Durham attorney uses social media to share instances of national police misconduct
DURHAM, N.C. (WTVD) -- The images that appear online and the nation's television screens of violent clashes involving police include incidents where officer misconduct is captured on camera. Those are among the hundreds of cases documented by attorney T. Greg Doucette and posted on his social media.
"I have been sharing stories about police misconduct since 2007 on Facebook," he said. "Started around 2012 on Twitter."
Doucette is a defense lawyer, so awareness of police activity fuels his business. Working with a professor in California, he feeds the information he gathers from online news sources and other outlets about police activity into a spreadsheet and shares the results with those who follow his posts.
"If it's something where we don't see corroborating video elsewhere, and I haven't seen it before, then we'll check Google to see if there's been a news story about it, check Google Maps to see if we can pinpoint the location," said Doucette.
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Now, with an estimated 600 incidents documented, there's a story about his work published in Time magazine.
During the recent days of protests against bad policing, his media racked up many views. He says among them were clicks by out of state investigators of police misconduct accusations.
"Some of them have reached out to tell me they're reviewing the video, taking action as appropriate and investigating. But as far as I'm aware, none of the departments have contacted me. Also, I don't actually know because I've gotten so many messages. There's probably about 1,600 that I haven't had a chance to open yet," he said when asked if there's been any feedback from officers.
Doucette, a self-described ex-Republican, identifies as a conservative.
"There's an old saying in politics, that there are two types of conservatives. You have those that are anti-state, anti-government and you have those who are anti-left. They're just in favor of whatever the Democrats oppose. I have always been skeptical of the government and I wear that truthfully. I'm a criminal defense attorney, I fight the government every single day, and police misconduct is part of that," he said.
