Perfect Situation: The Jillian Shriner Footage
We requested body camera footage of the Jillian Shriner incident from both the California Highway Patrol (CHP) and the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD).
We got this response from the California Highway Patrol:
Bodycams are not mandatory for police in California but some local law enforcement agencies, like the LAPD, have adopted them anyway. The state legislature approved nearly $10 million dollars in the 2024/2025 budget to purchase bodycams for the CHP.
CHP officers in Southern California were expected to receive them within six to eight weeks. As of June 2025, the CHP has not yet deployed bodycams for all of its officers.
Even though CHP began testing bodycams in 2016, at last known count, only 3% of the CHP's 7,600 uniformed officers had bodycams, and they were all in the areas of Oakland and Stockton.
A few days later, we got this bizarre and confusing response from LAPD:
The video they linked us to is… something else. Apparently LAPD puts out a lot of videos like this; it almost comes across as a miniature documentary. You can find it below the clips we pulled from it.
We also found that it seemingly contradicted LAPD’s claim that these exact same records would in some way disrupt their investigation into this incident, or the ongoing trial, if they were released as raw evidence without extrapolation from the LAPD.
We see all there is to be seen, and what there is isn’t much. As a result, it isn’t immediately clear that the footage substantiates the states case against Shriner. We have broken down the video from LAPD.
Most of the action occurs off screen and is framed by the LAPDs construction of events. LAPD seems to have worked very hard at making footage that would have have otherwise supported their case instead come across as prejudicial against Shriner.
At no point do officers verbally describe her pointing a gun at them; one does describe her holding it aloft and another describes her racking it just before an initial shot is fired by someone (presumably Shriner) at something (allegedly, at the police).
Shriner was shot by the return fire from police which followed immediately. For her part, Shriner comes across as somewhat disoriented. Based on the subsequent 9/11 call, it seems as if she didn’t realize that the police were the police… despite the fact that they repeatedly identified themselves as officers.
We’re unclear why LAPD doesn’t just release information like this intact and unaltered. We believe it works against their purpose not to do so.
Presented as raw evidence, this footage would have weakly supported the police accusations against Shriner. Presented as a minidocumentary with commentary and annotation, it instead comes across as something else entirely.
We made a request for comment from LAPD asking if this was policy and why they release public records in this way. We also asked CHP how their body worn camera rollout is going.
As of yet we have not heard back from either agency - LAPD or CHP. We’ll update this story if and when we do.
Thank you. Is there sound or is it just me that’s not getting any?