What People Are Doing Wrong This Week: Fake Police Body Camera Videos
Another week, another “gotcha” video debunked. This time, it’s “ Cop Pulls Over Black Judge and Lives To Regret It,” a mockumentary street drama that has been viewed millions of times on YouTube and TikTok (and elsewhere, I’m sure). The video is part of a growing genre of online videos based around documenting police encounters with the public, either through footage captured on police body cameras or through footage shot by citizens. Some of these videos are real, but many are not.
Here’s the video “Policeman Stops Judge”:
Stories: Bad Improv in a Florida Parking Lot
If you have even a drop of media literacy, you can easily recognize a fake.
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The level of acting is at the level of subcultural theatre.
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The improved dialogues are just laughable.
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I’m pretty sure judges don’t wear robes when they’re on assignment.
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The taillight, which was allegedly broken by the police officer, is intact at the end of the video.
That’s just the surface. Dig deeper and you’ll find out that the watermark on the body camera is incorrect and that there is no Sunny Springs in Florida.
The Cinematic Universe That Inspires Anger: Who Makes These Videos Anyway?
The description of the channel where the video of the judge was taken, bodycam declassified , reads: “On our channel we bring you real, unfiltered bodycam footage that gives you an insight into real situations. In some cases, we may replay certain elements to clarify key aspects of certain encounters.”
I can’t find a single video on this channel with real footage of “Cop slaps arrogant prince in Ferrari and gets suspended” , “Black female lawyer vs arrogant cop” and all the rest of these videos are fake, unless all of these confrontations happened in the parking lot of the same building.
After a little digging on YouTube, we found a ton of these infuriating videos from different creators, with different stories. We have cops pulling over FBI agents , cops harassing people for taking their shoes off in the park, and my personal favorite: Dumb cop messing with the wrong FBI agent on a plane . Watch it and try not to laugh:
I actually like the sincerity of this video. It reminds me of the delusional incompetence of B-movie king Ed Wood: “God bless them, they tried .” But that’s not an airplane interior. That’s not a flight attendant uniform. That’s not an FBI agent. That’s not how people talk to each other on planet Earth. That same fake airplane was also used in this video .
The “Cop vs. Judge” video is essentially a reboot of the real thing, where Florida police stop Aramis Ayala, Florida’s first elected prosecutor, for no reason. Comparing the two makes it clear what real body camera footage looks like compared to a fake, but it also highlights why people are drawn to the fake over the real thing. We don’t see what happens to the real cop, other than a brief moment of embarrassment. (Spoiler: nothing.)
Why are these fakes so successful?
I’ve been digging into the subgenre of fake confrontation videos, and they, like the fake political confrontation videos I posted last week, point to a collective desire for justice. Cops are often assholes, and we want to see them face consequences when they make mistakes, so there are plenty of popular channelsdedicated to videos showing just that. (Thanks for all the free body-camera entertainment, Police of America!) But real police confrontations tend to be darker than the fakes (maybe the cops shouldn’t have beaten up that guy , but I think he’s drunk), and even when the cops are clearly in the wrong , any “conclusion” from these stories takes years of legal wrangling. And the fakes? Instant justice!
Why People Believe Fake Police Videos
The winning formula for these videos is a cop pulling over someone who is “higher” in the hierarchy of justice than the cop on the street. That way, the offender can face instant karma, instead of being punished years later in a legal document no one will read. We want the gangster cop in full robes while we watch. We want to see the good guys win now, and if they don’t, we’ll splurge. Real justice isn’t usually exciting, it’s a tedious slog through layers of moral relativism and triple-dip paperwork, but fake justice hits hard . The biggest sign that these videos are fake isn’t bad dialogue or questionable production design, but how truthful they feel.
(Also: flight attendant uniform.)