A deadly shootout in Charlotte that left five dead illustrates how smartphone-wielding bystanders don’t always run for cover when bullets start to fly
— Saing Chhoeun was locked out of his Charlotte, North Carolina, home on Monday as law enforcement with high-powered rifles descended into his yard and garage, using a car as a shield as they were met with a shower of gunfire from the direction of his neighbor’s house.
As bullets flew just feet away, Chhoeun took out his phone and started live-streaming the standoff between officials and a man wanted for possession of a firearm by an ex-felon and fleeing to elude.
By the end of the ordeal, five people including four officers and the shooter were dead and more injured in the deadliest single-day incident for U.S. law enforcement since 2016.
The deadly shootout also illustrated how smartphone-wielding bystanders don’t always run for cover when bullets start to fly. Increasingly, they look to livestream their perspective of the attack. Experts say the reaction reflects the new role that bystanders play in the age of smartphones.
“It’s become sort of a social norm, » said Karen North, a digital social media professor at the University of Southern California Annenberg.
Humans always have had trouble defining the responsibilities of a bystander in a crisis situation, North said. It’s not always safe to intervene, as with the situation in Charlotte, and people can feel helpless when they’re doing nothing. Social media has provided a third option.
The « new responsibility of the bystander” in the digital era is to take a record of what happened on their phones, she said.
“It used to be, ‘If you see something, say something,' » North said. « Now, it’s, ‘If you see something, start recording.’”
Chhoeun had been about to leave for work when U.
