This is an opinion cartoon.

In Alabama, getting access to evidence from a police body camera is tougher than ordering soup from an authoritarian chef. It’s damn near impossible.

As I’ve said and drawn before, Alabama police bodycam rules are as transparent as ductape.

To catch y’all up to speed, please read John Sharp’s comprehensive story on the Alabama police bodycam issue: Alabama police know they don’t have to show bodycam videos to families: ‘Why hide it?’

Excerpts:

The family of a young man killed by police at a soccer park south of Birmingham says an officer shot him in the back.

But police won’t show the video to the public or even to Jabari Peoples’ family.

Across the state — in Decatur, Bay Minette, Huntsville, Madison, and Montgomery — the pattern repeats: Someone dies in police custody, grieving families ask for body camera footage, and authorities often say no with the same refrain: “Due to an ongoing investigation.”

“In order to eliminate some of the confusion, disruption, lawsuits even, and the mistrust and distrust of law enforcement, I think the video camera footage should be shown,” said Robert Clopton, president of the Mobile branch of the NAACP. “If there is nothing to hide, why hide it?”

In Alabama, police now know they don’t have to release the tapes.

Four years ago, the state supreme court ruled that police can keep all of their investigative materials, including bodycams, hidden from the public.

And a state law passed in 2023 allows them to choose whether to keep the footage hidden from families.

While there’s no law or court ruling that says they can’t show the footage, in Alabama, that only tends to happen when the videos are convenient for police, or if a judge orders it released years after the fact.

Read all of Sharp’s story here.

Related: Jabari Peoples’ death sparks political fight: Lawmaker who helped pass bodycam law attacks family lawyer

Related: Independent autopsy leaves questions unanswered about Jabari Peoples’ death, lawyers say: ‘We need the bullet’

JD Crowe is the cartoonist for Alabama Media Group andAL.com. He won the RFK Human Rights Award for Editorial Cartoons in 2020. In 2018, he was awarded the Rex Babin Memorial Award for local and state cartoons by the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists. Follow JD on Facebook, Twitter@Crowejam andInstagram @JDCrowepix. Give him a holler @[email protected].

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