The biggest crime trial in Hawaii for years is in progress now. An off duty federal agent shot a local man in McDonald's. It taps into two of the biggest tensions / issues / prejudices locally - that white people are jerks who abuse locals, and that locals are drugged out punks.
The shooting happened more than a year and a half ago. While the police disclosed that surveillance video captured the incident then, it has taken until now for it to be released.
Unfortunately, as a local site notes, the "video is of such poor quality that it does little to help jurors see what really happened."
Here's a few stills. First the better quality video:
And here's another camera from the other side of the store:
And here's the full video shown in court:
It's difficult. The lack of details, the slow frame rates, the jumpiness of the video, etc. Indeed, this is a case where audio would be crucial as a key contention was what the off duty officer said (i.e., was he the aggressor or was he trying to defuse the situation, etc.).
And for McDonald's, what can they really do? They are not at fault here. And murders like this rarely happen, so it is harder to justify improved surveillance for such cases.
What do you think?