Cameras make difference in police work

It’s the kind of case that sends shivers down the spines of some cops and does worse to the ones at home who love them and pray for their safety.

It happened just a week ago, on the Wednesday, a routine call about a suspicious guy in a Durango, parked by the truck stop on La. Highway 182 near Coteau.

Here’s where the terrifying part of it begins.

The call is routine as routine can be. People are always seeing suspicious some ones, all over Terrebonne Parish, and in every other community on earth just about. Most of the time, it ends up being nothing. An awkward few moments involving the checking of a license, the running of a plate. Lots of anxiety for the suspicious person.

There’s in most cases a lot more anxiety for the officer, however, and with good reason. Very good reason.

The cops are not psychic, and so don’t know which suspicious person is a bad guy and who is the good guy.

So the cop gets there, in broad daylight, at 8:23 a.m., and the guy is sleeping in the Durango. The cop hasn’t been identified yet. But the guy in the Durango was 59-year-old Wilton Henry, who was said to have been homeless. The deputy wakes up Henry and asks for identification which is the most normal thing in the world to do. Henry grabs a pistol from the floorboard of the Durango. The deputy realizes this is THAT moment. But Henry points the gun at himself and pulls the trigger.

He was a lousy shot and Henry suffers a non-incapacitating wound.

Then he points the gun at the deputy, who is pointing his gun back, and Henry cocks his gun and the deputy fires.

He was a far better shot than Henry, who now exists in the past tense.

The whole thing is under investigation by the Louisiana State Police but this is the story that is so far understood.

It is sad that anyone dies, but a lot of people are glad the deputy got to go home.

The issues that come up in these kinds of cases, where a cop shoots someone and there are headlines that follow don’t apply in this one. The incident was not cross-racial. Both the officer and the man who was killed were white. Not that this should really matter, but it can matter a lot, and has in several places.

This incident marked the second time within the space of some hours involving deputies being called in connection with Henry, Sheriff Jerry Larpenter said. Just the night before they had been called because an intoxicated Henry made a disturbance in the store. The situation was amicably resolved. Or so it seemed.

The video from the body camera worn by the officer appears to corroborate what witnesses have already said, which is the version you have just read.

Larpenter was one of the first people to see the video, from the camera that he mandates should be on at all times when his deputies are on patrol. He started out using the devices only for his narcotics squad, because the technology costs a lot of money and there was only so much to go around. As soon as he was able Larpenter bought more cameras and now everyone in his department has them, and he says incidents like this prove why the technology is so important.

“I have known that from the beginning,” Larpenter said of the important role body cameras now play.

Larpenter’s experience with the cameras has thus far matched the experiences cited by other police departments using them. Good cops, he notes, should have nothing to fear from the cameras, which have been the result on more than one occasion of a police officer’s side of the story being upheld.

A lot about these cameras has yet to be resolved. There are questions about how public records laws relate to them, and about the privacy of people. These will be worked out, one would hope, in due time.

But for now it appears the camera has done its job. •