Police chief Doug Barthel spoke at Democratic Forum yesterday (3/28/15). He gave a good introduction where he talked about more communication with the public, which is quite ironic (which we will get to in a moment). he also touched on the Tuthill incident in which he said, “the suspect pulled a gun and pointed it at the officer.”
Later on during the Q & A, an audience member asked Barthel what the policy was with releasing police video and audio to the public (Barthel supports the use of body cameras, dash cameras and tasers). Barthel concluded that according to State Law, he doesn’t have to release those files (but has the authority to do so – he, of course, didn’t mention that) but felt he didn’t need to, because it would open up the ‘flood gate’ of the media requesting footage.
Since he brought up Tuthill, I asked him why the SFPD hasn’t released the audio or a crime scene site map and why the DCI wasn’t allowed to investigate the shooting by the officer?
He felt that releasing a map or an audio file ‘wouldn’t benefit’ the case (Even though, I suspect it’s because they don’t want the public ‘speculating’ whether the officer performed his duties correctly, even though they already are.)
He also believes there truly was a suspect and a ‘threat’ and the officer had every right to fire.
He said that the DCI didn’t need to investigate because ‘the suspect wasn’t injured.’
I found that answer interesting because we ‘don’t know’ if the suspect was injured, they have not been found.
I still think if we released the audio file and had a ‘real’ external investigation of the incident, we would be a lot closer to finding the suspect. But that of course that would require the SFPD to ‘communicate’ and be ‘transparent’ with the public, and do we really want to open those floodgates?