Every cop should be required to were a gopro on their chest. Anyone who has any encounter with a cop should have protected rights to access and review that video as material evidence in their case.
I see absolutely no reason why police shouldn't wear cameras. It keeps all parties honest. I just hope they don't "lose the recording" when it conveniences the police the most.
This is why body cams should be mandatory, also for the police officer's benefits - videos can't "misremember". Also police officers should be held to higher standards than the general population when it comes to giving testimony.
All of the police I know are in favor of this. They want cameras on at all times that they ideally couldn't interfere with. Not only will those cameras protect the public from police misbehavior, it will protect officers from frivolous lawsuits and an alarming amount of people calm down when they're informed their actions are being recorded.
Other than the logistics of making it happen and ensuring the entirety of the video from an encounter is available, I can't see a problem with the whole idea. The only people that lose out are crooked cops and members of the public wanting to file unwarranted abuse claims.
police officers have a hard and dangerous job to do and they do it for our safety. if they have to worry about being video taped all the time they will be less effective in this job.
In fact, if my impression of the news is correct, police body cams do more to protect the police from unjustified charges of abuse than they do to protect the victims of police abuse.
Perhaps that is an effect of police unions? Perhaps it is simply a good thing and we should have more of them?
People independent of the police filming it seems like a good idea to me. For all concerned.
So where is the protection from all their video taping being used for data mining purposes? I can see a future where their cameras are on all the time or nearly all the time. This indirect recording would treated similarly to how they now treat license plate scanners and I do not doubt some police are actively hoping they can.
So yeah while its nice that cops will have to wear them there needs to be sufficient protection from extending what they are used for.
I don't want to live in a world where every cop I walk by, see or don't see, records me.
We need every cop to wear cams as soon as possible. Then all these "the cop is the perp and the perp is the victim" idiots can watch the videos and shut up.
All of the reasons are silly, but in order of most to least reasonable:
* Recording officers creates a permanent record of their identity which causes problems for undercover operations.
* Bystanders who record the police frequently interfere (directly, physically) with police actions and can put themselves or others in danger.
* Recorded video is frequently edited to create misleading narratives and spurs nuisance claims against the police.
* The police are themselves required to jump through all sorts of due process hoops to surveil people, so they should benefit from the same protections while on the job.
(Incidentally: all these reasons are probably true; they're just wildly insufficient to restrict video recording).
I know a lot of cops, including many that wear body cameras. They are universally in favor of them, for the very reason you mentioned (they all have stories of times they were accused of misconduct, but had video evidence on their side).
A lot of this is solved with a requirement that police officers must always be on cam (cameras that they carry on their person must be on at all times). Everybody benefits except the scumbag cops and the criminals.
That said there still seem to be a reasonable number of cases where body cams coincidentally don’t record events where they’re accused of misbehaving :-/
I think all police should wear body cameras. Police misconduct declines. Civilian misconduct declines. Cameras are a potential source of powerful evidence. Everyone wins.
It protects the cops as much as it protects the public.
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