Sacramento Bee’s best in 2015: Eye-catching videos
Our videos engaged audiences with immediacy, emotion and raw humanity. Sacramento Bee editors consider these videos as among the best on sacbee.com in 2015.
1. Pattern of excessive force?
A Sacramento County sheriff’s deputy, Paul “Scotte” Pfeifer, has been accused of using excessive force in the course of his policing. The Sacramento Bee obtained and published video of one of the incidents that led to those accusations. It contains graphic violence.
2. Full-length surveillance video of Spencer Stone stabbing
Sacramento native Spencer Stone gained fame when he and two other Sacramento men stopped a terror attack on a train bound for Paris. His stabbing weeks later on a Sacramento street stunned the city and people around the world who had become aware of his heroics.
3. Former Cal Fire cadet describes how he cheated on tests
A former cadet at the Cal Fire academy, whose image and voice have been altered to protect his anonymity, describes a culture of cheating in which instructors routinely provided cadets with questions and answers before they were tested.
4. Confessions of a recovering gambler
A recovering problem gambler from Northern California talks about being a compulsive gambler and the turning points in his addiction that got him to Gambler Anonymous meetings and a better life. To help preserve anonymity, the pitch of the subject's voice has been electronically altered and his face is photographed in shadow.
5. Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson, teen accuser discuss what she will tell her therapist
In this recorded phone clip from 1996, Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson, then a Phoenix Suns basketball player, and Mandi Koba, 16 at the time, discuss what she will tell her therapist about their relationship. Her counselor had already spoken with Johnson via telephone. The call came four days after Koba, in an interview with a Phoenix police detective, accused Johnson of molesting her. Johnson was never charged and has denied the allegations. This is the first time the audio file provided by the Phoenix Police Department has been made public.
6. How to save yourself from drowning
Drownings and near-drownings spiked in Sacramento-area rivers and this a video provides instruction and techniques to help swimmers avoid trouble.
7. Aftermath of the Valley fire in Anderson Springs
The Valley fire was one of the devastating blazes that scorched extensive swaths of Northern California land during the late summer. The fire’s destruction, and what residents face, becomes clear through these poignant images.
This story was originally published December 31, 2015 at 7:00 AM with the headline "Sacramento Bee’s best in 2015: Eye-catching videos."