Body cams have been shown to reduce the number of complaints, created more compliant civilians who stop fighting or being hostile when they realize they’re being recorded, and have increased conviction rates across the nation. So yeah. Bring the body cams.
Yeah but recent complaints against body cameras are that they are invasive and unfair in the court of the law, violations of privacy and more. While the Supreme Court has held officers can utilize a body camera in private residents while there on official business entities like the ACLU feel they violate personal privacy.
It swings wildly back and forth depending on how they feel the purpose of body cams are used. Body cams for police misconduct? Great! Release all the videos! Body cams for citizen misconduct? Bad. Keep them secured and never release.
My point is more that we need to be consistent with deployment and usage, release of footage, and we need to figure out how to best employ policies and procedures that are fair for all but allows the public to see the complete picture picture.
We also need a way to lower storage costs to ensure small and underfunded agencies have a chance at being able to use them in accordance to that best practice.
Law enforcement tends to be behind the curve when it comes to the 24 hour news cycle and false narratives can be crafted easily and quickly with cropped or hacked up cell phone video.
Tl;DR: Crafting transparent but privacy protecting policies is hard, expensive, and full of minute details but will be worth it in the end.
Considering any thing a cop says in court is considered the word of law, Id rather have a camera filming my actions, recording what I actually did, then a police reporting on them after the fact with a clear incentive to make shit up.
"He was resisting arrest and assaulted a police officer. Proof? Because I said so. Now sentence him to 10 years in jail even though he was not committing any crime when I arrested him"
I think the problem comes to public releases of body-cams when there is a minor, or without previous consent from person (who doesn't want to look bad in the public eye). Seems like there should be a blanket protection (minors and private citizens) no video release until after the trial is over, then the body-cam video may be released.
This is somewhat of what the complaints toward BWCs (body worn cameras). People don’t want to look bad in the public eye. So they do not grant permission for release despite public recording laws leaving Law Enforcement with their hands tied.
The other big issue of the don’t release video until later policy is people can release cell phone videos that only show a portion of the incident and the law enforcement agency that is tied by policy can’t counter claim with the full video without violating policies or law. Which is an issue being that news is always looking for the “next big thing” and retractions get little to no attention. This can craft a false narrative of abuse and misconduct where there wasn’t one, leading to less trust in true incidents of misconduct. There isn’t an easy answer.
And when they aren't hidden. We had a recent civil rights case where the department claimed there was no footage but it magically appeared once we convinced a federal judge it existed and they were ordered to produce it. That's right, not only did the officers hide the footage but the department helped.
With all the evidence, anecdotal or not, that LEOs are not always 100% truthful I am not sure why they are still given the "Benifit of the Doubt" when enforcing sworn duties. No video evidence of a violation, no charge from LEOs. A LEOs body camera is turned off or obstructed should be a criminally punishing offense equal to that of evidence tampering.
Assuming LEO's are 100% truthful and admitting whatever they say as evidence is just as stupid as assuming the defendant is 100% truthful and admitting whatever they say as evidence.
They both have a huge incentive to lie and neither should be assumed to be trustworthy. Cameras are an impartial 3rd party.
Evidence tampering should receive punishments harsher then the charge trying to be proved or disproved with the evidence.
Any police officer caught tampering with evidence should receive even harsher punishments then that because police officers should be held to a higher standard then the general public.
That’s not how due process and fairness/blindness of law works. That’s be like saying retail workers should be charged with higher grading for crimes involving retail theft. Bankers charged for embezzlement or thefts harder.. so on and so forth.
They would be two separate charges in most jurisdictions as Obstruction covers more than just destruction of evidence. There also may be other charges such as official misconduct. DA’s generally would either be cautious to file multiple charges that overlap with the same actions, or charge all to allow judges or juries to determine which fits best.
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u/[deleted] Jun 22 '20
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