It's irresponsible to just take police at their word and use their justifications on the off chance that they haven't covered their bodycam or "lost" the footage.

There was no claim of lost footage. A claim of lost footage is not easily verifiable. Is the footage really lost? Or is it "conveniently" lost? There is room for them to tell a plausible lie: you and I can't prove that the footage actually existed. It is possible that it never did, and it is possible that if it did, it was inadvertantly destroyed. It's also possible that someone is lying their ass off to protect themselves, knowing we cannot positively verify the truth of their claim.

I would not trust a claim that is not verifiable, but they didn't make a non-verifiable claim here. The claims they made were readily verifiable, even though they had not yet been verified.

If they had no intention of releasing it, the lie they would have told would have been that it didn't exist, or was lost. I can't conceive of a reason why they would say "we will release it at " with the intention of being deceitful. That's an easily verifiable claim: they either release it, or they don't. There is no room for them to receive with that claim: they will be caught on such a deception in short order, and being caught in a blatant, overt lie is far more damaging to their credibility than a strong but unproven suspicion that they are lying.

Likewise with the content of the video. If they are going to release it, it doesn't make any sense that they would tell a bald face lie about what we are going to see in it. Again, there is no room for them to deceive: they will be caught on such a deception in short order.

Neither of these claims had been verified, but the nature of both claims was easily verifiable. They aren't going to deliberately destroy their credibility, so it is reasonably safe to trust their easily verifiable claim, even before it is actually verified.

I think you're willing to believe the police when proof is not available, and that you're willing to take at face value what a racist institution puts out there.

Depends on the nature of the claim, not the entity making it.

"I'm going to show you a video of a woman driving her car at an officer" - yes, I'm going to trust that claim without proof, until such time as the claim is disproven.

"None of the 11 officers present had their body cameras turned on, and the dash cameras from the 8 cruisers present were all faulty or pointing away from the scene" - no fucking way am I going to trust that claim.

I wait for proof because police are untrustworthy.

I think that in the absence of proof, you broadly assume the police are guilty until proven otherwise. I don't think you actually wait for proof; I think you jump immediately to a conclusion based not on the circumstances of the case, but on the races and/or jobs of the individuals present.

I think that you had reached your conclusion by the end of the headline, and didn't need to actually read the article.