Body cameras on cops are just the beginning

[bemildred]

The grass-roots push to equip police officers with body cameras has been effective: One-third of all police departments now have them, a significant increase since 2013, when the US Justice Department found that 75 percent of surveyed police departments didn’t use the technology.

Recent incidents in Cincinnati and rural New Hampshire have shown that the cameras simultaneously hold trigger-happy cops accountable and exonerate police officers who only pulled the trigger when they had no other option. Now, it’s time for local governments to start listening to and implementing further demands of the police-accountability movement.

On July 19, University of Cincinnati police officer Ray Tensing’s body camera captured footage of his fatal encounter with Samuel DuBose, in which he shot and killed the unarmed young man just minutes after pulling him over for a routine traffic stop. While Ray Tensing’s official report claimed that he was “almost run over” and had to fire his weapon out of fear for his life, his body camera showed him attempting to open DuBose’s door, DuBose holding the door shut and starting the engine, and Tensing shooting him in the head after telling him to stop.

Joseph Deters, the district attorney who indicted Tensing on murder charges, said in a press conference that Tensing’s behavior was “an absolute tragedy.” If it weren’t for the body camera footage, Deters would’ve likely believed Tensing’s story and Tensing would have never had to face a jury for his actions.

http://america.aljazeera.com/opinions/2015/8/body-cameras-on-cops-are-just-the-beginning.html

[Thinkingabout]

1. I think the cameras are a good event, it will protect both police and the public as we have found.

[marble falls]

2. Tamper resistant cameras with sound are a very good first step.

[bemildred]

3. "Surveillance, it's not just for private citizens, it's for everyone."

[left-of-center2012]

4. Depends how the cops use the cameras

There's a preliminary hearing going on now in Albuquerque, NM (streamed online) for two cops who killed a homeless man by shooting him in the back.
Although the shooting is seen on one lapel camera (of a dozen cops at the scene) most of the cop lapel cameras appear pointed at the cops' feet & the ground.
Since this appears more often than not, I suspect many cops say "I'll wear the damn thing, but I'll (accidentally) aim it downward."

[Joe Chi Minh]

5. Well, allowing that is as good as 'construcitve omission - to borrow a term

from industrial relations. The penalty for failing to wear or operate their camera effectively should be tantamount to an admission of guilt, plus attempting to pervert the course of justice.

A 'slap on the wrist' is not going to be any good at all. It's going to be a straight forward calculation on the part of the police officer, otherwise.

[left-of-center2012]

6. A 'slap on the wrist'

More often than not, slaps on the wrist for our local cops tends to be a two week suspension with pay.
More of a vacation than penalty.

[Chan790]

7. It's short-sighted and stupid on their part.

Do you want to know when cops will start to like the damned things? When a cop-killer is convicted because their murder was recorded on their lapel camera and that footage was the damning evidence against their killer.

It's sad that is what it will take...but I've managed to change a lot of cops perspective on them by pointing out that scenario, their value as an evidence-gathering tool (sometimes you don't know what you didn't see until you saw it on the replay) or as a proof against accusations of their own misconduct or because it allows one to freeze-frame on anything they saw (Did you get the plate? No? Okay, we can pull it from the footage) or because it allows recording of a crime in progress which makes defense assertions of an alternate chain-of-events difficult.

Body cameras benefit the police a far measure more than they benefit the public...but intransigent resistance will make that a hard row to plow before they concede it.

[Joe Chi Minh]

8. Murdering unarmed innocents with impunity,

then lying in the courts with the backing of corrupt police forensics, is just too much fun.

For potentially lethal work the police figure about seventh - some way behind garbage collectors (presumably net of the Mob connection....) taxi-drivers, lumberjacks etc.