A Month before Shanahan Accident, an Independent Audit Found Palo Alto Police Inconsistent with Body Camera Use

TMZ and others requested the Body Camera footage and the accident report. The Palo Alto police denied all requests.

Most conspiracy theories amount to absolutely nothing. As facts begin confirming the story, however, it’s no longer a theory.

TMZ claims they were denied the body camera footage and accident report pertaining to a July 14th car accident that landed 49ers head coach Kyle Shanahan in the hospital. The Palo Alto Police Department (PAPD) cited the California Public Records Act as the reason they are “exempt from disclosure”.

Upon looking into various stories surrounding the PAPD, I found something interesting though.

The Kyle Shanahan car accident occurred less than a month after an independent audit found the PAPD didn’t properly utilize their body cameras through several incidents, per NBC Bay Area.

“Body worn cameras are gamechangers when it comes to our auditing responsibilities and often are determinative in deciding whether or not the officers’ conduct was consistent with policy,” said Michael Gennaco of the Office of Independent Review. “We found several situations in which for one reason or another, the body worn camera did not depict all of the encounter or one of the (PAPD) officers on scene did not appropriately activate his or her body worn camera.”

Is that the reason for the PAPD reluctance to hand over body camera footage? Was it improperly used? Was it used at all?

Hard to say without anything being provided.

This is just the latest addition to a long series of strange behavior from the media and police involved in the Kyle Shanahan car accident.

First we had the timeline; the local and national media didn’t report on the matter for 11 days, which is an extremely long time for someone as prominent as Shanahan to have evaded 49ers writers that are paid to cover the team so extensively. In fact, according to one 49ers beat reporter, Shanahan, himself, was surprised how long it took for the story to break.

Then, we found out the PAPD didn’t issue a citation to anyone for the car accident, despite Shanahan clearly being at fault. The police knew he had been holding his cell phone at the time of the crash, or at least that’s what the entry in the online database said.

The same database listed the 21-year-old victim of the accident, as the person at fault. To his credit, Shanahan cleared up the mistake that the PAPD claimed was a “clerical error”.

There’s just been one thing after another with the handling of this matter. And where there’s smoke…

There’s me doing lots of Google searches and making lots of Twitter/X posts.

-Written by Seattle Mike