Bystander Video | Rodney King, George Floyd, Eric Garner, Arab Spring, Renee Good, Alex Pretti, & History | Britannica

Ask the Chatbot Games & Quizzes History & Society Science & Tech Biographies Animals & Nature Geography & Travel Arts & Culture ProCon Money Videos Bystander Video: A History IntroductionRodney KingOscar Grant IIIArab SpringEric GarnerGeorge FloydIranian protestsRenee Good and Alex Pretti References & Edit History Related Topics Images Contents print Print Please select which sections you would like to print: CITE verifiedCite While every effort has been made to follow citation style rules, there may be some discrepancies. Please refer to the appropriate style manual or other sources if you have any questions. Select Citation Style MLA APA Chicago Manual of Style Copy Citation Share Share Share to social media Facebook X URL https://www.britannica.com/topic/Bystander-Video-A-History Feedback Feedback Thank you for your feedback Our editors will review what you’ve submitted and determine whether to revise the article. External Websites Bystander Video: A History Sometimes pictures are worth more than a thousand words. Ask Anything Homework Help Written by Tracy Grant Tracy Grant is a senior editor at Encyclopaedia Britannica. She previously served as editor in chief, the first woman to hold that title. Tracy Grant Fact-checked by Britannica Editors Encyclopaedia Britannica's editors oversee subject areas in which they have extensive knowledge, whether from years of experience gained by working on that content or via study for an advanced degree.... Britannica Editors Last updated Feb. 26, 2026 •History Britannica AI Ask Anything Table of Contents Table of Contents Ask Anything Bearing witnessSeveral bystanders recording the actions of U.S. federal immigration agents with their phones in Minneapolis, Minnesota, February 2026.(more)“Without that video, the incident would have really been passed up by the public. No one would have known about it, or challenged what police said.” —law professor David Harris on the 1991 beating of Rodney King“Thank God, thank God we have video.” —Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz on the 2026 shooting of Alex PrettiThe same sentiment expressed about events separated by almost 35 years speaks to the increasing role that video technology has had in shaping a modern understanding of the world. For centuries allegations of impropriety and instances of violence have been one person’s word against another’s. Without evidence, who do you believe? Historically, the answer has been the person with more authority, power, and social stature.The advent of technology and the rise of citizen journalism have brought to light at times incontrovertible evidence in the form of bystander video taken on street corners and spread across the globe. Like eyewitness testimony, bystander videos are far from perfect. Sometimes they offer only one view of an incident. Sometimes they lack the context of what came before or after the moment the video camera was recording. But the reality is that technology has put millions of people into the roles of documentarians in a way that has changed the relationship citizens have with those in authority, whether they are law enforcement officers or world leaders. Here is a look at some of those moments. Rodney King The evidenceGeorge Holliday used his new video camera to record officers beating and kicking Rodney King in the early morning hours of March 3, 1991. Within days the video had been shown worldwide.(more)In 1991 there were no cell phones with cameras, but there were video cameras that had over the previous decade become smaller, lighter, and easier to use. In the early morning hours of March 3, 1991, Los Angeles resident George Holliday, awakened by a disturbance outside his apartment, took out his new video camera and began recording what was playing out 90 feet (30 meters) away. For roughly nine minutes he captured about a dozen law enforcement officers kicking, punching, and using stun guns on Rodney King, who had led police on a chase through the city before Holliday began filming. Officers would say that they thought King had a gun and was on drugs. It was later determined that he was unarmed and had no drugs in his system, although he had been drinking. The day after the incident Holliday took the video to a local television station. Within days it had been seen around the world. Four officers were charged in the case, and when three not-guilty verdicts and a mistrial were returned in 1992, Los Angeles saw some of the worst riots in its history. Pres. George H.W. Bush said to the country at the time, “It was hard to understand how the verdict could possibly square with the video.” Explore Britannica Premium! The trusted destination for professionals, college students, and lifelong learners. SUBSCRIBE Oscar Grant III In one of the first instances of cell phone video going viral, several bystanders recorded as transit police officers removed 22-year-old Oscar Grant III and some of his friends from a train in Oakland, California, in the early morning hours of New Year’s Day in 2009. The police were responding to reports of a fight involving two groups on the train. One officer pinned Grant to the train platform, and another officer shot him in the back. He died later that day. Indicative of the technology of the day, the video is grainy and shaky, and the conclusions from it were mixed. But in the days after Grant’s death it was shown on local television and downloaded almost 500,000 times from a local news station’s website. “It’s one of those phenomenons of the Internet world,” the site’s managing editor told the San Francisco Chronicle. The officer who fired the fatal shot was tried and found not guilty on second-degree murder and voluntary manslaughter charges but was convicted of the lesser charge of involuntary manslaughter. He spent 11 months in prison. In 2013 director Ryan Coogler made the film Fruitvale Station about Oscar Grant’s last day. The title comes from the train stop where Grant was killed. Arab Spring Start of a global movementProtesters taking to the streets of Tunisia to demand the end to an oppressive regime, January 2011. The movement began a month earlier, after bystanders captured the self-immolation of street vendor Mohamed Bouazizi in a video that was shared on social media.(more)The pro-democracy protests that swept across the Arab world between 2010 and 2012 have been called the “Facebook Revolution,” but they started with one Tunisian street vendor’s frustration with being harassed by government bureaucrats and police officers. On December 17, 2010, Mohamed Bouazizi’s despair led him to set himself on fire outside a government building. The aftermath of the shocking act was captured on video. While the state-sponsored television stations initially suppressed the video, it was shared on social media and led to widespread protests throughout the country. Shortly after Bouazizi died of his injuries on January 4, 2011, the authoritarian regime of Tunisian Pres. Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali was toppled. The Arab Spring spread across the region to encompass, among other countries, Egypt, Yemen, and Syria, with the world seeing the uprising through widespread videos shot by protesters in those countries. Eric Garner In July 2014 New York City police approached 43-year-old Eric Garner on a city street and accused him of selling loose cigarettes. It was the second time in a month that police had accused Garner of illegal sales. In a video shot by a bystander, Garner engages with officers, repeatedly telling them that he was “minding my business” and “didn’t sell anything.” After several minutes officers attempt to arrest Garner. The video shows one officer wrapping his arm around Garner’s neck, in a choke hold that is expressly prohibited by New York City Police Department policy. As officers restrain Garner on the ground, he is heard saying “I can’t breathe” 11 times. Garner was pronounced dead at a hospital. The officer who used the choke hold was fired. “I can’t breathe” became the mantra of the Black Lives Matter movement in 2014 and again in 2020. George Floyd Witness to horrorVideo still from police body-camera footage of bystanders, including 17-year-old Darnella Frazier (third from right) using her cell phone to record the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police on May 25, 2020.(more) Six years after the death of Garner, on Memorial Day in 2020, Minneapolis police confronted George Floyd, age 46, and accused him of trying to pass a counterfeit $20 bill. As 17-year-old Darnella Frazier recorded on her phone, police officer Derek Chauvin pinned Floyd to the pavement, kneeling on his neck for more than nine minutes. Floyd repeatedly pleaded for his life, telling officers “I can’t breathe” at least 27 times during his last minutes. The Minneapolis Police Department issued a misleading statement about Floyd’s death that was headlined, “Man Dies After Medical Incident During Police Interaction.” Frazier’s footage, posted on social media, immediately bore witness to the issues with that statement. Frazier was awarded a special Pulitzer Prize in 2021 for her role as a citizen journalist. The citation read: For courageously recording the murder of George Floyd, a video that spurred protests against police brutality around the world, highlighting the crucial role of citizens in journalists’ quest for truth and justice. Iranian protests In December 2025 and January 2026 tens of thousands of Iranians took to the streets to protest the economic hardships they were enduring and their government’s failure to address them. As protests raged in virtually every part of the country, the government staged a brutal crackdown that left thousands of civilians dead. The government also shut down the Internet, in essence creating a media vacuum that obscured what was going on within the authoritarian country. But, despite the online blackout, videos shot surreptitiously by activists made their way out of Iran and onto the Internet, documenting the horrors of the repression, including one 16-minute video that showed hundreds of bullet-riddled bodies lined up outside an overwhelmed morgue. Renee Good and Alex Pretti Capturing tragedyBystander video shows Minneapolis resident and U.S. citizen Alex Pretti (in brown at left) using his phone to record his interaction with a federal immigration officer on January 24, 2026. Moments later Pretti was shot and killed by agents.(more)In January 2026 thousands of Minneapolis residents took to the streets to protest the federal government’s immigration enforcement action in the city. Two of those protesters were Renee Nicole Good and Alex Jeffrey Pretti. Good was a 37-year-old mother of three who had dropped off her six-year-old at school on the morning of January 7 and then went with her wife to a protest in her neighborhood where Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents were working. Video taken by multiple bystanders shows Good in her vehicle as ICE officers approach her. After telling one ICE officer “I’m not mad at you” and having another try to open the door of her vehicle, she reverses and pulls forward, turning her wheel to the right, in an apparent attempt to leave the scene. The officer with whom she had spoken fires three shots, killing her. In the hours after the shooting, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said Good had committed “an act of domestic terrorism” and “weaponized” her vehicle in an attempt to kill or injure federal officers. The video seemed to contradict that narrative. A little more than two weeks later, on January 24, intensive care unit nurse Alex Pretti, age 37, was shot multiple times by federal agents during a protest against the immigration crackdown. Pretti, who was legally carrying a gun at the protest, was immediately labeled an “assassin” who was trying to “murder federal agents” by Pres. Donald Trump’s deputy chief of staff for policy, Stephen Miller. Multiple videos taken by bystanders show Pretti using his own phone to record the protest and then coming to the aid of a woman who was shoved to the ground by immigration officers. Moments later at least half a dozen officers bring Pretti to the ground. At least 10 shots are fired at him. His gun, which can be seen in the waistband of his pants in some videos, was removed by a federal agent before the shooting started. Related Topics: citizen journalism (Show more) See all related content It was at a press conference almost immediately after Pretti’s shooting that Governor Walz said, “Thank God, thank God, we have video.” Tracy Grant