NYT Video Sync Reframes Moments Before Renee Good Shooting (Full Transcript)

[00:00:00] Speaker 1: There's still many questions, outstanding questions, about what happened in the critical moments leading up to the killing of Rene Good during a confrontation with ICE officers last week. As additional videos of the shootings continue to surface, the New York Times is out with a very detailed new analysis syncing up multiple videos from different angles, going frame by frame and creating really the fullest video image picture of what transpired. Here's a portion of their analysis centering around the position of the officer in relation to Ms. Good's vehicle. That's from the New York Times.

[00:00:31] Speaker 2: The cell phone is focused squarely on Ms. Good. She looks down, shifts into drive, and begins turning to the right, away from the agent. Cut to this high angle and zoom in. We can make out the agent's body and his arm filming. We can also see, at the same time, he's beginning to lift his other arm. On these cameras, we can see what's happening around Agent Ross. The other agent is yelling orders and reaching into Ms. Good's SUV. Her front tire spins as she continues turning right. Agent Ross is at least a few feet away from Ms. Good's SUV. He does not appear to move out of the way.

[00:01:12] Speaker 1: And I'm joined by one of the reporters who worked on that video analysis from the New York Times, Devin Lam. Devin, so that video that we just saw, what is the significance to you in that?

[00:01:22] Speaker 2: Right, so what we're seeing in that video is the agent who eventually shoots Renee Good moving from his position near his own SUV in front of her vehicle as it's moving. So law enforcement agents are not instructed to do that. They're told the direct opposite, because it places them in danger, like we see in this.

[00:01:43] Speaker 1: It also, I mean, what you're saying in the video is that she is turning the wheel almost like a three-point turn. She had backed up, and now she's turning. Does it indicate in the video that she was, I mean, this is one of the questions. The president said that she ran over the officer. That clearly didn't occur. Was she aiming for him? Was she trying to turn away?

[00:02:06] Speaker 2: Right, so we can see in the video there's a split second where the tires of her car are pointed towards the agent. But it's not because she's angling those tires at the agent. It's like you said, she's in the middle of completing a three-point turn. So she was reversing with the wheel turned all the way to the left to flip the front of the car to the right and was in the process of turning to the right. So if you play the video further, you can see those wheels are moving away from the agent.

[00:02:34] Speaker 1: There's also the question of was the agent who killed Ms. Goode, was he actually hit? That we've seen his cell phone camera video. There seems to be, you know, a jostling of the camera, whether that's him smashing against the car, I'm not sure. Well, I want to show this other video that's part of your analysis.

[00:02:57] Speaker 2: This is also the moment many have said looks like Agent Ross getting run over. And it does when watched at full speed.

[00:03:05] Speaker 3: But looking more closely, we can see in.

[00:03:13] Speaker 1: We had some problem with that. Can we try to re-rack that and play that again? Because that's important.

[00:03:20] Speaker 2: This is also the moment many have said looks like Agent Ross getting run over. And it does when watched at full speed. But looking more closely, we can see in multiple angles that there's a visible gap between the vehicle and his legs indicating his feet are positioned outside the SUV's path.

[00:03:42] Speaker 3: The agent's left hand is still against the vehicle and gripping his phone.

[00:03:47] Speaker 2: We see as he fires, it's recording the clouds and the trees overhead. It's not because the agent is knocked to the ground. The other angle shows he's still standing, continuing to maintain his grip on his phone and his gun. And we see a clear and growing gap between his body and the SUV as he fires a second shot.

[00:04:10] Speaker 1: And that, there's four shots, your report. There's three. Three shots. Yeah, that's correct. So the second and the third shot, which I think we have a freeze frame maybe of or a re-racking of the second and the third shot. That's from a different angle than the first shot. And is it directly into the window?

[00:04:32] Speaker 2: So, you know, we're not able to establish the direct path of each bullet that was shot. But what we can see in the video is by the time that he's firing his second and third shot, there's a clear and growing gap between where he's positioned and where Renee Good has been turning, right? So the first shot looks to be a little bit more directly, potentially through the windshield. But again, we can't establish that through the visuals at this moment. But at the moment of the first shot, he has his hand on the vehicle as it's turning and pushing this direction as pivoting away, right? And you can really see that pivoting motion when he fires the second and third shot and that gap continues to grow as she drives past and it becomes more of a firing through the side.

[00:05:17] Speaker 1: I want to play another piece of your analysis that shows, well, let's play this next one.

[00:05:25] Speaker 2: It's at this point in the cell phone video where it first looks and sounds like the agent's getting knocked violently. On the other camera, we can see what's happening. Here is Agent Ross aiming his miss good. And here is his outstretched arm leaning toward her vehicle, which is barely visible behind the Tahoe. His phone, which is gripped in his left hand, flips over when the agent's hand lands on the front of the vehicle. There's an audible thud when it hits. The camera rotates up towards the sky. Again, while it appears the agent's getting knocked over, we can see that's not the case from the other angle, which shows he's standing with his hand near the headlight, his torso and legs away from the vehicle.

[00:06:14] Speaker 1: So that knock in the agent's camera, which when you first hear it, it sounds like he's being hit, that's actually the phone in his hand making impact with the car.

[00:06:25] Speaker 2: Yeah, it's really important to acknowledge that the video that came out last Friday from the perspective of the agent was not being recorded by a body camera. It was the cell phone that he was holding in his hand. So when we see some ruffling, some darkness, some shaking, it's not that he's being knocked back. It's that his hand, which is holding the camera, is being moved around by himself as well as the motion of the car. So when we hear a thud and the camera is flipping upward, pretend you're filming holding a camera like this and something is coming towards you and you wanna put your hand on that thing in front of you. The camera is gonna flip up, right? And so when it makes contact with the car, which is turning and driving, it's gonna push back in this direction. So that's what we see when we see his face and the shift from facing the car to upward. It's not him being knocked over. It's the motion of his hand.

[00:07:19] Speaker 1: His hand is on the vehicle and it moves toward his chest as the car is moving, but his legs are back.

[00:07:24] Speaker 2: Yes, so he's positioned back, kind of leaning forward like this, but his legs are out of the path of the vehicle and he's trained on Rene Good that entire time. If you watch the video, his shooting hand is remarkably stable throughout that entire portion. Even after this contact with his hand, despite being on a slippery road and making contact with the vehicle, he's still on his feet. He's sliding a little bit, but he hasn't been knocked to the ground. He hasn't lost a grip on his camera and he has not stopped aiming directly at Ms. Good.

[00:07:58] Speaker 1: Devin Lum, appreciate it. Thanks very much. You can find the full video on The New York Times' homepage. It's fascinating. Take a look.