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Growing Number of Prosecutions for Videotaping the Police

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Re: Growing Number of Prosecutions for Videotaping the Police

#21

Post by stcredzero »

Nelson69 wrote: post #11
stcredzero wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish all cars came with black boxes and 360-degree video coverage so that we could voluntarily supply this information. People lie when they get into a fender bender. (Note: if you live in a neighborhood where people key cars, either stop parking like a douche or you need to move to a better neighborhood. If people feel free to vandalize in a place, they'll also do other crime.) I'd pay $300 for a device I could ju…

I started sketching notes for this a couple years back. Some stupid parking lot altercation where someone started lying.. With the costs of flash and cameras becoming so inexpensive and the amount of wireless access around (GSM or Wifi) I was thinking you Tivo style record like 2 to 8 hours of video just with a circular buffer then if a triggering event happens (hazard button pressed, the record button pressed, a cra…

For a moving violation like that, why does a gun need to be drawn? Was there a threat of violence or just stupidity? The motorcyclist stopped on his own, right?

I'm a mild-mannered introvert. I have a rust belt near-midwest accent and the benefit of an east-coast Ivy League education. Yet, I have had traffic cops escalate levels of hostility on me even though I am doing my level best to be polite and cooperative. I've also noted that some policemen like to arbitrarily order you around, even when you aren't causing trouble. I've read something about problem steroid use in police causing mood disorders and excess aggression, and this seems to fit very well. I also suspect that this is also connected with my having long hair and being non-white.

Re: Growing Number of Prosecutions for Videotaping the Police

#23

Post by stcredzero »

politicalist wrote: post #17
buzzblog wrote: post #8

These prosecutions aren't just wrong, they're un-American. How police and prosecutors sworn to uphold the law can abuse it to this extent boggles the mind.

The US has the highest incarceration rate in the world, so it unfortunately looks very American. (If "American" refers to the US alone.) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_incarceration_rat...

Indeed. The US laws at various levels are riddled with outdated laws, some centuries old, which can often be conservative enough to do the Taliban proud. At their discretion, the police can decide to enforce one of these on you, which gives them arbitrary power to oppress anyone who pisses them off enough.

Re: Growing Number of Prosecutions for Videotaping the Police

#24

Post by sophacles »

Groxx wrote: post #4

There's just something massively wrong with "public servants" claiming they can't be photographed while performing a public service. Bullshit. There would be no complaints if some of them weren't incriminating abusive cops. Notice how many of the cases against photographing are in potential (or blatant) police-abuse situations. The public and the government should be applauding citizens for helping to maintain contro…

Yes, there would be complaints. Once they adjust to the video taping they will forget the tapes are there and act as they would anyway. The big difference comes because the douches would get caught sooner, as everyone would know a complaint would actually have merit.

The cynic in me worries that it would work out this way instead tho: As video of the cops being douches becomes commonplace, people just come to accept it, and it becomes difficult to file a complaint because the official response would be "oh cops are just douches, you shouldn't have gone outside if you cared". Worse, the public attitude would be the same, therefore not voting for, or even voting against, rules holding cops accountable.

Re: Growing Number of Prosecutions for Videotaping the Police

#25

Post by stonemetal »

ErrantX wrote: post #6

Was the camera obscured - as it appears to be? In which case I can kinda see the issue they have (i.e. unaware of being filmed). That seems different from most of the other cases where the filming was pretty overt. Still; it is an extremely bad reaction even so. The thing that shocked me most was.... he drew his gun. Are things really that bad that a traffic stop requires a drawn weapon? Jesus :(

More police are killed during routine traffic stops than during any other activity in the US. So yes things are sadly that bad.

The last time I was pulled over for a traffic violation the officer refused to shake my hand because he needed it free to be able to draw his weapon(or so he claimed).

Re: Growing Number of Prosecutions for Videotaping the Police

#26

Post by openfly »

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #2

I wish I had ten upvotes for this. Or a hundred. I love devil's advocate, so I'll say this just as a way of keeping things in perspective: not a lot of folks would want people videotaping everything they did at work and putting it on YouTube (along with criticisms) I know it would drive me nuts. Society as a whole is going to have to go through some major contortions as people get their heads wrapped around the idea…

If not for the liberal use of cameras the world would never have heard of Neda in Iran. The US is effectively on a path to making it illegal to spread truth... maybe it is just a small sliver of truth. But I would rather be judged on that small sliver of truth than end up in a situation where it is my word against a police officer.

It's an interesting question though.

Re: Growing Number of Prosecutions for Videotaping the Police

#27

Post by tsally »

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #2

I wish I had ten upvotes for this. Or a hundred. I love devil's advocate, so I'll say this just as a way of keeping things in perspective: not a lot of folks would want people videotaping everything they did at work and putting it on YouTube (along with criticisms) I know it would drive me nuts. Society as a whole is going to have to go through some major contortions as people get their heads wrapped around the idea…

not a lot of folks would want people videotaping everything they did at work

Did you know if you get a Top Secret clearance, you have to have anything related to your work release reviewed for the rest of your life? Being awarded privileges by the government comes with additional responsibility. Videotaping the police is the same as monitoring people who work with classified information; it's just part of the job. If someone is uncomfortable with that s/he should find a different job.

Re: Growing Number of Prosecutions for Videotaping the Police

#28

Post by CodeMage »

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #2

I wish I had ten upvotes for this. Or a hundred. I love devil's advocate, so I'll say this just as a way of keeping things in perspective: not a lot of folks would want people videotaping everything they did at work and putting it on YouTube (along with criticisms) I know it would drive me nuts. Society as a whole is going to have to go through some major contortions as people get their heads wrapped around the idea…

Society as a whole is going to have to go through some major contortions as people get their heads wrapped around the idea that everything -- and I mean everything -- is going to be digitized and recorded.

That is precisely one of the things that give me the shivers about the society today. I understand Mr. Graber's motivation. I also agree wholeheartedly that the "reasonable expectation of privacy" rule has to be applied consistently, i.e. if a police officer can videotape me over the course of his or her work, then I should be allowed to videotape that officer.

That said, what gives me the shivers is that our expectations of privacy, in general, seem to be sliding down a slippery slope of justified surveillance. The first time I read "1984", I was still in school (not even university yet) and it etched itself onto my mind precisely because it's so damn plausible. Everyone would love to think it's impossible because "we would never stand for it", but things keep changing slowly.

A commonplace example is your workplace, where your employer can monitor all your activities on their computers (and I mean all, not just network communication), record your business phone calls or videotape you. Also, it has become commonplace to have to do a drug test when applying for a job.

Another example is the highway toll system here in Santiago, Chile. Certain highways require you to have a device installed in your car to transit them. Instead of waiting in line at a toll booth, your device communicates with a gate under which your car passes and your billed monthly. Every gate also has cameras to record cases of infractions, when a car without the device passes under the gate.

Sure, there are laws and rules that control how all this information can be used. Yet it keeps creeping me out to think that this information is available to multitude of people. Now that information of all sorts can be shared easily and readily on a global scale, it seems even scarier. Now you can be embarrassed, humiliated, falsely accused or harassed literally in front of the whole world.

What creeps me out even more is that our expectations of privacy seem to be eroding slowly. If we're so indifferent to being under surveillance in public or at work because it makes it easier to prove who's right and who's wrong, why does it seem so implausible that in some future we would accept the same things in our homes? After all, wouldn't it help cut down on domestic violence and child abuse?

I hope I'm not coming across as a borderline paranoid nutjob, but I just felt the need to address the issue.

Re: Growing Number of Prosecutions for Videotaping the Police

#29

Post by moxiemk1 »

stonemetal wrote: post #25
ErrantX wrote: post #6

Was the camera obscured - as it appears to be? In which case I can kinda see the issue they have (i.e. unaware of being filmed). That seems different from most of the other cases where the filming was pretty overt. Still; it is an extremely bad reaction even so. The thing that shocked me most was.... he drew his gun. Are things really that bad that a traffic stop requires a drawn weapon? Jesus :(

More police are killed during routine traffic stops than during any other activity in the US. So yes things are sadly that bad. The last time I was pulled over for a traffic violation the officer refused to shake my hand because he needed it free to be able to draw his weapon(or so he claimed).

A statistic I'd be much more interested in seeing would be police fatalities by incident type normalized by the number of incidents

I feel like traffic stops are also a disproportionately high number of police actions.

Re: Growing Number of Prosecutions for Videotaping the Police

#30

Post by BrandonM »

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #19
patio11 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think we all, given a few minutes of reflection, would be glad that we're not judged on a 30 second edited video highlights reel of the worst decisions we've ever made. Particularly not one which stripped the context out of the video. That said, I'm much less concerned about videotaping cops on the street and more concerned with VPI -- videotaped police interrogations. Unlike videotaping cops on the street, they'd…

I hadn't thought about videotaping interrogations. Interesting. Perhaps the question is: what parts of police activity shouldn't be videotaped and published, and why? Undercover busts maybe. You can't spend five years growing a policeman into what looks like a drug dealer only to have him outed on YouTube in ten seconds. Or do we get rid of all undercover police work? Need to think about that some more.

Stop making the consumption of drugs illegal, and it's no longer necessary to have a policeman that looks like a drug dealer.
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