"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary." ~ H.L. Mencken
Cameras on Cops: Coming to a Town Near You
Submitted by Bradley Keyes on Fri, 2014-03-21 00:00
Rialto, with a population of 100,000 and a police force of 115 officers, began experimenting with wearable cameras in 2012. The results, Farrar says, were stunning: a plunge in incidents involving use of force, from 60 in 2011 to 25 the following year. Complaints from citizens dropped from 28 to three, with just four in the past twelve months.
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Comments
There are two problems with Taser's cameras, and the police departments testing their use. First, the camera can be turned off by the person wearing it. Second, the footage can be kept secret from the public indefinitely.
This is emphatically a "soft" approach, so that when the public demands that police officers be filmed while on duty, the departments and the union can respond that cops are already wearing them. As a result, these will produce no greater reform than dashboard cams in cruisers. In any event that would cast the police in an unfavorable light, the camera will be "malfunctioning" or the resulting footage "lost" or "recycled".
And we will continue to see theatrical nonsense, such as repeated orders to "Stop resisting!" against people who are already limp as a rag doll because they have recently been beaten to death.
It is our responsibility to ensure that the cameras recording police conduct are always on and always accessible to us. You cannot trust the police cameras for this, therefore every person should record every police encounter they witness with their own camera.