Police Videos Aren't Going Away. How Can We Learn From Them?

Editor's Note: This story includes videos and descriptions of violent encounters between police and civilians, as well as language that may not be appropriate for all readers.

For three days last summer, many of us watched as TV and computer screens showed violence between police and civilians. Alton Sterling and Philando Castile were shot and killed by police. Then a gunman killed five police officers in Dallas.

That week made clear just how much these videos of police violence have become part of our lives.

The videos are not new, of course — the Rodney King beating by Los Angeles police was filmed in 1991. But from dashcams to body cameras to bystanders' cellphones, more and more interactions between civilians and police are being captured on camera.

How are these videos changing the police? How are they changing civilians? And what can we learn from them?

These are the questions we tried to answer as we looked at three very different videos.

Charlotte, N.C.: Confirmation Bias

The death of Jonathan Ferrell is one of the few police shootings where nearly every piece of evidence and every perspective was publicly examined and presented. And yet people still came to startlingly different conclusions about what happened.

Around 2:30 a.m. on Sept. 14, 2013, a woman calls 911 and says a black man is trying to break into her house. Three officers respond; one has his dashcam rolling.

His headlights shine on Ferrell, a black man in a green shirt and light-colored pants. He matches the description the woman gave to 911.

At first you see Ferrell walking toward the cops. Then you see both his hands go to his waist, like he might be pulling up his pants.

Then you see a red dot on his chest. We later learn it's from a second officer's Taser.

Then Ferrell starts to run, and he runs right off camera. You