On Tuesday, Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! interviewed Kevin Moore about the video and its role in the uprising.
A key piece of evidence against the officers in the upcoming Freddie Gray trials is the video showing Gray screaming in apparent agony as police drag him to a van. It was shot by Kevin Moore, a Baltimore resident who lives in the Gilmor Homes housing projects where Freddie Gray lived.
Excerpts from the Interview:
AMY GOODMAN: Had you filmed before?
KEVIN MOORE: Never. Never, never, never. I was always witnessing or, you know, there for police brutality, and—but the Freddie Gray incident was the first time I ever picked up a camera and actually pushed it this far, you know?
KEVIN MOORE: I was in the street on—it’s a street called Presbury, and I was in the middle of the street, and I could see he was handcuffed. And like, they had the heels of his feet in his back, in the middle of his back almost. And—
AMY GOODMAN: What do you mean?
KEVIN MOORE: I mean, like the heels of your feet—picture the heels of your feet almost in the middle of your back, but the wrong way. And it just looked like a pretzel almost. And the one officer had his knee like buried right into his neck. And I could—you could hear him screaming, man. You could hear the pain in his voice, and on his face, you could see it. And then, when they picked him up and, you know, drug him to the van, you could see he couldn’t—he had no control of his legs or wasn’t able to stand or—you know, which is why they dragged from one point to the other. So...
AMY GOODMAN: So, you had never done this before, but Copwatch got in touch with you after?
KEVIN MOORE: Absolutely, like immediately after they saw the Freddie Gray video, and there was like a few days into what was going on, and they came out, and they got in contact with me. And we went out and got—they brought me cameras and set up a nonprofit GoFundMe. And then, it was just—it was so much love.
AMY GOODMAN: And what has been the police reaction to you since?
KEVIN MOORE: Oh, man, it’s amazing how I can keep them at bay, so to speak, keep them on a leash with just a video camera. It’s almost like live ammunition, almost with like live rounds, live bullets from a gun. When you put a camera in a cop’s face, and he sees you, you know, he’s like, "Oh, wow, what do I do now?" you know, because at first his mindset was, "Oh, I can do whatever I want, and I’m a police, so I’ll get away with it." But then, once he sees a civilian recording, and it’s raw footage and not CCTV, which can be tampered with, a body camera, which can be tampered with—
Watch the full interview at Democracy Now!