Police video scandal spotlights Web's publicity role

Today's headliner about the suspension of 20 San Francisco police officers for their alleged roles in making "sexist" and "racists" videos is intriguing on many levels; it's about politics, cops, judgement calls, free speech and--of particular interest to us at CNET News.com--the public nature of the Internet.

S.F. Mayor Gavin Newsom and Police Chief Heather Fong announced the suspensions at a press conference Wednesday before showing clips from the videos they described as mocking minorities and treating women as objects. The films, which feature officers mainly from one of the city's crime-plagued stations, were produced by Officer Andrew Cohen, who posted them on the now defunct site www.insidethesfpd.com.

The videos are parodies of police patrols involving African Americans, Asian Americans and transgender individuals. Newsom said the conduct of those involved with the videos "is shameful. It is offensive. it is sexist, it is homophobic, it is racist, and we're going to make sure it ends."

However, in an interview on KRON with columnist Phil Matier, Cohen's lawyer, Daniel Horowitz, called the videos a form of artistic communication that make a point about community perception and what's wrong with the department. He also argued that his client didn't "release" the videos. He merely put them on a Web site that's viewed by police officers and not on a search engine. "He was not releasing it to the general public at this time," Horowitz said.

Rather, it was Newsom and Fong who made "a real bonehead move" by releasing the videos to the public at a press conference and thus making it a national story, Horowitz said.

Hmmm. That leaves us wondering how putting something on the Web is different than releasing it to the public. Guess Cohen didn't learn any lessons from a similar scandal in which a racy training tape for the San Francisco 49ers was circulated online.