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Police have undermined the promise of body cameras

propublica.org

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Re: Police have undermined the promise of body cameras

#151
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. So much this. The problem is that due to the underlying need for police cooperation in unrelated cases, no sane DA or judge would dare challenge a cop (or the police union) who can claim "oh it was a malfunction" or "oh uh the battery ran out" when it comes time for video footage to be reviewed and made public in the case of a police officer breaking the law. My proposal: make it someone's (or an anonymous boar…

State and Federal gov'ts have priority in prosecution. If it is true that DA or judge are reticent to prosecute, then the appropriate avenue is State/Fed

Guess where little State Prosecutors grow up? Working cases at the municipal level until they move to the minor leagues. Federal prosecutors work up the same route, so all the institutional bias and privilege is instilled early.

How many Attorneys General worked as public defenders? I bet out of the current 50 US AGs, it's probably close to zero.

Re: Police have undermined the promise of body cameras

#152

Watching police body camera footage has given me much more appreciation for the tough job police have. I can't imagine having people actively try to kill me in my day-to-day job as a software engineer.

The fire department has a saying - what do police offices and fire fighters have in common? They both wanted to be fire fighters when they grew up.

It's not a job you'd want your children to do, but it's one that someone has to do.

Re: Police have undermined the promise of body cameras

#153
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Regardless of whether some of the time, a police department is full of bad apples and concealing or destroying body-cam footage Make it a felony to conceal or destroy body cam footage. Also, make it so that if a cop is accused of violating rights or involved in foul play, and their body cam "suddenly malfunctioned or were turned off or was left in the car" , a default judgement is given against the officer in quest…

While I agree with what you say for the most part, it's not a question of "what rules can we add on top of the existing structure?". Which is why simply adding bodycams has been so ineffective. We're only really going to be safe from cops by essentially nuking the entire system and starting over. The core issue is that cops are far less vulnerable to prosecution or even non-legal accountability than almost any other…

There one but 1 reform that will do the most... Putting an end to the moronic judicial created doctrine of "Qualified Immunity"

it is very sad that we had the opportunity to do so in 2020, with both Democrat and Republican Support, but that opportunity was wasted by using that political interia and capital on the moronic "De fund the police" mantra's where by the new status quo seems to be "Well if the police act like criminals lets to all be criminals and never arrest anyone for anything"....

"Qualified Immunity" is one of the Root Causes of the policing problem, and it needs to end

Re: Police have undermined the promise of body cameras

#154
post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

your statement is easily proven to be total BS by a single press release: https://corporate.target.com/press/statement/2023/09/target-...

You do realize that this has been shown to be absolutely false? That losses due to shoplifting were used as BS justifications to shut down stores? https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/06/business/walgreens-shopli... https://www.reuters.com/business/retail-consumer/us-retail-l...

Neither of your articles says what you are claiming. Have you yourself read the articles you're linking?

Re: Police have undermined the promise of body cameras

#156
post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

your statement is easily proven to be total BS by a single press release: https://corporate.target.com/press/statement/2023/09/target-...

Umm, I'm familiar with one of those locations that closed. It had very little parking, was extremely understaffed (1 active cashier working slowly...), and didn't have much foot traffic. There weren't any bags to put my stuff in when I checked out. It was such a poor experience I never went back there, despite it being the Target nearest to me. I was zero percent surprised when I heard it closed for good. Businesses…

I'm also familiar with one of the locations that closed. While I was shopping, it was raided by 80 people who also acted violently towards the patrons. It was such a poor experience I never went back there, despite it being the Target nearest to me. I was zero percent surprised when I heard it closed for good.

Re: Police have undermined the promise of body cameras

#157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that most people don't consider how much of that footage has privacy implications. They deal with people very single day, they need to be able to turn those cameras off in the case of, a nude minor, a detailing of psychiatric history of a minor, etc. The problem is that giving them that ability also opens the door for them to abuse it. There is no easy/good answer here. And I'm not making excuses for t…

No, the solution there is appropriate security of footage, appropriate access control, and appropriate vetting of footage before release. But there should be little to no discretion. There are security cameras in hospital ERs (I'm a paramedic) where I absolutely assure you even outside rooms, in the open areas, people in states of undress (from MVA/trauma, etc., and us working on them) and people in behavioral crisis…

How long is the footage kept, and who can get access to it?

Re: Police have undermined the promise of body cameras

#158
post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can google for 2 mins and find many examples of hardware mysteriously failing while an officer was violating someone's rights. You can also find many instances of the video being magically deleted..aw shucks. Are there exceptions, like you mentioned? Sure. Are there many, many instances of that being bullshit? Sure.

> Are there exceptions [where it's truly accidental] > Are there many, many instances of that being bullshit? Sure. If you're trying to be fair by including the former sentence, then that should also include a "many, many" before "exceptions" unless you have the data I was asking after. As it stands, this adds no further information > You can google for 2 mins and find many examples of hardware mysteriously failing w…

>>How are you ever going to know what happened there?

if only there was a recording device to record what actually happened....

>>You can assume the cop was corrupt and the citizen innocent in all those cases,

yes that is exactly how it should work, that is how the system is setup to work. We have some how flipped that in recent years. At all times you should assume the government is abusing you, unless they can prove they are not.

No video, I side with the people not the government

>>There has to be a fraction of cases where their rights were not being violated as claimed and footage is still unavailable. Whether that is 1/10 or 9/10

It would be an error rate far far far far far less than that, and when you factor in most calls have more than one officers, plus patrol cars that have their own recording devices, plus citizen witnesses, plus business surveillance I think we get to such an unlikely circumstance to be statically impossible

Re: Police have undermined the promise of body cameras

#159
post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A police officer in performance of his duties should have zero expectation of privacy, and has a legal obligation to fill out an accurate duty log, which is such that it may be used as evidence in court. However, in 35 states, and this blows my mind, an officer can have "consensual" sex with a detainee. Even if they are in handcuffs at the time. 35 states have decided that this is not improper from an "authority" p…

35 states allow for that? I would've assumed 0 states allow for it, because, well, come on. Might as well let officers consent to taking bags of money from detainees.

Not sure if you're being sarcastic, but it's called civil forfeiture.

Re: Police have undermined the promise of body cameras

#160
post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's put this in perspective. Something like that might happen once or twice every few decades . In the country . Meanwhile, the abuses the police are perpetrating, in many cities, are happening on a monthly basis (or more often). Even if we stipulate that we need someone capable of dealing with the looter horde, we don't need that capability to be in the same hands as the people who are handing out traffic tickets…

your statement is easily proven to be total BS by a single press release: https://corporate.target.com/press/statement/2023/09/target-...

...which also "proves" that cops aren't doing jack shit about organized looting, so that's no longer a useful argument.
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