WATCH "CAUGHT ON TAPE: BOOT CAMP GONE AWRY"
on a special edition of ABC 20/20 this Friday at 9 pm
Dec. 27, 2006 ? Everywhere you look there are cameras ? from street corner surveillance to camcorders to cell phones. Many of these cameras are used to solve crimes, and when it comes to all the crimes caught on tape in 2006, the story of 14-year-old Martin Lee Anderson stands out. In Anderson's case, a camera actually changed the course of justice, and gave voice to a victim who could no longer speak.
You may have seen the 30-minute silent surveillance tape that captured the last conscious moments of Martin's life, surrounded by multiple sheriff's guards and a nurse at the Panama City, Fla., juvenile boot camp where he had been sent after violating probation on charges that he took his grandmother's car for a joy ride.
It's a day juvenile boot camp supervisor Charles Helms had not spoken about in public until his interview with "20/20." And he probably wouldn't be talking at all if it weren't for the grainy videotape that led to manslaughter charges for Helms, his staff, and the nurse who was there when Anderson died.
What those three cameras in the exercise yard of the boot camp recorded was the actual death of a teenager. His parents had hoped he would serve his time close to home and "come out and be a 14-year-old kid, but it did not turn out that way," they said.
'Standard Law Enforcement Techniques'?
In fact, just two hours after Anderson was processed at the boot camp, and just six laps into his first mandatory mile run, the incident that led to his death began. Helms says that Anderson refused to continue running and was deemed "uncooperative."
"He said something to the effect?that 'I'm not going to do this,' or 'I'll do this tomorrow,'" says Helms. So, Helms and his men used what they claim were "standard law enforcement techniques." They punched the boy in the arms to unclench his fists and kneed him in the thighs to make him collapse to the ground.
Helms says the officers were "trying to see if the kid was faking it, feigning illness, which happens quite often with a new kid coming into the program, because a lot of these kids are used to manipulating people and the system."
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