By Charles Davis (Asst. Prof. of Architecture History) | This essay notes the historical shift pf techniques in activists’ resistance to police brutality. The bold images of the Black Panther Party that intertwined black masculinity with armed resistance have given way to a broader public armed with camera phones and other tools from social media. Might this shift mark an epochal transition of strategies and aims in the maintenance of minority civil rights? 1. The first instance of recording police abuse that I can recall (at least vividly) is the beating of Rodney King in Los Angeles. Though the footage was grainy, and I was still in high school, it was a visceral reminder of the monopoly on state-sponsered violence that police officers employed against the black body. It also keyed me into the power of video to promote change. Because of the power of video, the LAPD was considered a menace in the eyes of the public. It would be interesting to write a history of public surveillance of police abuse that begins with the Rodney King …