Xix, in his post above (#6), suggests that this video might be staged. I think that suggestion is correct. This is probably not a real encounter between a cop and an FBI agent — it’s probably an encounter between an actor pretending to be a cop and an actor pretending to be an FBI agent. (I’m talking about the original video that Stinkynuts posted, not the others that other terbites have posted or referenced in this thread, which I haven’t watched.)
While viewing the video, I was waiting for the moment when the FBI agent shows the cop his badge in the way that he does in the thumbnail image. That moment never arrives, making it look like the thumbnail image was staged, using actors. Note that the car interior in the thumbnail exactly matches the car interior in the video, so, if the video was real, but they recreated the scene for the thumbnail — using actors — they went to the trouble of finding the same type of car. Not likely. More likely is that the thumbnail image and the video were both staged using the same actors.
The video was on the Bodycam Declassified channel, so I took the time to go to YouTube and read the description of the channel that’s there:
"Our channel presents authentic bodycam footage, sourced through official FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) requests, as well as reenactments using professional actors to clarify key events. All reenacted content is original, scripted, and the exclusive intellectual property of Media 360 LLC”. [My emphasis.]
The word reenactment implies that the reenactments are based on incidents that really happened. But if the “reenacted” material is based on events that really happened, why would you need to write a script? You would just have your reenactment actors say and do what the real people said and did in the real incident — no script that could qualify as “original” and “exclusive intellectual property” would be necessary.
Media 360 is claiming that some of the stuff on their channel is genuine bodycam footage, and I’m willing to believe them. But they’re not even pretending that it’s all genuine.
For the sake of argument, let’s say that this video is a reenactment that's based on real bodycam footage of a real confrontation between a real cop and a real FBI agent. Even if that is the case, how closely do you think that the script would have stayed true to what was really said? Does it change things if the cop was really black and the FBI agent was really white? What if the cop was actually respectful and pleasant? I’m not writing this to defend cops — there are white asshole cops who would behave in the way that we see in this video.
My guess — and it is only a guess — is that the video is fiction from top to bottom. The content-creators at Media 360 came up with a scenario that was designed to be clickbait, and they did a great job — they got 12-million views. Congratulations to those content-creators.
