The Blue Hand

Directed & Produced by: Jayrol San Jose and Ben Camacho

Stage:
- Finished Project
Location:
- California, United States
Updated: April 2, 2026
Project Type:
- Short
Project Style:
- Narrative/Doc Mix,
- Reportage
Theme Subject:
- Crime,
- Politics,
- Social / Cultural

Logline

LAPD shot at a party then improperly used a search warrant to investigate a shooting victim.

LAPD's community policing program avoided scrutiny for a shootout a month before the program became its own bureau. Data revealed search warrant practices were leading to untraceable warrants.

Clips

LAPD Community Safety Partnership Officer Nathaniel Beck shot five times towards crowds of partygoers on June 3, 2020.

A short-documentary about shadow warrants accompanies the written piece about this incident.
After the June 3, 2020 shooting, LAPD held onto Jermaine Welch’s property, which included his phone. In this clip from the project’s short documentary, LAPD Detective Aaron Harrington tells Welch that they will keep his phone as evidence despite Welch being a shooting victim. Soon after, LAPD produces the shadow warrant.
The Blue Hand: Before LAPD gave Jermaine Welch the shadow warrant, they had no warrant even though they held his property as evidence.

In this clip from the short documentary, Jermaine tells LAPD Detective Peter Verscherun that LAPD unjustly implicating him in the police shooting incident and withholding his property from him without a warrant.

Synopsis

The Blue Hand is an investigative reporting project examining a June 2020 police shooting in Los Angeles and the actions that followed. During a neighborhood gathering, an LAPD officer fired multiple shots into a crowd, injuring a partygoer. In the aftermath, police obtained and improperly handled a search warrant that was used to seize the victim’s property rather than to investigate the officer involved.

Drawing on public records, internal LAPD documents, and legal

...

Drawing on public records, internal LAPD documents, and legal filings, the project reconstructs the incident and tracks how the case was documented, investigated, and ultimately obscured. The reporting highlights discrepancies between official police statements and the underlying record, as well as procedural failures that left key actions effectively untraceable within the court system.

The Blue Hand focuses on transparency and accountability in law enforcement, documenting how institutional processes can deflect scrutiny and limit public understanding of police use of force.

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Background

Incidents involving police use of force continue to draw national attention, but public understanding of how these cases are investigated — and how accountability is avoided — remains limited. The Blue Hand examines this gap by focusing not only on a police shooting, but on the procedural aftermath: how records are created, handled, and sometimes obscured within the justice system. At a moment when debates around policing often stall at surface-level narratives,

...

The June 2020 incident at the center of The Blue Hand occurred during a period of heightened public scrutiny of law enforcement, yet the case itself received little sustained coverage. Through extensive public records requests, litigation, and document analysis, the reporting uncovers how an improperly handled search warrant was used against a shooting victim, raising broader questions about transparency, civil rights, and internal police accountability mechanisms. These findings remain timely as courts, journalists, and communities continue to grapple with the limits of oversight in large police departments.

The project is designed for audiences engaged with investigative journalism, criminal justice reporting, and accountability-focused storytelling — including readers of outlets such as ProPublica, The Marshall Project, and local investigative desks. It also speaks to a wider public that increasingly consumes long-form, document-driven reporting to understand systemic failures that are otherwise difficult to see.

From an industry perspective, The Blue Hand demonstrates a scalable model for accountability reporting rooted in primary source material and legal research. The project combines narrative clarity with verifiable documentation, positioning it for adaptation across platforms, including long-form articles, documentary development, and educational or policy-focused use. At a time when trust in institutions and media alike is under strain, this project offers a rigorously reported case study with clear relevance, longevity, and impact potential.

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Style & Tone

The Blue Hand is designed to engage its audience through careful, evidence-based storytelling that encourages critical attention and informed reflection. The project examines the alleged misuse of a search warrant by the Los Angeles Police Department following a shooting incident, presenting the investigation in a way that emphasizes transparency, context, and accountability. Rather than seeking emotional immediacy alone, the work aims to foster a measured response

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The audience experience is shaped by a deliberate balance between human narrative and documented fact. Personal accounts are presented alongside public records, legal filings, and expert analysis, allowing viewers to assess the material with clarity and perspective. This structure is intended to promote trust by showing not only conclusions, but the reporting process itself. As a result, the audience is invited to engage with the investigation as an informed observer, encouraged to question official narratives and examine the evidence independently.

The project’s visual language reflects its journalistic intent. The Blue Hand employs a restrained documentary aesthetic that prioritizes accuracy and credibility over stylization. Visuals are grounded in observational footage, archival materials, and on-screen documentation, with design choices that favor clarity, legibility, and context. A muted color palette and naturalistic lighting reinforce a sober tone consistent with investigative reporting.

Graphics and visual evidence—such as documents, timelines, and contextual imagery—are integrated in a clear and methodical manner, supporting comprehension rather than dramatization. The visual structure mirrors the logic of the investigation, guiding the audience through complex information without editorial excess.

Overall, The Blue Hand seeks to leave its audience with a sustained awareness of how law enforcement practices, legal procedures, and institutional authority intersect. By combining rigorous reporting with a disciplined visual approach, the project aims to contribute meaningfully to public understanding and to uphold the standards of investigative journalism.

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Team

Jayrol San Jose

Director & Producer

Team

Jayrol San Jose

Director & Producer

As a documentary photographer/videographer based in Los Angeles, I specialize in capturing candid and real moments that tell a story. My passion for photography began at a young age and has only grown stronger throughout the years. I have a keen eye for detail and a unique perspective that allows me to see the beauty in the everyday.

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Ben Camacho

Director & Producer

Team

Ben Camacho

Director & Producer

Ben Camacho is a multi-award winning investigative journalist and documentary photographer. His work focuses on state-sponsored violence and the communities impacted by it. He was sued twice by the City of Los Angeles in a failed effort to censor public records. He co-founded The Southlander, LA's first investigative news cooperative. He chaired the legal committee at IWW Freelance Journalists Union from 2021 until 2025, where they organized to create better working conditions for freelancers across the country. He co-founded and is a producer with the West Side Storytellers, a documentary production team whose flagship project received the Charles M. Rappleye Investigative Journalism Award from the Los Angeles Press Club. He has spoken at Yale, CUNY, USC, Cal State Northridge, Santa Ana College and the University of La Verne about his work. He is featured in a documentary titled "Flashpoint: Protests, Policing and The Press" produced by the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University. In 2023, he was named a "Distinguished Journalist" by the Society of Professional Journalists-LA. He enjoys street photography, shows and breathing clean air.

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Budget

This section includes information about this project.

Screenplay narrative story narrative visual independent screenplay production. Journey film editing award doc project producer award production production visual.

Grants & Awards

2024 Charles M. Rappleye Investigative Journalism Award

Rights

This section includes information about this project.

Production doc team journey film production doc independent. Team doc screenplay doc impact screenplay film director creative story award production project creative visual director.

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Our Ask

West Side Storytellers (WSS) produces investigative documentaries focused on accountability and transparency. Our work applies journalistic standards to visual storytelling in order to inform the public and prompt meaningful institutional response.Local investigative journalism has eroded at the precise moment when public scrutiny of institutions is most critical. Many stories of civic importance go underreported, particularly when they require sustained attention, visual evidence, or the ability to operate in sensitive, high-stakes environments. As a result, communities are left without clear, trustworthy records of decisions that directly affect them. WSS exists to address that gap. Our approach combines reporting with documentary photography and video, producing work that audiences trust and institutions must respond to. We focus on accuracy, narrative clarity, and credibility—creating journalism designed to endure rather than disappear in a news cycle.Our impact is demonstrated by our reporting on a City of Glendale contract involving Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). WSS produced both a written investigative piece and a short documentary video examining the contract and its implications. Following publication, the reporting contributed to public scrutiny that ultimately resulted in the cancellation of the contract. This project serves as a proof of concept for our model: lean, independent journalism capable of producing measurable civic outcomes through credible reporting and visual evidence.Our team is journalist-led and independent by design. We are able to work in sensitive environments, pair reporting with visual documentation, and produce multi-format stories. Our sustainability model combines philanthropic and impact funding, editorial partnerships, project-based underwriting, and limited aligned commercial work to support ongoing operations while preserving editorial independence.Our long-term vision is to build a durable investigative documentary production organization that restores trust through documentary evidence and rigorous reporting. Funding support will allow us to expand reporting capacity, strengthen editorial production and distribution, and invest in legal and archival infrastructure necessary for sustained public-interest multimedia journalism.We would welcome the opportunity to discuss how WSS aligns with your commitment to supporting independent journalism and public accountability.

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The Blue Hand

Logline

Clips

Team

Jayrol San Jose

Jayrol San Jose

Ben Camacho

Ben Camacho

Budget

Grants & Awards

Rights

Stills

Our Ask