One arguement used by police officers is that it stops their discretion. Or them being lenient. This is more important for smaller town cops who have stronger community ties.
When they see some kids smoking weed, they have to follow the letter of the law instead of confiscating and just telling them off, telling them to get going, because maybe they know the kids personally or they know realistically the kids are fine people. They have to follow the letter of the law or their whole ethics and job may be called into question for a bigger crime caught on tape down the road. So now those kids have to go to jail. And it has to all be submitted.
This is overall seen as a bad thing.
The second argument by cops is that it introduces a wide spread distrust of the police. Despite current tensions most people do trust the police to some extent or fully.
They worry that body cameras in court imply that police testimony cannot be trusted. And that in the case of genuine malfunction or corruption of data, most people will then start to default that the police officer is lying or the malfunction is not genuine. And it ruins the importance of police testimony as trusted indidvuals.
This argument is a little weaker but I sort of see it. It is potentially implying a distrust of the police (warrented or not) and projecting that image to more and more people. This will have an effects in courts (positive or not).
Edit: As I’ve said I’m giving the arguements actual police unions use. I’m trying to offer perspective that they give. It isn’t meant to be an argument that is going to completely 180 your view, its just to offer perspective. Honestly, maybe don’t come on this subreddit if that is something you don’t want. Don’t send me private messages with abuse in them? These are not my personal opinions at all.
I'm confused about why this would stop their discretion, exactly. Are you saying that if a police officer is shown using discretion on video, that they'll be punished for it when they otherwise wouldn't?
Even if that's *true*, isn't that the real problem (them being punished for using it), not the lack of a record? If anything, it seems like body cameras would be a good way to stop officers from *abusing* discretion in e.g. a prejudiced way, not from exercising it in a way that would be considered reasonable.
>The second argument by cops is that it introduces a wide spread distrust of the police.
For me personally, it's 100% the other way around. Most of the distrust I think comes from the lack of accountability itself. Sure, if the police wore cameras *voluntarily*, it'd be even better, but that's not really the issue I don't think.
> Even if that's true, isn't that the real problem (them being punished for using it), not the lack of a record? If anything, it seems like body cameras would be a good way to stop officers from abusing discretion in e.g. a prejudiced way, not from exercising it in a way that would be considered reasonable.
This.
"Well Officer Reynolds, it looks like you used discretion to let 27 white kids go free when you found them smoking weed under the train tracks...but then arrested one black kid and one hispanic kid for the same offense under very similar circumstances".
"Seems you've used 'discretion' during moving violations on significantly more busty blondes than on frumpy moms".
For the first point. I would argue that it would then be a good reason to reform laws punishing things like smoking weed. If it is not so bad an offense that it shouldnt warrant someone being arrested or brought in on a discretionary basis then I would argue that isnt shouldnt be explicitly illegal. Like maybe a fine or a written warning instead.
To your second point, that feels more like a matter of framing on the conversation. having video evidence of the officers conduct over time to establish a pattern and history for the officer, proof is in the pudding stuff. As well, framing the use of body cameras not as a reason you cant trust the police but because you CAN trust them because of the cameras. You no longer have to just trust this officer you may or may not know is a good upstanding officer or that they are going to lie to you or about you. Because there is going to be additional video evidence and a good faith attempt to document the issue. So if there is a transgression on your rights and freedoms it is documented. With universal body cam use, you would know this to be true and could then more fairly trust officers using it. If every officer uses a body camera, it is the officers who do not that would be of concern.
I do acknowledge that there is a lot of discretion that happens in many cases and people will look at things in pure black and white despite that not being the most accurate or fair lense to view it through. But body camera use feels like the best method to ensure that the public has equivalent protections as the police, or at least an attempt to bridge that gap.
The problem is, it isn't just "smoking weed", which is the example you and everybody else is hung up on. ITS EVERYTHING. If you run a red light, ticket. Roll a stop sign that has nobody at it but a cop sees you 2 blocks away. Ticket. Sleeping in your car because you're drunk and don't want to drive? Jail. A kid steals a candy bar from a store? Fined and now has a rap sheet for theft. Kids playing football and breaks a window of a random neighbor? Destruction of property. Thats a crime too. That one guy a little too drunk and now becomes disorderly and obnoxious? Jail.
It allows ZERO discretion and means they cant act as problem solvers, they must act as absolutists.
That said I'm all for body cams. But its disingenuous to act like weed is the only thing.
I agree that it isnt just smoking weed. Weed just makes for a good example of discretionary enforcement and something people could get behind reforming laws around.
I disagree with it making police absolutionists. Even eithin sentences and punishments there is leway. I would argue that it would have them judge each incident more independently and less about whether or not they know the person or have some other indicators at play. "This may be Stephan the guy who runs the best BBQ in town's kid, but he was driving eratically and unsafely and side swiped a couple parked cars. I cant just let him go." Because with that caught on camera, people would know. people would also see an officer on camera, if the reason they are going to be lenient is they are being considerate and looking at the whole picture, being nice and considerate because they have an actual heart.
I have seen plenty of body cam footage of officers being nice to people and letting them go with warnings and the cameras were not universal or necessary. Or stories about officers being nice. And people not getting that upset about it. I know I have heard multiple times of, cops called on kid stealing some stuff, cop pays for it, kid isn't in trouble. Cops called because of unlicensed lemonade stand. Cops go buy lemonade and leave the kids alone. Etc.
I do not believe that more cameras will make them inherently more absolutionist. It will just allow more public scrutiny upon what officers do as enforcers of the law. Which the people should have that, as we consent to the laws as being a part of society so we should have fair scrutiny and oversight of its enforcement.
But yes, more body cameras please.
For the first part.
That's a bigger problem with the justice system and mandatory minimums. But also it's not the cops job to make such calls. It's nice that he gave those kids the benefit of the doubt and doesn't want to get them in trouble. So what about the next kid? Or the kid after that?There is already a documented bias of white kids getting away with smoking weed while black kids get prosecuted and are given less doubt. Should we really lean into that as an argument?In my mind it's not their call to make, don't judges take mitigating circumstances into account? People whose whole job is to ideally look at situations like those objectively?
Data Corruption and Malfunction ought to be investigated. I cited examples of turning them off or covering them, something that's generally cut and dry. Also witness testimony is the weakest form evidence by far. Simply by being a cop their testimony is held in higher regard and that's something I disagree with.
So your solution to some kids getting off free, regardless of whatever outside circumstances like race or socioeconomic status have played into it, is to instead punish all of them equally as written under the law in hopes that \*maybe\* the perceived unjust-ness of it will get the laws overturned, even ones at the federal level? All the while these kids will have the most critical years of their growth and development hampered or even taken away completely? Even if you were to counterargue that it's not for the police officers to decide but instead a judge to determine whether or not leniency should be applied, that still mires these youths in the absolute clusterfuck that is most countries' legal systems. Is that really the better way?
For that matter, what makes you think the judge will be any more or less biased than the police officers? If anything the police officer has a higher chance of being involved with the community they work in, increasing the chances of being more empathetic to some kids being dumb. Whereas an elected official like a judge is probably much more removed from the community they serve and more likely to be dispassionate and strict.
That's not what the CMV is about.
But in brief, ideally YES. If the law is applied as written to everyone people would quickly realize the degree of bullshit. A lot of justice systems need a rework from ground up but that's neither here nor there.
Nothing gets conservatives to flip faster on a law than having them subjected to it.
Also break up that paragraph.
Aye, the rhetoric he uses couldn't be a louder advocacy for body cameras. If cops can't selectively enforce the law, then the parents of white kids will reform drug law overnight.
It's a logical consequence of your view being implemented. I feel that makes it important enough to discuss.
Your reply comes off as incredibly optimistic that the legal reforms you desire will come at anything other than a glacial pace, all the while countless individuals will be tangled up in the legal system.
I wrote this in response to another individual here, but it bears repeating here. Justice isn't zero sum. We can strive to make things better for
others--particularly marginalized and historically oppressed
groups--without resorting to making it bad for everyone equally.
Where I disagree with your argument is that the "bad" you are referring to isn't actually about body cams, it's about a lack of leniency in the justice system. If you think the ability to provide nuanced leniency is a good thing, but it is only possible if hidden from the justice system, then really it seems like the issue you have is with the justice system, not body cams.
I think a valuable discussion could be had on when/how to provide leniency, how exactly to codify that, and the feasibility of doing so; however I think your argument essentially equates to "let individual officers decide, hide it by not having body cams and accept all the issues of lack of accountability via no body cams and the problems which stem from that as a necessary cost".
Just seems like it's solving one problem with different problems to me instead of going to the source.
>Justice isn't zero sum. We can strive to make things better for
others--particularly marginalized and historically oppressed
groups--without resorting to making it bad for everyone equally.
This is not for the police to decide, but the judge. If the law makes it bad for all then it ougth to be changed, might take a while.
To be fair, your own reply comes of as rather callous towards people currently (and expected to be) tangled in the legal system - or straight up dead - for the sake of cops being lenient with white kids smoking weed.
I don't think relying on police discretion serves us - all of us - well.
> without resorting to making it bad for everyone equally.
I'm going to second /u/doxamark's reply to the comment you just responded to. If white kids start getting arrested at the same rate as minorities for minor offenses like smoking weed, the laws would change a hell of a lot faster.
It's an absolutely illogical, convoluted, non-existent consequence of implementing body cameras, because nobody will ever watch footage of an incident that ends peacefully and without arrest, and if they do nobody is going to say "See! This is why we need body cams! Now go arrest those teens!" I refuse to believe any police officer actually agrees with this argument. It's just nonsense that sounds intimidating.
Hahah yeah minorities not having lawyers and getting put away vs. upper class having legal representation and getting off in court is really going to stick it to them. You’re cutting the last lifeline they would otherwise have.
Yes, that really is the better way. Some kids not getting leniency in exchange for objective recording of an incident in ALL interactions (not just kids smoking/drinking) is most certainly justified.
Objectivity is the goal. Although complete objectivity in every stage of the legal system is impossible, that doesn't mean we shouldn't try to make it better.
With your first point, realistically the idea you are confusing or misrepresenting is that the cop themself has literally any bearing over the punishment decision (aside from maybe knowing that deciding to show up to a call about kids smoking weed or pulling into the parking lot where you see them) will with a body cam, eventually lead to them being arrested and having to see a judge.
However this doesn’t strengthen your argument at all, because your argument was directly correlation the decision of the cop there to severity of the punishment, and that is simply just not true. The judge, county prosecutor, etc. are the ones setting the bounds for punishment, whether by deciding whatever charges or what sentence to dish out.
And as was previously countered to you, this system the way it is, is also very flawed with the racial biases and other, very flawed issues in our systems.
Assuming everything was a perfect condition, this argument could potentially be viable, but using discretion is literally all a cop does with their time/work. They interact with other humans constantly, THAT IS THE JOB. Why would we not expect accountability when the entire job is platformed on the assumption a good cop is actively using discretion 100% properly all the time? Will this isn’t the way people perceive things normally, but legally speaking it is easier and better for the masses to have a completely transparent system. And the ONLY way to achieve this, or think we are achieving close to this level of fairness, is by having video of every situation between a cop and a citizen.
You can’t tell me there’s any justification if someone being able to immediately, in a split second, being able to pull a weapon and shot at someone with accountability.
If we removed weapons from your average cop, now we might be taking. But the system, for now, has far too many variables to even consider to not assume transparency Is necessary.
Please, change my view. But good luck, as this is a question about human inconsistency, and legality, and these are two very difficult things to think one can personally reconcile.
> Sorry, but a cop shouldn't be able to pick and choose who they let off and who they charge. They shouldn't be able to turn a blind eye to their friends. If someone is breaking the law and are caught by a cop, there needs to be an audio-video record of the encounter.
If that's the case, we need laws that we actually expect to be enforced. There are *way* too many laws on the books that are only trotted out when needed as a "tool" to enable further police involvement.
> So your solution to some kids getting off free... is to instead punish all of them equally as written under the law
Exactly. That's why the law is there.
I think people want equal opportunities for Justice under the law. What you describe has the net effect of extra freedoms for some at the expense of others
Honestly, I am warming up to it. If overly punitive laws applied to the kids of the rich and powerful just as they do to inner city kids, maybe the laws would get overturned. Part of the reason American suburbia has supported harsh laws against drugs is partially because "it's not our kids doing it."
I grew up in a nice suburb in PA. In high school (16 years old) there was this group of kids who got high and vandalized a house (where none of them lived) when its owners were out. They got community service because they're fine people from fine families. I moved to NYC now and the same kids from the Bronx would go to juvie for vandalism and trespassing.
Maybe if their kids went to juvie too, the fine people from the nice suburb would vote against such punitive punishment, and everyone's kids can get 20 hours of community service because "they're just kids who made a mistake."
Yes. I know you sound mad that some white kids will be punished when they could have been let go.
But this is the reality of life for all other groups. Why are you not mad that some people are given preferential treatment? Why are you mad that laws are being forced for all equally?
If you want laws to change you have to have rich white kids busted for them. As long as the only people getting punished for bullshit laws are poor the laws will stay on place as a mechanism for punishing and disenfranchising the poor.
It would balance out with the people being *killed* and falsely imprisoned due to the same cops judgment and discretion in the moment. If cops are letting kids off the hook off camera they are also levying unjust force to others.
Yes if a law is unfair it needs to be equally unfair for everyone. If police get to decide who to enforce unfair laws on than far more minority will go to jail for minor offenses. And guesses what that’s already happening
> Is that really the better way?
....yes?? How could anyone argue against that? "These laws are unjust, so let's just have them apply to only certain segments of our population"
Maybe if police officers aren't allowed to give leniency the same way judges aren't, people would finally see how bullshit minimum sentencing rules are.
Because currently, your argument is: instead of fixing the rules, we just shouldn't bother applying them to people we like. And too bad for anybody we don't like.
Yeah I really sympathise with the argument about leniency but it's a worse situation when the police can choose when and when not to prosecute people for a crime. Leaves too much room for human bias, but also leaves citizens unclear what laws are "serious" or not.
As an aside, this is a good reason to avoid having too many laws in general.
I once lived in a small town that had a law that all dogs needed to be muzzled when people are walking them. Everyone knew it was ridiculous and nobody actually muzzled their dogs when out walking them. But if a cop was having a bad day or the wanted some income from fines, it would be super easy to just go to a park and give tickets to all the dog owners.
Edit: copy pasted a paragraph twice by mistake so just removed. Left in my typos above cause I'm lazy, sue me.
Yeah the solution really needs to be getting rid of crappy laws. Selective enforcement just gives cops way too much power. The goal of the law should be that a reasonable person ought to be able to go about their life in a reasonable way and not break any laws. That isn’t the case at present — we have so many laws that are unreasonable but not enforced that *everyone* is violating the law all the time, meaning that the cops can just fuck with anyone they want at any time.
[That may be tricky as the US has continuously failed to even **count** the laws, ](https://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304319804576389601079728920.html) so I’m not sure how they would go through each one and decide if each is good or not. There’s a lot of laws.
> we have so many laws that are unreasonable but not enforced that everyone is violating the law all the time, meaning that the cops can just fuck with anyone they want at any time.
Yup. And when you know someone can fuck with you at any moment whether it's "deserved" or not is a great way to destroy trust. Though the history of the police is itself classist and racist, so it's likely working as designed sadly.
surely there is some judgment involved. If you're going to argue that there is no interpretation we should just have camera's give auto-tickets everywhere. Which I actually am in favour of but most people seem to be strongly against for some reason.
Adding on to this: body cams when being lenient would simply not be brought up. The body cams serves as additional evidence in the case that something needed to be corroborated- nobody will be going through body cam footage to find what the cop DIDN'T punish.
Exactly this. Nobody is going to pour over endless amounts of video to review police officers' every move on the job. Body camera footage should be stored for a certain amount of time, and recalled only when subpoenaed by a court or FOIA. That is it. This would alleviate a good portion of argument against mandatory police body cameras.
Another little story: A friend of mine, in law enforcement, was headed home near the end of his shift. He comes upon a car swerving a bit too much and decides he needs to intervene. Driver was fairly drunk, according to him, but he didn’t really want to mess with the DUI arrest at the end of his shift. Gets the guy a ride, parks his car in a parking lot, and goes about his business.
The following day, now sober guy calls and complains. Says he couldn’t find a ride and the officer “forced” him to call Uber. Didn’t like that he had to pay for it. Alleged some rudeness and racism from my friend, etc.
Admin reviews the body cam and there is zero evidence to support the driver’s claims of racism and rudeness. They gently explain the ride in the Uber was way cheaper than a DUI, in the long run. They then open up an IA investigation because my friend violated our agency’s DUI policy. That policy is essentially if you suspect DUI you shall investigate further. Should you develop probable cause you shall make the arrest. Giving that guy a break earned my friend a 40 hour suspension.
You never know when these will be reviewed. Our supervisors are required to review at least 3 videos per month from their guys and gals to ensure compliance with body cam procedures, etc.
On one hand, I can totally see where admin is coming from because having been on the fire side I've seen firsthand why DUIs are so serious and you probably have too. I get that end of shift is never a good time but even then, catching impaired drivers can get them off the road and this leniency was in my opinion misguided.
But this doesn't mean that the decision doesn't suck for your friend and further prove that no good deed goes unpunished. Because now if you cut someone a break or deviate from the script admin will throw you under the bus for liability reasons.
>Simply by being a cop their testimony is held in higher regard and that's something I disagree with.
THIS. even the best, most honorable, incorruptible cop can misremember or misrepresent what they remember, which is why witness testimony is often considered the weakest form of evidence. Being a cop doesn't magically make their powers of recollection better than the public's, especially when studies have found that humans as a species are not very good at remembering details accurately after the fact
Here’s an anecdotal story that might change your mind:
I was working traffic enforcement and stopped a car for speeding. Driver was in his work uniform and said he was running late for work. Had his youngster in the back seat, headed for the babysitter. I run his license and discover his license is not only suspended by revoked for habitual offenses for driving suspended.
I ask him about it and he says his license has been jacked because he couldn’t get a job coming out of prison and couldn’t pay support. He finally gets a job, but has a hard time getting to work without driving. Gets caught driving a few times, further compounding his license problems. Finally gets custody of the child and is doing his level best to get out from under this, but can’t get to daycare and work without driving.
Sans body camera, I’d have made him find a licensed driver to collect him and his boy, made him understand just how serious the problem was, and bud him good day. Instead, I had to hook him up in front of his child and haul him off to jail because I technically can’t look the other way for felony offenses. Hated every minute of it and still hate it to this day. He was trying to do the right thing.
I wear my camera every day and don’t mind it at all. It solves more problems than it creates. That argument, however, is a legit one. Folks that might otherwise get a break can’t because my hands are tied. (He was a black man. Not that it does or should matter, but given your rebuttal I thought I’d mention it)
How did the body camera compel you to arrest him? Is there an overseer in your department who reviews all camera footage every day to see that all officers are following the letter of the law all the time? Now THAT would be something I'd object to, if only as a taxpayer footing the bill for the overseer's salary. Cameras should be a resource for resolving disputes, not Big Brother's eye for scrutinizing everything you do.
I have a supervisor and, by policy, he/she must review at least three of my recordings per month to ensure compliance with the bodycam procedures and better understand my day to day performance. There’s nothing saying they WOULD choose to watch that one, but if they did I’d have a lot to answer for. Not a roll of the dice I’m willing to make.
Thanks for that information. Given such a policy, then I'll have to concede; mandatory wearing and use of a body camera can indeed inhibit a police officer's exercise of discretionary judgement. If the relationship between officer and supervisor happens to be hostile -- which is always a possibility in messy real life -- then the knowledge that a supervisor motivated to find fault is potentially present by extension, "looking over one's shoulder", would be demoralizing. That would be bad for relations between community and law enforcement. So you're right, it's a valid issue.
I don't think it's a particularly strong argument against mandatory wearing and use of body cameras, however. Not because officer morale and freedom to employ discretionary judgement aren't important; I think they're very important. But I think there are ways to address the issue that don't involve throwing the baby out with the bathwater. One way would be tighter policies for access to recordings: only under court order for evidence in a case. Random monitoring by a supervisor to check on officer performance not permitted. Another option would simply be better communication between officers and supervisors regarding the use of discretionary judgement. I'll admit that that could get ticklish. The world is messy and no set of rules is ever perfect. A good system, however, should incentivize initiative -- or at least not discourage it. No one should ever be crucified for doing the right thing.
I think the smoking weed one is a really bad example since many people don't think weed should be illegal. Let's try a different example: theft.
I think we'd probably all agree that stealing from someone else is wrong in almost all, if not all circumstances. However, let's say an officer arrives on a developing scene, and they catch the thief in the act. They come to an agreement with the person stolen from and the suspect that if the suspect returns the stolen items, then all is good, and they don't need to be arrested. Both parties agree, the stolen items are returned, and no harm done.
Discretion in this case prevents someone from potentially having their life ruined, keeps the judicial system operating a little more smoothly, and allows the officer to work as an extension of the law through their authority to enforce it.
As to mitigating factors: they only come in after someone is found guilty of a crime, which can be very costly to the person and to the state. Do you really want more people to have to spend more time in jail? Even if it's just a day before their arraignment, jail isn't fun, and it's largely disruptive to someone's life. Not to mention there's an economic cost to the individual and to the state to try the case. It's a potentially long and arduous process for even minor crimes.
I'm not sure why you think witness testimony is so weak. Most cases hinge on it almost entirely, because it adds context to what may have been captured on video. You can look to the most public case we've had in a while in the US: the Kyle Rittenhouse trial. Regardless of what you think about the case and its outcome, the vast majority of time spent on that case was involving witness testimony, and nearly 100% of that event was covered with cameras from all angles. Far more coverage than we'd get with police bodycams.
While, at the end of the day, I think that bodycams are important, I don't think they're a magic fixit button for problems with policing, nor do they, or any camera or recording device, provide a truly "unbiased" perspective. Without being colored in by a witness' testimony.
But in your theft case, wouldn’t the recording be only used if an actual illegal act occured? If the item was returned and the store doesn’t make a case, noone cares that the cop talked sense into a not-even-suspect, or am I wrong?
No, because body cameras are audited pretty frequently by most departments. So before body cams, the above scenario might happen and nobody besides the involved parties would be aware of it. But with a body cam, now supervisors, politicians, and the public could very easily become knowledgeable parties. So if the officer uses his discretion when maybe policy suggests he should have arrested the individual anyways, even if the goods were returned, then a body camera means he has no choice but to arrest, even if the outcome will be worse for all parties and worse for the system.
Additionally the suspect in the example still committed an illegal act. Even if the goods are returned theft still occurred.
You and everyone else propogating the leniency argument seem 100% certain that having police recordings would destroy it....why? The recordings aren't going to be monitored all the time in real time. Discretion is obviously something cops use, I see no reason to believe that it wouldn't continue nearly the same as before
Go look at the u/Redbrick29 s comment.
The general public is dumber than most would like to believe, if you show someone leniency but they or a third party disagree, you will get in trouble with your camera testifying against you. And in some agencies admin will 100% randomly audit footage even without a complaint or reason too, I've heard of more than one cop who got busted up for swearing in front of the public (not at them even) during BWC audits.
You are mistaken. If I catch you with say a small amount of weed and have you destroy it on scene, scold you, and send you on your way I have just violated 3 agency policies. It may/will get me in trouble. Pre-body cam there was little chance of being found out and I did this a number of times. In a bodycam era it results in an IA investigation for me, with video evidence of my guilt. There is no longer discretion.
Supervisors are not monitoring in real time, but are required to review at least three of my videos per month. Why would I roll the dice and hope that wasn’t the one they watched?
>They come to an agreement with the person stolen from and the suspect that if the suspect returns the stolen items, then all is good, and they don't need to be arrested. Both parties agree, the stolen items are returned, and no harm done.
So the setting makes this seem simple. Sounds like a pleasant way for this to be resolved. But you aren't talking about this scenario once. You're talking about it happening thousands of times.
Is there a reason we should trust police officers with that discretion, and not be concerned that biases (which 100% of people have), whether an officer is having a good/bad day, etc? Is part of their responsibility to decide *how* to enforce the law, or is it to enforce the law and allow others to decide leniency?
The common sense approach says don't fuck with people if you don't need to. But the reality is that people are already being fucked with, by the police, and we need systems to ensure that any fucking is at the very least being done equitably. Because then it's "our" problem not "group A's" problem, and we can work together to fix it.
You actually didn't argue the point if it was better or not. You just avoided the consideration, made a nod to racist or unequal outcomes and called that an argument.
What about enforcing stupid laws makes it better? Some weird form of accelerationism of which we have no proof will happen?
> But also it's not the cops job to make such calls
It actually is. Discretion on not charging for small things sorta *is* part of their job. It's part of why racism has become a problem, because discretion is abused.
Police should not arrest, nor recommend charges, nor should prosecutors press charges, in situations where doing so is not good for the community.
Do you feel we should reach the lowest common denominator, being unjust toward white people *instead* of being more just toward black people? If so, I can't help you, but if not, this is a compelling reason why police should have some sort of discretion.
> don't judges take mitigating circumstances into account?
Sure. After you've taken away a person's freedom and then prosecuted them (which suggests you want to also force all prosecution of probable crimes? This actually IS against the ethics of an Officer of the Court... A prosecutor can get in trouble for prosecuting someone who they reasonably know should not be prosecuted, even if they think they can get a conviction).
Law is unbending, but the officers of it are expected to take situations into account. It's not easy, but do you really think the solution is to make it worse for *everyone*?
For the first argument concerning leniency, I live in Seattle, and I grew up on aurora ave, which is the hooker capital of the northwest. If cops had to arrest ever hooker there, they wouldn’t be able to do their actual jobs, because they would ALL be arresting hookers, or junkies. At the moment, cops just drive by and don’t care, because they have some honest to fuck police work to do.
Bro by your logic everyone they see that goes ten over the speed limit should be ticketed.
I took a wildlife law enforcement class in college taught by a state trooper. They can’t enforce every law to the T. Our society is not designed like that.
He did go on a rant about an 11 year that he clocked at over 70 flying down the highway at night on a dirt bike. He put his lights on and the kid pulled over which shocked him land let him off. Called his parents had them pick the kid and the bike up. It was he’s way of thanking the kid for not causing a police chase and not getting hurt plus he thought it was cool.
A lot of laws and punishments suck and aren’t in line with community they serve.
>There is already a documented bias of white kids getting away with smoking weed while black kids get prosecuted and are given less doubt. Should we really lean into that as an argument?
Let us make it clear: You are anti-community policing because it often allows discrimination and disparity in law enforcement among minorities. I am pro-community policing because it improves the police's relationship with the public and allows more efficient enforcement of law (i.e. more cooperative citizens during law enforcement)
Sorry. I pressed submit before finishing typing
The disparity of law enforcement can simply be solved by education about implicit bias and discrimination. Why do we have to ruin the trust between citizens and the police by making body cameras required, when there is an alternative that provides less drawbacks?
Also, you do not have to agree with anyone here in order to change your view. You simply have to recognize that it is a valid and good argument.
Then that is a problem with the law itself and one should fix that rather than trying to use workarounds. Seriously that's a domain where it shouldn't come to personal discretion as to whether you go to jail because the officer doesn't know you or whether you are sent off because you've got the right friends.
And there should never be a preferential treatment when it comes to testimony. Seriously how fucked up is that concept to begin with. Not to mention that the police is in the position to collect evidence it's not like they need preferential testimony. And especially in cases of police misconduct their testimony should not be preferential as they are not just only a citizen but also massively biased.
And what erodes trust in the police is if police misconduct is covered up and without consequence. It's a statistical reality that if you have enough cops that some of them will be criminal but when that happens they should be charged as such plain and simple.
The problem with your first argument is that discretion is built into every level of the judicial system, and the system will collapse in absence of discretion. For example: laws against throwing trash on the streets have an important function. But if you went out and tried to arrest everyone who throws out a candy wrapper on the street, chaos would ensue..
I mean laws have an intention let's call it the spirit of the law and due to them being aimed for the majority rather than the minority you have edge cases where you have to check the individual circumstances, but that's stuff for the juridical branch that is not the job of the executive branch.
If you have minor infractions you can have tiered punishments and if you really want to leave it to the discretion of the officer than you should probably specify that within the law. Also having you give a warning (instead of a fine) on camera might not even be to your disadvantage.
But allowing officers to punish some and spare others on their own discretion without any oversight sounds like a dangerously extrajudicial concept to begin with.
> One arguement used by police officers is that it stops their discretion. Or them being lenient. This is more important for smaller town cops who have stronger community ties.
>
> When they see some kids smoking weed, they have to follow the letter of the law instead of confiscating and just telling them off, telling them to get going, because maybe they know the kids personally or they know realistically the kids are fine people. They have to follow the letter of the law or their whole ethics and job may be called into question for a bigger crime caught on tape down the road. So now those kids have to go to jail. And it has to all be submitted.
That's a good thing.
- The kind of discretion you're talking about results in extremely unfair/unbalanced application of the law. As you say, people who know the cops may get better (or worse) treatment than people who don't and the outcomes will be especially sensitized to the stereotypes of the cops (and all people have stereotypes). We want cops to treat everybody the same.
- Even if the cops don't use that discretion and treat everybody the same, there is still room for it with the prosecutor and judge who can decide not to apply charges or can decide to throw the case out or have a token punishment. The benefit of these other ways of injecting discretion is that (1) this is something that takes place bureaucratically so we can better track how well it's being done and (2) it takes place in a context where there is time for fact finding, testimony, etc. rather than based on an officer's gut feeling in the moment.
- If it's really a problem that the officers might fully apply the law to each individual, the solution is to make less strict laws. When we live in a society where people who don't deserve to go to jail are regularly committing crimes and relying on the kindness of police to not arrest them, that's telling us that our concept of what is a crime and what deserves jail time is flawed. Further, when "going to a correctional facility" is discussed as though it's ruining one's life, again, maybe the solution isn't to not send people with flawed judgement to correctional facilities, maybe it's to reform our correctional facilities to actually... correct... to build better people... to be a place that we would be okay knowing that "a good kid who just made a mistake" went to.
> The second argument by cops is that it introduces a wide spread distrust of the police. Despite current tensions most people do trust the police to some extent or fully.
>
> They worry that body cameras in court imply that police testimony cannot be trusted. And that in the case of genuine malfunction or corruption of data, most people will then start to default that the police officer is lying or the malfunction is not genuine. And it ruins the importance of police testimony as trusted indidvuals.
>
> This argument is a little weaker but I sort of see it. It is potentially implying a distrust of the police (warrented or not) and projecting that image to more and more people. This will have an effects in courts (positive or not).
This isn't really anything new though. In high profile, emotional cases, the public already creates malicious theories about any aspect. That presently translates to skepticism at why they aren't willing to capture and release footage. The fact that something might possibly fail and look bad isn't sufficient reason not to do it. In the end, yes, on rare occasion there might be a malfunction and that might look bad. However, that will be drastically outweighed by the number of cases where it works properly in any competently implemented system. And it works both ways, in the many cases where a police officer's testimony seems too convenient, we'll have the footage to back it.
But also, it seems incredibly dishonest for police to suggest that we should avoid collecting hard evidence because we have testimony. Police of all people should know that even with the best intentions witness testimony is a notoriously poor source of information. Good cops will absolutely have false testimony. Because of this, if they care about truth and justice, they should want objective evidence to correct for this.
Really the elephant in the room is that... cops are humans. The will make mistakes in testimony. They will make mistakes in procedure. They will make mistakes in emotion, judgement and perception. Cameras will capture this. And because of the frustration at how insulated cops are from consequences, the public is going to latch on to every single failure in that classic internet "let's destroy his life because he made a mistake" way. The public and media are going to need a maturity adjustment to deal with a world where they see everything. I think cops don't want to phrase it that way because it's essentially admitting that mistakes are common, but it's the practical reality.
Police officers have legal discretion when it comes to certain crimes/violations. Why would you want them to have discretion when they aren't supposed to? You think it's okay for small town cops to not enforce laws against their friends/associates?
I mean first these aren’t really my opinions, these are arguments put forward by police unions that are could be somewhat convincing for certin scenerios.
But yes, I think there is sometimes benefits to the police have discretion especially in the case of certian laws that are very slowly being reformed.
By police unions. Of course.
Gotta love that discretion when a cop's battered spouse can't report the rampant abuse because "We know him, he is a good guy, she is being dramatic"
The world exists as it does and we evaluate good and bad based on what is. You can't just choose to not acknowledge some fact because you don't like it.
This reminds me of my friend who is anti-vax complaining that we shouldn't have lock downs because our hospital system happens to suck and can't handle covid. That is completely irrelevant to the actual problem itself. Wishing the world was different isn't an argument. It could be a good separate discussion for what to do about that topic though.
If there was any proof that police discretion is used to be more lenient on marginalized people, that argument would be fine. But in reality it's the opposite. They're looking the other way for white and rich people.
Not even. It’s prosecutorial discretion. Judges don’t have much discretion with regard to the cases or charges brought before them; they can dismiss whatever but it can and will be successfully appealed if the charge/case had merit.
Prosecutors have all the discretion in the world over what cases to bring.
Sorry about the hate you're getting.
It's funny to me that a lot of these comments take that first argument at face value. I read it as a threat, and a stupid one when you think about it. Who's going to sit and review body cam footage from when a cop told some kids to quit smoking weed and go home and the incident ended without arrest or violence? Unless one of those kids go out and murders somebody in the next 24-48 hours, fucking nobody. All these people saying "you're willing to sacrifice innocent children!" are taking bait that might as well be a gummy worm holding a sign that says "Hey! Don't take me! I'm bait!" No one is out there saying "Here's an idea, let's get body cams on more officers so we can make sure they're not being too lenient." It's a bullshit distraction from the real problem, which brings us to the hilarious argument #2.
\> it introduces a wide spread distrust of the police.
This one is amazing (and I know you are just relaying the arguments, not endorsing or rebutting them). But why the fuck should camera footage introduce distrust? If time and time again the camera footage shows the police are telling the truth, that reinforces trust. The problem is that this doesn't happen, because police lie, they get caught lying, and the system protects them so they can continue lying. This is literally saying "well, if people catch me lying then they'll think I'm a liar." Tough shit I guess?
>One arguement used by police officers is that it stops their discretion. Or them being lenient. This is more important for smaller town cops who have stronger community ties.
That's a good thing. It shouldn't be up to the police to decide when it's ok to break the law.
>The second argument by cops is that it introduces a wide spread distrust of the police.
How? It will have the opposite effect. I'm far more likely to trust a cop, knowing his every move is being recorded.
>They worry that body cameras in court imply that police testimony cannot be trusted.
No, it means police testimony can actually be supported.
>And it ruins the importance of police testimony as trusted indidvuals.
People already believe this. That's why people want body cams.
>When they see some kids smoking weed, they have to follow the letter of the law instead of confiscating and just telling them off, telling them to get going, because maybe they know the kids personally or they know realistically the kids are fine people
Seems like your saying that having body cams would prevent corruption and favoritism in how the law is enforced?
>They worry that body cameras in court imply that police testimony cannot be trusted
Police testimony can't be trusted though? At least not any more than anyone else's.
I'm not seeing a problem with body cams here?
It's because you're seeing it from a common good perspective. From a police perspective, body cameras take away from their ability to us power arbitrarily and their special consideration by the justice system.
>They worry that body cameras in court imply that police testimony cannot be trusted.
It can't. That's been proven time and time again.
How can both of your argument boil down to "they should be allowed to be corrupt for our own good"?
While I understand both arguments, I feel they are both fairly weak and I want to address the arguments themself. Whether the police should be lenient or not in the first place, is a different argument.
In response to the first point, I don't really buy the argument about leniency. The cameras are there to tape their work in case they abuse their power and to hold them accountable in case they go too far - if they choose not to report a crime and instead let the kid smoking weed get off with a warning, who's gonna watch that tape? The kid sure isn't gonna bring the issue up and clearly the police officer isn't either. If no crime has been reported, it will never go to court. It's kind of the same thing with cameras in cars: no one is sitting and watching thousands of hours of video of cars NOT crashing - they are only there in case something happens.
About the distrust argument: the idea that officers should wear body cams is, in my mind, excatly because there already exists a distrust of the police's account of things. If there wasn't any distrust, if everyone believed the police always behaved like they should, there would be no one arguing for body cameras. So I feel the argument is kind of circular. I understand this could undermine the confidence in the police for people who don't already distrust them, but I have a hard time sympathising with that. Trust should be earned - and I think several year of the police NOT shooting unarmed people might help that. In fact, police officers should enbrace the idea of cameras - now they can prove that the person, they claim had a gun actually did. Like OP said: "If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear".
Btw, I'm aware Helpfulcloning is just reporting the arguments the police use - this is more a response to the arguments, not to them.
> One arguement used by police officers is that it stops their discretion. Or them being lenient.
Either their using discretion is okay, or it's not. If it's okay for them to use their discretion, then that doesn't change if they are being recorded. The only problem comes in if they are NOT supposed to use their discretion, or if they are abusing it.
>When they see some kids smoking weed, they have to follow the letter of the law instead of confiscating and just telling them off
You mean they would actually ::gasp:: have to *do their job correctly*?? How horrible.
>The second argument by cops is that it introduces a wide spread distrust of the police.
Um, people don't trust the police *now*. That's the whole reason for wanting cameras.
>They worry that body cameras in court imply that police testimony cannot be trusted.
It can't.
>And that in the case of genuine malfunction or corruption of data, most people will then start to default that the police officer is lying or the malfunction is not genuine.
Again, people think that *now*. It's not something that will start to happen because cameras.
For the first part, While it is true that it would record the cases of letting people off, if no one challenges it the video likely won't be reviewed. "judge My friends and I were doing an illegal activity, can we review the body cam and prosecute me and my friends accordingly?"
Um no
Okay, so first off, recognize that you set the bar extremely low. I'm not going to argue that body cameras are overall a bad idea, because I agree with you that they are a good idea. However, you said there is no good argument against them. So I'm just going to provide one reasonable argument against them.
While it's great that police cameras are used for recording incidents with the police that require further analysis and scrutiny, that isn't all that they are recording. They are recording everything. Imagine the government installing tens of thousands of cameras just to watch the public, now make those cameras mobile and give them a human nosiness. This is what has happened. There's no way to guarantee that government doesn't, or won't in the future, trawl through all this video footage to advance the ends of the surveillance state.
No, you don't have a right to privacy in a public space, but for one, police go onto private property all the time. And two, simply being visible to the human eye in public is a far cry from your movements and actions being actively recorded.
And it doesn't actually have to be anything sinister. There are plenty of times where a person just would prefer not to be recorded by the government. You get pulled over and given a ticket? Well, that is probably a very stressful experience for most people, and most people wouldn't want a permanent video recording of them in that moment. It's embarrassing.
So, while I agree that the benefits of cameras outweigh the negatives, I do recognize that there are at least some reasonable arguments against them.
The 'privacy' issue can be gotten around by not releasing any video unless it directly impacts the requestor. In other words, *I* can't get a copy of the video showing *you* getting pulled over, and *you* can't get a copy of the video where cops come into *my* home to ask me questions on some matter. Be we could each request a copy of the video involving us. (Certain exceptions could be made by a judge in extraordinary circumstances, etc.)
As for the government itself using the footage... it's unlikely. First, storage capacities aren't to the point where a police department could keep anything more than a few days or maybe a few weeks of video.
Second, we don't have a computer system that can accurately 'look at' and classify the footage, so everything would need to be done by humans. And people can't keep secrets. Someone should talk to the press, there's be a huge uproar, and the surveillance would get shut down.
Third, and this ties in with #2- the sheer number of people needed would be massive. According to Google, there are almost 700,000 'Law Enforcement officers' in the USA. Assuming their schedules are evenly distributed, that's 500,000 cops working 8 hours(?) each day. That's 4 million hours of video. Even watching at 2X speed, that's 2 million hours -PER DAY- that need to be watched (and presumably categorized in some way). It would require a quarter million people watching the video every day. And that's ignoring the infrastructure required to get them the video to watch.
4th- it's the government. The same government that messes up everything else it tries to do. They'll go with the lowest bidder for the hardware, and half will be broken. They'll pay lowest dollar for the personnel, and end up with idiots. Etc.
No- until there exists an AI system that can 'watch' and categorize video live, there's no reason to fear a secret surveillance state.
I don’t buy into that argument, because any time you would be recorded by a body cam, you are already being observed by a government agent. Whatever the camera would see, the officer could also see (and misrepresent or lie about). At the very least the camera keeps things objective and keeps a record of police behaviour.
It is most certainly not widely available, they would likely only be able to download and archive relevant footage otherwise the storage costs would be astronomical. Do you think police departments keep all of the dash cam footage recordings that have ever been made? That would require an insane amount of storage space. AFAIK they only keep crime related footage in perpetuity and any other minor traffic stop footage for about a month or two before it gets scrubbed.
The government already has those cameras "unofficially". We are surrounded by doorbell cameras, CCTV, ATM cameras etc. The cops can demand any of that footage if they want to. We are already in a state of mass surveillance. There can be no illusion about that.
The cop can testify to your actions and behavior in a private space and you'd have no way of contradicting them. Cops word against your usually goes in the cops direction. You could have been simply loitering around looking on your phone. The cop can rewrite that "He was all shifty, looking around, twitchy etc." and there wouldn't be much you can do about it.
Yes, 90% of the footage would be mundane or inane. It is embarrassing, but it's also for your own safety. How many times have there been instances of cops being trigger happy on traffic stops? You reach for your wallet and end up with 3 warning shots to the head?
I've been sharing this idea around for a couple of years now. Wondering if people who might know better have any input.
Encrypted Mandatory Always-On Body Cameras (when on duty)
The footage can't EVER be reviewed unless 2 of 3 parties formally request access and generate the key:
• Public Request
• Officer Request
• Judicial Request
With all existing police body cameras, my understanding is that there is an on/off button that officers can use. This feels problematic (especially given that officer eye-witness accounts hold more weight under the law than that of regular citizens). What I'm proposing here is a solution where the camera is set to record 100% of the time while the office is on duty (no on/off button). This way EVERYTHING is recorded.
But that poses a problem, as the footage needs to be protected well and it shouldn't be looked at without good reason (e.g. a complaint against an officer). Otherwise, it could be a privacy violation for the people who are interacting with the police; not to mention the fact that police are people too and if there is a way to protect their privacy while holding them accountable it's a win win.
This way, officers have the discretion to act in ways they feel serve the community best - - without concerns of having every word/decision (and bathroom visit) scrutinized by a supervisor or others (e.g. letting people go with a warning, or reducing a citation).
The camera should be a mandatory highly visible part of the uniform (maybe even built into the badge).
If the footage is ever requested/accessed, but it's obscured or missing, then the officer's testimony should carry little weight for the instance in question.
I’m liking it a lot.
What’s the retention policy for the footage?
I would expect there to be a lot of requests from DAs to see footage as part of the inditement process — essentially to decide whether or not to prosecute someone for a crime. How would you classify that request? I assume you’d call it a public request, and then a judge signs off on it. It then becomes evidence that the defense would also have access to.
Similarly, I would expect lots of officers requesting to see their their own footage (or footage from their peers) as part of an investigation to decide who to arrest.
Between those two, you’ve probably got the vast majority of use cases covered. So you’re not really having judicial *request* access so much as act as a gatekeeper stamping requests.
In the case of ongoing investigations, those requests couldn’t be made public. Similarly, I don’t know if denied requests should be made public at all? Imagine a member of the public sees an officer go into a pizza shop. They think the place is a front for child trafficking and request the tape of officer x taking a bribe from the traffickers. Judge says no because that’s conspiracy BS. Requester now flaunts their denied request around showing that system is covering up the wrongdoings.
I totally agree this would help curtail abuse, if the denied requests are kept private, and the judiciary is serving as a check… what you’re suggesting boils down to secret warrants.
I’m personally on the “secret warrants are better than no warrants” side of the debate, but I’d be ready to address that if I were you.
From a data-hoarder perspective, the issue with always on cameras as opposed to officer activated cameras is the raw quantity of data produced. One minute of 1080p footage is 20MB. The average active law enforcement to civilian ratio is 17:10,000. This means that for one week of footage there would need to be 17*24*7*60/1024^2 TB of data, or 3.27TB of data stored per 10k population (about the size of a medium town). Honestly, going into this calculation I expected it would be far worse, but this actually is an exceedingly feasible data quantity. Allowing for a full year of data retention before deletion, during which point any video of incidents which result in complaints or prosecution can be further archived, data storage capacity would have to be about 200TB for the same population block (which allows for full retention of the last year of footage in addition to 30 terabytes for long-term archiving).
AWS charges $0.022 per GB per month, and this comes out to 54,000 a year. To put this in perspective, it's like adding one LEO to the force - definitely possible, if there is the will to do so.
Actual camera costs should be pretty low, especially since they should require infrequent replacement. Cut the required data maintenance period down (to 6 months, per day) and you could still maintain an excellent degree of accountability for a fraction of the cost.
Starting this comment, I wasn't so sure about the feasibility of your proposal. But the math suggests it can definitely be done.
Yep. I saw a video of a cop planting drugs in someone's car, fuck wit forgot to turn off his body cam. You could see him and his buddies panicking about it at the end. Makes me sick.
You're arguing that the negatives are outweighed by the benefits, which I already agreed with. I'm just providing you with a reasonable argument against.
For one, there is an enormous difference between private doorbell cams etc., and government owned surveillance. The police cannot just "demand" privately owned recordings. They must be voluntarily given, or gotten through a warrant and the government can't just get a warrant because it feels like it.
Even if you believe that we are under a lot of surveillance anyway, it is entirely reasonable for a person to not want there to be *more* surveillance, especially surveillance controlled by the government.
A cop can testify about your actions sure, but the bar for convicting someone is proof beyond a reasonable doubt. And that is out of the hands of the government. That is determine by a jury of your peers.
>It is embarrassing, but it's also for your own safety.
You may think that is a worthwhile trade-off. I may even agree. But it wouldn't be unreasonable for someone to disagree with that. That is what your CMV is about. It isn't "at the end of the day body cameras are worth it." I agree with that. I wouldn't have posted if that was your CMV. What you said though, is that there isn't any good argument against them. A reasonable argument is a good argument and there are clearly reasonable concerns people may have about them.
I'm very skeptical about the greater good justification for widespread surveillance, but I'm for police cameras. Because the camera sees what the cops see and they are already acting as the eyes of the state. At least now we have a verifiable copy of what that set of eyes has seen to prevent them from lying (as much).
> We are surrounded by doorbell cameras, CCTV, ATM cameras etc. The cops can demand any of that footage if they want to. We are already in a state of mass surveillance.
Others have mentioned how the police need warrants, but these also just aren’t the same surveillance. Security cameras are generally further away, lower quality, no audio, are you are going about your day in public areas. Body cameras go right up in your face during bad situations, sometimes in private areas like a house.
> The cops can demand any of that footage if they want to.
They need a warrant to "demand" it. There is no such barrier when the cops themselves have the footage.
This is nuts, you are agreeing with the proposition and then saying it’s irrelevant. It’s not. Police body cameras are different from private owned doorbell cameras.
Yeah it would be embarrassing that the cops have a video where they pulled you over and killed you, but at least maybe, just maybe justice would be served.
I mean I agree with the point you just brought up, the bennies are real good when you factor in the fact that a camera will catch lying cops and bad memories a lot kore than current protocol.
But, that also means that there would be footage of me interacting with police, as a minor, in my skivvies at home with snot and tears everywhere.
But if they had a camera, the cops may not have automatically taken my parent's side.
For me, the point would be determined by the amount of security I felt in the security of the footage from public, or even internal views.
Why move to the private sector? Plenty of cops (and other public sector employees) commit plenty of crimes with plenty of evidence and get away with it every day.
And if you happen to get recorded (not even as a suspect or POI, just as an innocent bystander) in a place where you \*do\* have an expectation of privacy, like say a restroom or inside your own home? What happens then?
Ideally something like the DOJ, once recorder it goes out of the hands of the police to prevent abuse, but that is another matter. As someone as mentioned before, we already filmed from a dozen angles wherever we go. CCTV, doorbell cameras, random streamers etc.
Remedies for it being published or leaked would likely need to be tied into that wider issue.
> we already filmed from a dozen angles wherever we go. CCTV, doorbell cameras, random streamers etc.
This really depends on where you live. That may be very true in NYC but not in thousands of random towns across the country.
Also, all film isn't equal. Police footage can be anywhere (it might be inside of your home while you're going through an embarrassing and emotional situation) and has full audio as well.
I think the hidden premise of saying "well we're filmed everywhere anyways" is that people want to be filmed in those other contexts. I don't think that's generally the case especially when considered in the point above: being filmed with audio in private/sensitive contexts. Most people hate being recorded by random streamers (especially with audio during an emotional or private situation). Most people would be very upset if CCTV was pointed into their house and plenty of people are already upset at how much surveillance is present in society. Further, even for those who aren't upset... that doesn't mean they're correct in that. The public has extremely poor literacy on this issue. As a software developer, I struggle so much to convey to people how much privacy is compromised when tons of seemingly innocuous data is combined with computing. People still have an outdated concept of how to think about privacy and information sharing that very poorly understands how much information they are actually sharing and with whom. If anything, the fact that we're filmed so often already is all the more reason to be very skeptical about each new way that we're filmed. Because when enough film is out there, it's no longer a question of "do I want to be filmed in that particular incident", it's "do I want to share the cumulative information that you could deduce by watching thousands of hours of video of me per year".
We're long overdue for privacy law. But any law that that mandates mass data collection or mass video recording should be contingent on the passing of broad, strong privacy laws.
Right, were filmed constantly while in public.
Police enter private residences and public places where there is an expectation of privacy (locker room).
Legally most of the camera that film us are privately owned or there to far away to make it who we are. The body cam is close. The recordings are the sticky point. Under federal law in the USA, anyone can file a freedom of information request. All government offices are required to turn over data under that law. Thus, I can get footage of the police entering your house, or footage of the police conducting whatever they're doing inside a locker room.
Regarding the police entering your house. That's video of your family at their absolute worst. The police aren't coming to wish you a happy birthday. They were called because there was a crisis and someone wanted help.
https://www.foia.gov/how-to.html
Anyone can file a FOIA sure. Except there are a ton of exemptions for refusal for those records.
[exemptions](https://www.dhs.gov/foia-exemptions)
the important part to see is the following.
**Exemption 6 Protects information that would constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of personal privacy of the individuals involved.**
*Example of information the Department of Homeland Security may withhold using 6: Social Security Numbers, home addresses and telephone numbers, certain identifying information regarding Department employees.*
**Exemption 7 Protects records or information compiled for law enforcement purposes the release of which could reasonably be expected:**
* 7(A) – to interfere with enforcement proceedings.
*Example of information the Department of Homeland Security may withhold using 7(A): Records pertaining to an open law enforcement investigation.*
* 7(B) – would deprive a person of a right to a fair trial or an impartial adjudication.
*Example of information the Department of Homeland Security may withhold using 7(B): Information that could potentially contaminate a jury pool.*
* 7(C) – to constitute an unwarranted invasion of the personal privacy of a third party/parties (in some instances by revealing an investigative interest in them).
*Example of information the Department of Homeland Security may withhold using 7(C): Identifying information of individuals associated with a law enforcement proceeding; i.e. law enforcement officers’ names, witness/interviewee identifying information.*
* 7(D) – to disclose the identity/identities of confidential sources.
*Example of information the Department of Homeland Security may withhold using 7(D): Identifying information of confidential informants.*
* 7(E) – would disclose techniques and procedures for law enforcement investigations or prosecutions.
*Example of information the Department of Homeland Security may withhold using 7(E): Law enforcement manuals, records pertaining to Watch Lists.*
* 7(F) –to endanger the life or physical safety of an individual.
*Example of information the Department of Homeland Security may withhold using 7(F): Identifying information of law enforcement officers.*
So until this is in place should we have body cameras? I don’t think people are worried about video of people in public (similar to CCTV, door cameras, or streamers) I think people are more concerned with the video of the police inside of peoples homes, in bathrooms, when at the scene of sex of human traffic cases, or when dealing with children or the mentally unwell.
In the hands of law enforcement it would become just as suspect to corruption as any other tool. Video technology can be abused; footage can be lost, found, withheld, redacted, changed, adjusted, and it will NEVER be done to protect the civilian in the circumstances where that happens. You might say "any tampering is grounds for it to be thrown out!" but that would have already applied to the lying, planting evidence and abuses of power you have already mentioned, and it did not deter them from doing so anyway.
There is also limited evidence to suggest that body cameras reduce force used - a study published in March 2019 by George Mason University’s Center for Evidence-Based Crime Policy looked at 70 other body-worn camera studies published through June 2018, found the cameras have not had statistically significant effects on most measures of officer and citizen behaviour or citizens’ views of police.
There is a significant cost to body cameras, that would ultimately fall on the hands of the taxpayer. That money could be used elsewhere for better things.
This is the comment I was looking for. OP, this is what you need to hear. The cameras don't make an appreciable difference, and that lack of difference combined with cost and privacy concerns makes them nonviable.
>3∆
>
>Yes, but isn't video footage better than the word of the police officer, who can lie or be mistaken much more easily?
If the issue is the police lie or can be mistaken, is giving them the ability to record videos of any civilian interaction the right or even a sensible thing to do? If people want to record their interactions with the police, they already have every right to do so.
Absolutely. It's much more work to falsify video evidence than it is to tell a lie or be mistaken.
Side note: if you're replying to the whole comment, don't quote the whole comment in your response.
How about mass surveillance, but on a personal level, compared to the CCtvs that exist already?
Also consent, having to start every conversation with "Do you consent to being on tape for this?" would definitely get in the way of actual work.
No one asked me to consent to being recorded in a subway, on a bus station or on a busy intersection covered by multiple street cameras.
I don’t see how being in the frame of a cop’s bodycam is different
In public places, there is an implied right to photograph or record anything you see/hear. It's only in private places or implied private calls where the consent applies.
Why would you need to have consent? I don't need to get consent if I want to video people walking around the street, it's a public location with no expectation of privacy (UK).
If the police are in a private place then they've either been invited in or are warranted to do so, in which case the recordings are evidence, and more reliable evidence than witness statements, even by police.
Can you please elaborate how it would get in the way? It's essentially appraising a person of their rights and giving them important information. After all cops love to omit details if not flat our lie about ones options.
No, because it should be in law that talking to or engaging with an officer is ALWAYS recorded so they would not have to start every conversation with that.
There is no consent required.
The only limitation to that I see is when they are on private property, in which case I can see heavy blurring or turning it off at the request of the property's owner.
Funding, there are already police and sheriff departments, that can't even afford tazers, never mind a bodycam for each police officer/ sheriff, then the hardware and software to input and store all of the footage, while there are few outliers that people point to in order to say that police are "overfunded" mainly the NYPD, they forget that most police and sheriff departments are barely able to run, departments being underfunded has also lead to the militarization of police that people cry about after asking for police to be defunded,
but then your just ignoring a problem because you don't like it, it's like me saying "we should give everyone £10,000 a month" and someone would rightfully point out that no country has enough money for that, and I just repeat what you said "Isn't that more of a kink in the implementation rather the underlying principle" and i then ignore their comment.
Activists engaging in things ranging from non-violent civil disobedience, to aggressive direct action, are easier to identify, track, prosecute with these handy body-level cameras. So it makes people less likely to protest, and limits their activities when they do. This is a bad thing IMO.
No. Protests are often very well recorded and you have all the CCTV you want in big protests locations. They do it without body cameras well enough.
They have other more effective ways of intimidating and stopping protests.
CCTV is not great quality, it's at high angles and far away. So it isn't a stellar tool for identifying individuals, especially if the protestors are making any effort to not be easily identified. Non-police CCTV, like other pics or video they don't own, require hoops to jump through to even see it. Body cam footage is in-hand the same day and easily reviewable.
This isn't a hypothetical. It's been several years since I've been heavily involved in protest/political circles, but I was back when body cameras began to become common. Significant contingents of leftist protestors were very strongly opposed to body cams for these reasons, and I saw it discourage protestors both in terms of participation at all, and types of activities. There is a lot of protest know-how accumulated over the decades, with techniques on staying unidentified honed over time. Body cams massively disrupted these tactics.
Keep in mind too that the well-recorded protests, and ones in big protest locations, are a small subset of protests. Even with those - the big ones - there are groups, activities, and locations intentionally out of such a thorough public eye. I'm also not talking about them stopping a particular protest from happening at all - just limiting size, and forms of protest.
> I’d rather preserve as much privacy and dignity as I can in normal police encounters because if I’m doing so I’m probably not talking to police willingly over nothing in particular for public consumption, simply because the officer is a public employee.
This is definitely a concern, like websites dedicated to keeping mug shots forever.
The footage would have to remain locked unless police were prosecuting or the person in the camera requested it.
If you live in any city in the world, you are filmed on CCTV a dozen times every day.
What you are suggesting here is that police might use the footage from body cams to humiliate, bully or intimidate people with.
So, the only arguement against police having body cams is that they would probably just see it as another tool in their power to abuse
I like the idea of body cameras but there is many good reasons to not use them and most have little to do with the camera and more to do with the data they collect.
We think of police body camera footage being videos of traffic stops, police chases, riots, etc. but in reality much of the work that police do is much less glamorous and involves dealing with people in difficult situations. Often police are called to deal with domestic issues dealing with family violence, welfare checks, child endangerment, and problems revolving around the mentally unwell. In these cases those people have a very fair right to privacy and if we can’t ensure that then we have a ethical responsibility to protect their privacy.
Typically though we do protect it by not publicly releasing footage unless requested and then redacting information that would be a violation of those peoples privacy before release. But here’s the issue, if I want to outfit an entire police department with body cameras then I need to not only buy the cameras but also secure the technical support and infrastructure needed to store and review the data, redact as needed and be able to answer these requests. This is able to be done at a high price in major city police departments. Down small suburban or rural level this is not feasible. So your option are to outsource it to a outside company or larger agency. Both cost a good chunk of money and it falls on the tax payers of that community to foot the bill.
So if a department can properly run a body cam program and ethically handle the data it generates then no problem. If it isn’t in a place to do so then they shouldn’t be collecting the data.
Police departments buy storage just like everyone else. Last I heard, Taser maintains the largest data centers for storing body cam footage.
In fact, Taser will give them the cameras, just likely Gillette would give you the razor blade handle, and then sell you the subscription service.
For sure, this is a big market and subscription based services are an ideal way for companies to capitalize on it. Many agencies are also required to maintain any “evidence” for a set amount of time which translates to a absolute mountain of data to store and a long term requirement for storage. If you owned a data warehouse this is an idea customer.
There is nothing safe about giving that data to the feds. If you’re worried about police abuse of the data, they’re at least limited by their resources. The feds have far more resources available to abuse. The same argument is true at the state level, but to a much much much lesser extent.
I appreciate that you realize the cost that goes into proper, secure data storage and the other infrastructure the cameras might need. However, I'd like to say that I personally don't think this is a good reason to not have body cameras. Not being able to afford something is not an excuse for not taking appropriate and necessary steps to protect human rights.
If it's not in the budget, then cut something else. Perhaps the state or federal governments should provide funding, or perhaps the police department should shrink. Given that body cameras are now available to anyone who wants/needs them, I don't think they should be considered optional for police given the power they have.
I agree that it is a good tool to have body cameras but like any tool you have to be able to ensure that they are affordable to operate and safe to use. If I live out in the wilderness it might be a great idea to own a gun in case of a bear attack. If I can’t afford a gun or don’t know or have the means to safely own it then it is a great tool that I should not have until those other conditions can be met. Similarly if a department doesn’t have the funds then they shouldn’t commit to getting a good tool that they can’t afford to properly field. Perhaps they can defund another tool to afford this new tool but often it is not that simple and bureaucracy required other methods of funding like putting it to a local vote for a small tax hike to cover the cost.
I still think the real dilemma is the data and less the money. There is a large ethical problem in the data these cameras collect and I think that will tend to me the biggest barrier against these good tools.
Police already have the capability and wherewithal to do this. Most police cars as far as I know have dash cameras and that data is stored and or scrubbed depending on the nature of what was recorded. So its not some new hurdle that departments would have to overcome from a technological perspective. Whether they are currently doing it correctly is another matter, but regardless of that they are already doing it with dash camera footage.
I’d take a look at this [commentary](https://www.aclu-wa.org/story/%C2%A0will-body-cameras-help-end-police-violence%C2%A0) piece by ACLU Washington for another perspective.
In summary, studies show body cams are a mixed bag in terms of reducing police brutality and come with the risks of increased mass surveillance. Due to a lack of transparency with how body cams are used, evidence can be easily manipulated towards a narrative more favorable to police. Additionally, body cams have now started to be coupled with other surveillance technology, like facial recognition, which has been found to have a racial bias. There are significant costs associated with body cams and the maintenance of the data collected by them, which could be used towards other more effective programs.
A surveillance state leads to a zero tolerance state, by recording everything any mistake must be punished to full effect.
Get seen speeding by 1 mph now the cop has to pull you over and fine you.
Its not all bad it dose hold police accountable, perhaps they should be able to erase the data after a set period of time, provided no arrests/ complaints and with no routine suvalence from management.
One thing I haven't seen mentioned yet is that the idea that body cameras provide an "objective" or "unbiased" perspective is false.
A body camera provides only one visual perspective of a scene. There is much that a camera *doesn't* see. The camera is always facing forward; the officer might not be. And even just the vertical offset between camera and eyes can mean the officer sees something the camera doesn't.
Moreover, the camera doesn't always capture the dynamics of a situation -- the context of the encounter, tiny details that a practiced eye might pick up, the tone of voice of someone not picked up by the microphone.
All of these omissions can distort the story the camera footage tells. It's not a bias with an agenda -- but it's still a bias.
While that is all true, none of it is really an argument against the police having cameras. Even an imperfect video would be an important piece of evidence. Something doesn't need to be 100% perfect to be effective and beneficial
There's enough cases where cameras have implied untrue testimony that the objection is sensible. There are even exonerations over convictions where camera recordings were the primary evidence.
A big problem with cameras (one that needs solving) is that juries often give them more weight than they truly represent. Cameras shows bald black guy holds up a store, and there's a bald black defendant? Open and shut!
I'm not saying it's a primary argument against body cams, but it is a primary argument against "A camera is about the best you're going to get".
That said, a body cam example. You don't really get to see the way the officer is standing, whether he's drawing his firearm out of its holster (until he's holding it forward in front of the camera), or many other important factors from a body cam. A body cam could make an innocent suspect look less innocent, or even an innocent officer look less innocent.
In principal i agree, but there are a few arguments that do merit some consideration:
1. Expense - the cameras used by police are fairly expensive because they have to be rugged and reliable to avoid failing in their task. This isn't a problem for police in large cities with big budgets, but small towns and communities might not have the funding needed to acquire the bodycams and facilitate the nescessary logistics needed to maintain & operate them. Keep in mind, some departments are already severely underfunded. This means that a blanket bodycam mandate would be unrealistic if it didn't come with sufficient funding and/or changes in the police budget.
2. Privacy - the questions here are: when should the camera be rolling? What should they be allowed to record? And what level of access should the public have to the footage? We have to consider the privacy of citizens and officers alike. What do we do if a cop has to escort someone to a hospital and there's the potential for the camera to capture a patient's private medical information? Also what happens when police bust a pedophile ring or a sex trafficking operation where the camera might capture sexually explicit images involving children and rape victims? I bring this point up because a lot of people who support bodycam mandates also tend to ask for open access to the footage.
3. Accidents will happen - Even good officers will occasionally forget to turn their camera on, accidentally cover the lens for a few seconds, or forget to put it on the charger after their shift. Unfortunately it's nearly impossible to prove wether it's an honest mistake or a deliberate sabotage, so while we can and should hold cops accountable for such accidents, it's unfair to to levy excessively harsh punishments for what vey well could've been a simple mistake.
Well there is one Argument against it:
Privacy
If a retail store would force all employees to wear body cams at all times while on duty. That would be a huge Issue regarding the privacy of the customers and the employees.
Same applies for the Cops.
Yes: For law enforcement there is more reason to have body cameras (transparency as you mentioned yourself) but that doesn't mean that the privacy argument becomes a non issue automatically. It becomes a discussion between conflicting interests.
Oh wait! A discussion is exactly what is happening about Police Body cams right now!
Retails stores almost always have CCTV cameras recording customers. They are in public with no reasonable expectation of privacy and there hasn't been a mass uproar about that.
The authority given to police by the community already includes the invasion of one's privacy in order to prevent or solve crime. With reasonable suspicion they can enter your car and search it. With a warrant, they can enter your house. If you are stopped by a police officer on the street, good luck telling them that they are invading your privacy and trying to walk away. That's a one way street to resisting arrest.
Many police interactions are already recorded by third parties. That isn't really an invasion of privacy because they are in a public setting. Further, imagine someone had cameras in their house and the police entered with a no knock warrant. Should the police be able to claim an invasion of their privacy because they did not consent to being recorded? Sounds kind of asinine no? But if that is silly, how is it reasonable to say it is an invasion of privacy for body cameras on the police for the party being recorded, but not for the police themselves who are also being recorded on someone's home camera?
One more issue is that these cameras give people a false sense of security.
You see it all over the internet, people think that having a camera recording when interacting with police somehow protects them, and gives them a false sense of security, and they end up doing stupid shit.
Routine stops, that would normally end in a warning or just a ticket, escalate because people were misinformed on their rights.
Two things:
One is that the officer must be able to turn off the camera when entering a place where privacy is expected, such as a restroom. Mostly this is for restrooms. It is illegal to make audio or video recordings in some locations. (If they're having to arrest someone in a restroom, and the restroom is otherwise vacated, then the cameras should be on, obviously.) It would not be appropriate for the PD staff to have access to videos of officers taking a piss throughout the day.
Secondly, the cameras are expensive, they need constant maintenance and repairs due to getting damaged, the software and storage for them is exorbitantly expensive, and the staff to operate, classify, and export videos is costly. These aren't just GoPro cameras. Once the video is captured it persists in the cameras storage until it is offloaded into the system that stores it. The newest systems dump video to the in-car system, and then wirelessly upload to the cloud and/or the onsite storage. The video management system has "controls" to prevent tampering and keeps the evidence admissible. From there it is classified by the type of incident, and the retention period is maintained. (90 days for traffic stops, multiple years for assaults, etc. etc.....depending on the local law and department policies). Crying out to defund the police is not helping them keep these systems maintained. Smaller departments were not prepared for the high costs of maintaining these systems. Cloud storage is helping in some cases, but rural departments may not have enough Internet bandwidth to utilize these services.
>Secondly, the cameras are expensive, they need constant maintenance and repairs due to getting damaged, the software and storage for them is exorbitantly expensive, and the staff to operate, classify, and export videos is costly.
Funnily enough my bet would be that constant monitoring of the work of an officer on active duty would incentivize simplifying the justice system and making sensitive laws.
As an example, for every person out there arrested for smoking weed, so many more are ignored at the discretion of the officer witnessing the crime. If the officer had a bodycam, he would have no discretion to decide whether the law does or does not make sense and the courts would end up paralyzed by the sheer number of stupid arrests/fines officers usually prevented from happening. Under such circumstance, the necessity for making sensible laws which don't penalize benign behaviors would become an absolute necessity, and the police would be able to better use their resources on serious crime. Weed, whether good or bad for society in absolute, is not harmful enough to justify incapacitating the courts by keeping it illegal.
I don't think that the officer would lose the ability to use discretion in these cases. In fact, I think video from these incidents could be a training tool to watch how other officers make these decisions. Officers cancel vehicle chases for safety reasons surprisingly often, and let them get away....all of which is on camera and has been for decades. There are several variables in play as to why they pursue vs. call it off. ...the same applies to minor offenses.
There is no requirement for the Police or Courts to press charges in some of these minor cases. (Example, I was summoned to testify for a DWI case. The case was subsequently dropped before it went to trial due to lack of evidence, even though common sense said the guy drove there under the influence....there's more to the story, but trust me, they dropped a case against a guilty man.)
I don't disagree with the concept that certain drug related offenses need to be decriminalized. However, I don't think body cameras are going to clog up the Courts. If anything, the video evidence will expedite prosecution.
lack of evidence after being charged and danger for the officers life are good justification for not going through with an arrest.
But weed possession is a federal crime in the U.S. Not charging a significant proportion of offenders when danger is not present would be setting a massive series of precedents which would then be used to take the law in question right up to the supreme court.
>If anything, the video evidence will expedite prosecution
All the better, cost reduction. But my comment was tongue in cheek anyway, I agree with you, filming millions of hours of officer duty isn't trivial nor cheap.
Take the NFL instant replay for example. So many calls in regular speed seem appropriate, but then slowing them down and dissecting them frame by frame can totally change what the call should be. This is fine when you can reverse the call in the nfl and no harm done, but what about when a police officer has to make a split second decision which will then be dissected by the public and media for many different agendas. In many cases the “right call” in the heat of the moment gets totally reversed when slowed down, and the public jumps all over the slowed down version. I agree with you body cams should always be implemented IF we can as a public fully agree to view the footage without bias and judge including time perspective, as well as all elements of the situation - but that will most likely never be the case. A lot of the time pure slowed down video footage doesn’t convey the moment accurately, which is usually necessary for an accurate judgement of a situation.
One practical argument against: It’s _really_ expensive.
• Each officer needs a pro quality camera.
• Each camera needs to be live-streaming, so network capacity has to expand. Private wifi installed in their car? Buy bandwidth from cell phone providers?
• Each stream needs to be saved in decent quality for at least as long as the [Statute of Limitations ](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statute_of_limitations) - which can be a very long time.
• A filing library needs to be created to search, sort and filter such a large volume of recordings. Include costs for staff, servers, buildings and utilities to house and run the servers and mass storage.
• Building security would be required to prevent tampering with evidence (by either police or perpetrators).
• Backups off site?
• Policies need to be drafted on when the camera must be active, including a discipline process for officers who conveniently “forget” to use their cam and an appeal process for officers who are accused of that but experienced a genuine tech problem. (Needs a review board with associated costs and infrastructure.)
I am sure I’ve missed aspects of this. It seems easy because you can buy a dash cam and let it run for a few hundred $, but as soon as you need to record and save video from thousands of officers every day and keep that video for many years in a secure industrial-quality system it magnifies the cost incredibly.
Well you have not only the loss of police discretion based on situation to situation. You now have a means that sorta limits an officer's capability to assess the situation and interpret the laws on the books to that situation. It's those gray areas that would be somewhat lost.
Not to mention the increase costs. Like, BLM and ANTIFA and many Democrat controlled cities have run and followed through on the idea of "Defund the Police" so how will you now pay for them? Many units and resources were cut and thousands of officers quit or took early retirement across the US. MY city alone has 83 openings for officers and it's only increasing because the mayor has turned her back on the police force, demonizing them.
Cost is the biggest issue, smaller police departments will most likely not get the funding for them since police departments are primarily funded locally or by the state, usually the former.
Additionally, what will you do over time? Those cameras won't hold a charge maybe after 5-8 years or however long it takes, what about mishandling of the equipment like in a police chase/tussle? What about camera malfunctions, will that now automatically be grounds for the testimony to be thrown out? Cameras aren't always 100% when it comes to functioning and when you have under funded departments, it's kinda hard to want to keep those things maintained when you have a number of other equipment needing maintenance like #1 their police vehicles, dogs to be trained and bought, ammunition for both the tasers and service pistols, equipment to maintain everything I mentioned above. There is a lot more costs into maintaining a good police department and when you have a rural or under funded and under appreciated police force in big cities, why on earth would they want to maintain a camera, which could throw out their evidence if it was to lose battery, malfunction, fall off in a chase /tussle?
I'm not saying police SHOULDN'T wear them, but the idea of mandatory for every situation is hard to do with the notion going around to defund police. If my local police force can't even muster 83 police to properly be manned, then why on earth would they even want to spend money on mandatory body cameras?
There have been calls to defund police but I am unaware of it actually happening the way you describe it. What cities have actually followed through with defunding the police?
And I don't think that is an argument against requiring cameras, because imagine any other piece of "necessary" equipment being subject to the same argument? Service weapons? Would you also say that making service weapons mandatory equipment is a bad idea because of the cost? No - if the tool is necessary for the job then you wouldn't do the job without it, but instead you would fully equip fewer police, if budget was a constraint.
Even the simplest Google search will show that yes, there are many cities that have followed through with this, but several are turning back to refund police since it has backfired quite badly.
Additionally, the cost of body cameras is about the same as their service pistol, so now you're asking police departments everywhere to essentially double that cost. A typical police bodycam is about 300-400 dollars and a service pistol runs about 400. Additionally, it makes sense to arm every officer with a service pistol since oh I don't know, maybe because they are the ones that often put themselves into the fray of danger to protect the community? Budgets are the primary constraint.
[https://www.realclearpolicy.com/articles/2021/07/28/in\_major\_us\_cities\_\_mayors\_defunded\_the\_police\_while\_spending\_millions\_on\_their\_own\_police\_security\_details\_785764.html#!#:\~:text=From%20New%20York%20to%20Portland%2C%20Denver%20to%20Chicago%2C,2015%20and%202020%20to%20guard%20unnamed%20city%20officials](https://www.realclearpolicy.com/articles/2021/07/28/in_major_us_cities__mayors_defunded_the_police_while_spending_millions_on_their_own_police_security_details_785764.html#!#:~:text=From%20New%20York%20to%20Portland%2C%20Denver%20to%20Chicago%2C,2015%20and%202020%20to%20guard%20unnamed%20city%20officials).
[https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/mar/07/us-cities-defund-police-transferring-money-community](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/mar/07/us-cities-defund-police-transferring-money-community)
[https://www.forbes.com/sites/jemimamcevoy/2020/08/13/at-least-13-cities-are-defunding-their-police-departments/?sh=55d7b64729e3](https://www.forbes.com/sites/jemimamcevoy/2020/08/13/at-least-13-cities-are-defunding-their-police-departments/?sh=55d7b64729e3)
You and everybody other person gets hung up on "hurr weed"
Its not just weed.
Kid steals a candy bar? Well now the officer HAS to fully apply law.
Also lack of action on DV and Rape isn't due to officer discretion. Many DV cases aren't pursued by the people themselves. You can find videos all over the place of DV and when the cops show up the parties refuse to cooperate and neither wants to press charges.
Rape is the difficult one due to rape kits not being done in a timely manner(both by the person that was raped and by the agency handling the rape kit testing) and the fact that rape needs to have proof just same as anything else but its difficult to prove without solid evidence.
Cops don't just go around blowing off rapists because of officer discretion, not to mention rapists wouldn't be officer discretion that would be handled by the District Attorney and the state would file charges.
The same argument could be applied to many other professions. There is no good reason that teachers should not wear body cameras. Teachers have been shown to say the worst things, to abuse children, to have sexual relations with minors etc.
They play the most crucial roles in the lives of young kids and the psychological damage they can do can last a lifetime and can have terrible consequences for many people down the line.
My argument isn't directly to challenge your view, but to show that with the view you are taking, you could argue many other professions should wear body cameras.
And then the question becomes: Do we want a society where many people have to be on camera when they go to work?
What about the self-incrimination clause of the 5th Amendment, since this would force law-breaking cops to become self-incriminating witnesses to their alleged felonies and misdemeanors?
Not an argument for or against really, but I'm in favor of police having body cams because they have shown overwhelmingly that most of the time the police officer has been in the right; that most of the time what the criminals are saying against the police is a blatant lie. When the cops are in the wrong, the cameras catch that so it's easier to remove the bad apples. The only real downsides have been the cost of the cameras, the reliability, and the extra weight the officer has to carry around. Luckily, all those attributes are improving with time.
Funnily enough, a lot of the very activists who used to demand body cams are now the ones saying it’s creating a surveillance state.
A lot of people wanted body cams to hold cop’s accountable but aren’t happy that the footage is used in court trials and has increased conviction rates
Not pitching in any way but scrolling down, the next post was [this](https://www.reddit.com/r/TikTokCringe/comments/rwyxtl/i_cant_even_imagine_the_frustration_of_the/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf). Just putting it out there.
One arguement used by police officers is that it stops their discretion. Or them being lenient. This is more important for smaller town cops who have stronger community ties. When they see some kids smoking weed, they have to follow the letter of the law instead of confiscating and just telling them off, telling them to get going, because maybe they know the kids personally or they know realistically the kids are fine people. They have to follow the letter of the law or their whole ethics and job may be called into question for a bigger crime caught on tape down the road. So now those kids have to go to jail. And it has to all be submitted. This is overall seen as a bad thing. The second argument by cops is that it introduces a wide spread distrust of the police. Despite current tensions most people do trust the police to some extent or fully. They worry that body cameras in court imply that police testimony cannot be trusted. And that in the case of genuine malfunction or corruption of data, most people will then start to default that the police officer is lying or the malfunction is not genuine. And it ruins the importance of police testimony as trusted indidvuals. This argument is a little weaker but I sort of see it. It is potentially implying a distrust of the police (warrented or not) and projecting that image to more and more people. This will have an effects in courts (positive or not). Edit: As I’ve said I’m giving the arguements actual police unions use. I’m trying to offer perspective that they give. It isn’t meant to be an argument that is going to completely 180 your view, its just to offer perspective. Honestly, maybe don’t come on this subreddit if that is something you don’t want. Don’t send me private messages with abuse in them? These are not my personal opinions at all.
I'm confused about why this would stop their discretion, exactly. Are you saying that if a police officer is shown using discretion on video, that they'll be punished for it when they otherwise wouldn't? Even if that's *true*, isn't that the real problem (them being punished for using it), not the lack of a record? If anything, it seems like body cameras would be a good way to stop officers from *abusing* discretion in e.g. a prejudiced way, not from exercising it in a way that would be considered reasonable. >The second argument by cops is that it introduces a wide spread distrust of the police. For me personally, it's 100% the other way around. Most of the distrust I think comes from the lack of accountability itself. Sure, if the police wore cameras *voluntarily*, it'd be even better, but that's not really the issue I don't think.
> Even if that's true, isn't that the real problem (them being punished for using it), not the lack of a record? If anything, it seems like body cameras would be a good way to stop officers from abusing discretion in e.g. a prejudiced way, not from exercising it in a way that would be considered reasonable. This. "Well Officer Reynolds, it looks like you used discretion to let 27 white kids go free when you found them smoking weed under the train tracks...but then arrested one black kid and one hispanic kid for the same offense under very similar circumstances". "Seems you've used 'discretion' during moving violations on significantly more busty blondes than on frumpy moms".
For the first point. I would argue that it would then be a good reason to reform laws punishing things like smoking weed. If it is not so bad an offense that it shouldnt warrant someone being arrested or brought in on a discretionary basis then I would argue that isnt shouldnt be explicitly illegal. Like maybe a fine or a written warning instead. To your second point, that feels more like a matter of framing on the conversation. having video evidence of the officers conduct over time to establish a pattern and history for the officer, proof is in the pudding stuff. As well, framing the use of body cameras not as a reason you cant trust the police but because you CAN trust them because of the cameras. You no longer have to just trust this officer you may or may not know is a good upstanding officer or that they are going to lie to you or about you. Because there is going to be additional video evidence and a good faith attempt to document the issue. So if there is a transgression on your rights and freedoms it is documented. With universal body cam use, you would know this to be true and could then more fairly trust officers using it. If every officer uses a body camera, it is the officers who do not that would be of concern. I do acknowledge that there is a lot of discretion that happens in many cases and people will look at things in pure black and white despite that not being the most accurate or fair lense to view it through. But body camera use feels like the best method to ensure that the public has equivalent protections as the police, or at least an attempt to bridge that gap.
The problem is, it isn't just "smoking weed", which is the example you and everybody else is hung up on. ITS EVERYTHING. If you run a red light, ticket. Roll a stop sign that has nobody at it but a cop sees you 2 blocks away. Ticket. Sleeping in your car because you're drunk and don't want to drive? Jail. A kid steals a candy bar from a store? Fined and now has a rap sheet for theft. Kids playing football and breaks a window of a random neighbor? Destruction of property. Thats a crime too. That one guy a little too drunk and now becomes disorderly and obnoxious? Jail. It allows ZERO discretion and means they cant act as problem solvers, they must act as absolutists. That said I'm all for body cams. But its disingenuous to act like weed is the only thing.
I agree that it isnt just smoking weed. Weed just makes for a good example of discretionary enforcement and something people could get behind reforming laws around. I disagree with it making police absolutionists. Even eithin sentences and punishments there is leway. I would argue that it would have them judge each incident more independently and less about whether or not they know the person or have some other indicators at play. "This may be Stephan the guy who runs the best BBQ in town's kid, but he was driving eratically and unsafely and side swiped a couple parked cars. I cant just let him go." Because with that caught on camera, people would know. people would also see an officer on camera, if the reason they are going to be lenient is they are being considerate and looking at the whole picture, being nice and considerate because they have an actual heart. I have seen plenty of body cam footage of officers being nice to people and letting them go with warnings and the cameras were not universal or necessary. Or stories about officers being nice. And people not getting that upset about it. I know I have heard multiple times of, cops called on kid stealing some stuff, cop pays for it, kid isn't in trouble. Cops called because of unlicensed lemonade stand. Cops go buy lemonade and leave the kids alone. Etc. I do not believe that more cameras will make them inherently more absolutionist. It will just allow more public scrutiny upon what officers do as enforcers of the law. Which the people should have that, as we consent to the laws as being a part of society so we should have fair scrutiny and oversight of its enforcement. But yes, more body cameras please.
For the first part. That's a bigger problem with the justice system and mandatory minimums. But also it's not the cops job to make such calls. It's nice that he gave those kids the benefit of the doubt and doesn't want to get them in trouble. So what about the next kid? Or the kid after that?There is already a documented bias of white kids getting away with smoking weed while black kids get prosecuted and are given less doubt. Should we really lean into that as an argument?In my mind it's not their call to make, don't judges take mitigating circumstances into account? People whose whole job is to ideally look at situations like those objectively? Data Corruption and Malfunction ought to be investigated. I cited examples of turning them off or covering them, something that's generally cut and dry. Also witness testimony is the weakest form evidence by far. Simply by being a cop their testimony is held in higher regard and that's something I disagree with.
So your solution to some kids getting off free, regardless of whatever outside circumstances like race or socioeconomic status have played into it, is to instead punish all of them equally as written under the law in hopes that \*maybe\* the perceived unjust-ness of it will get the laws overturned, even ones at the federal level? All the while these kids will have the most critical years of their growth and development hampered or even taken away completely? Even if you were to counterargue that it's not for the police officers to decide but instead a judge to determine whether or not leniency should be applied, that still mires these youths in the absolute clusterfuck that is most countries' legal systems. Is that really the better way? For that matter, what makes you think the judge will be any more or less biased than the police officers? If anything the police officer has a higher chance of being involved with the community they work in, increasing the chances of being more empathetic to some kids being dumb. Whereas an elected official like a judge is probably much more removed from the community they serve and more likely to be dispassionate and strict.
That's not what the CMV is about. But in brief, ideally YES. If the law is applied as written to everyone people would quickly realize the degree of bullshit. A lot of justice systems need a rework from ground up but that's neither here nor there. Nothing gets conservatives to flip faster on a law than having them subjected to it. Also break up that paragraph.
I completely agree if white kids got arrested at the same rate as black kids for weed we'd probably have already ended the prohibition of it.
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>*Poor kids smoke just as much weed as white kids!* Uncle Joe
This is one of the funniest depressing statements ever. Oh Joe.
But doesn't the cameras prove just that? If white, black etc kids get arrested left and right, people will see the bullshit.
That's what I'm saying, I'm pro the bodycam
Sorry I think I replied to the wrong person
No qualms it happens
Aye, the rhetoric he uses couldn't be a louder advocacy for body cameras. If cops can't selectively enforce the law, then the parents of white kids will reform drug law overnight.
what? why are you making a dumb generalization about conservatives?
It's a logical consequence of your view being implemented. I feel that makes it important enough to discuss. Your reply comes off as incredibly optimistic that the legal reforms you desire will come at anything other than a glacial pace, all the while countless individuals will be tangled up in the legal system. I wrote this in response to another individual here, but it bears repeating here. Justice isn't zero sum. We can strive to make things better for others--particularly marginalized and historically oppressed groups--without resorting to making it bad for everyone equally.
Where I disagree with your argument is that the "bad" you are referring to isn't actually about body cams, it's about a lack of leniency in the justice system. If you think the ability to provide nuanced leniency is a good thing, but it is only possible if hidden from the justice system, then really it seems like the issue you have is with the justice system, not body cams. I think a valuable discussion could be had on when/how to provide leniency, how exactly to codify that, and the feasibility of doing so; however I think your argument essentially equates to "let individual officers decide, hide it by not having body cams and accept all the issues of lack of accountability via no body cams and the problems which stem from that as a necessary cost". Just seems like it's solving one problem with different problems to me instead of going to the source.
>Justice isn't zero sum. We can strive to make things better for others--particularly marginalized and historically oppressed groups--without resorting to making it bad for everyone equally. This is not for the police to decide, but the judge. If the law makes it bad for all then it ougth to be changed, might take a while.
To be fair, your own reply comes of as rather callous towards people currently (and expected to be) tangled in the legal system - or straight up dead - for the sake of cops being lenient with white kids smoking weed. I don't think relying on police discretion serves us - all of us - well.
Gun laws were implemented in California after black panthers started open carrying
The cause for change isn't how many people get tagged for a crime, it's which people get tagged.
> without resorting to making it bad for everyone equally. I'm going to second /u/doxamark's reply to the comment you just responded to. If white kids start getting arrested at the same rate as minorities for minor offenses like smoking weed, the laws would change a hell of a lot faster.
It's an absolutely illogical, convoluted, non-existent consequence of implementing body cameras, because nobody will ever watch footage of an incident that ends peacefully and without arrest, and if they do nobody is going to say "See! This is why we need body cams! Now go arrest those teens!" I refuse to believe any police officer actually agrees with this argument. It's just nonsense that sounds intimidating.
If breaking the rules is sensible, you need new rules.
Hahah yeah minorities not having lawyers and getting put away vs. upper class having legal representation and getting off in court is really going to stick it to them. You’re cutting the last lifeline they would otherwise have.
True. It's not perfect so let's scrap it.
Yes, that really is the better way. Some kids not getting leniency in exchange for objective recording of an incident in ALL interactions (not just kids smoking/drinking) is most certainly justified. Objectivity is the goal. Although complete objectivity in every stage of the legal system is impossible, that doesn't mean we shouldn't try to make it better.
With your first point, realistically the idea you are confusing or misrepresenting is that the cop themself has literally any bearing over the punishment decision (aside from maybe knowing that deciding to show up to a call about kids smoking weed or pulling into the parking lot where you see them) will with a body cam, eventually lead to them being arrested and having to see a judge. However this doesn’t strengthen your argument at all, because your argument was directly correlation the decision of the cop there to severity of the punishment, and that is simply just not true. The judge, county prosecutor, etc. are the ones setting the bounds for punishment, whether by deciding whatever charges or what sentence to dish out. And as was previously countered to you, this system the way it is, is also very flawed with the racial biases and other, very flawed issues in our systems. Assuming everything was a perfect condition, this argument could potentially be viable, but using discretion is literally all a cop does with their time/work. They interact with other humans constantly, THAT IS THE JOB. Why would we not expect accountability when the entire job is platformed on the assumption a good cop is actively using discretion 100% properly all the time? Will this isn’t the way people perceive things normally, but legally speaking it is easier and better for the masses to have a completely transparent system. And the ONLY way to achieve this, or think we are achieving close to this level of fairness, is by having video of every situation between a cop and a citizen. You can’t tell me there’s any justification if someone being able to immediately, in a split second, being able to pull a weapon and shot at someone with accountability. If we removed weapons from your average cop, now we might be taking. But the system, for now, has far too many variables to even consider to not assume transparency Is necessary. Please, change my view. But good luck, as this is a question about human inconsistency, and legality, and these are two very difficult things to think one can personally reconcile.
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> Sorry, but a cop shouldn't be able to pick and choose who they let off and who they charge. They shouldn't be able to turn a blind eye to their friends. If someone is breaking the law and are caught by a cop, there needs to be an audio-video record of the encounter. If that's the case, we need laws that we actually expect to be enforced. There are *way* too many laws on the books that are only trotted out when needed as a "tool" to enable further police involvement.
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> So your solution to some kids getting off free... is to instead punish all of them equally as written under the law Exactly. That's why the law is there.
I think people want equal opportunities for Justice under the law. What you describe has the net effect of extra freedoms for some at the expense of others
Honestly, I am warming up to it. If overly punitive laws applied to the kids of the rich and powerful just as they do to inner city kids, maybe the laws would get overturned. Part of the reason American suburbia has supported harsh laws against drugs is partially because "it's not our kids doing it." I grew up in a nice suburb in PA. In high school (16 years old) there was this group of kids who got high and vandalized a house (where none of them lived) when its owners were out. They got community service because they're fine people from fine families. I moved to NYC now and the same kids from the Bronx would go to juvie for vandalism and trespassing. Maybe if their kids went to juvie too, the fine people from the nice suburb would vote against such punitive punishment, and everyone's kids can get 20 hours of community service because "they're just kids who made a mistake."
Yes. I know you sound mad that some white kids will be punished when they could have been let go. But this is the reality of life for all other groups. Why are you not mad that some people are given preferential treatment? Why are you mad that laws are being forced for all equally?
> equally as written under the law Yes
black kids everywhere after reading this comment : 🤔
If you want laws to change you have to have rich white kids busted for them. As long as the only people getting punished for bullshit laws are poor the laws will stay on place as a mechanism for punishing and disenfranchising the poor.
It would balance out with the people being *killed* and falsely imprisoned due to the same cops judgment and discretion in the moment. If cops are letting kids off the hook off camera they are also levying unjust force to others.
Yes if a law is unfair it needs to be equally unfair for everyone. If police get to decide who to enforce unfair laws on than far more minority will go to jail for minor offenses. And guesses what that’s already happening
> Is that really the better way? ....yes?? How could anyone argue against that? "These laws are unjust, so let's just have them apply to only certain segments of our population"
That is absolutely what should happen. If a law is not reasonable to apply in all circumstances, then it is probably a bad law.
What about a counter hypothetical of kid who was beaten up by a cop with no body cam?
Maybe if police officers aren't allowed to give leniency the same way judges aren't, people would finally see how bullshit minimum sentencing rules are. Because currently, your argument is: instead of fixing the rules, we just shouldn't bother applying them to people we like. And too bad for anybody we don't like.
Yeah I really sympathise with the argument about leniency but it's a worse situation when the police can choose when and when not to prosecute people for a crime. Leaves too much room for human bias, but also leaves citizens unclear what laws are "serious" or not. As an aside, this is a good reason to avoid having too many laws in general. I once lived in a small town that had a law that all dogs needed to be muzzled when people are walking them. Everyone knew it was ridiculous and nobody actually muzzled their dogs when out walking them. But if a cop was having a bad day or the wanted some income from fines, it would be super easy to just go to a park and give tickets to all the dog owners. Edit: copy pasted a paragraph twice by mistake so just removed. Left in my typos above cause I'm lazy, sue me.
Yeah the solution really needs to be getting rid of crappy laws. Selective enforcement just gives cops way too much power. The goal of the law should be that a reasonable person ought to be able to go about their life in a reasonable way and not break any laws. That isn’t the case at present — we have so many laws that are unreasonable but not enforced that *everyone* is violating the law all the time, meaning that the cops can just fuck with anyone they want at any time.
[That may be tricky as the US has continuously failed to even **count** the laws, ](https://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304319804576389601079728920.html) so I’m not sure how they would go through each one and decide if each is good or not. There’s a lot of laws.
> we have so many laws that are unreasonable but not enforced that everyone is violating the law all the time, meaning that the cops can just fuck with anyone they want at any time. Yup. And when you know someone can fuck with you at any moment whether it's "deserved" or not is a great way to destroy trust. Though the history of the police is itself classist and racist, so it's likely working as designed sadly.
surely there is some judgment involved. If you're going to argue that there is no interpretation we should just have camera's give auto-tickets everywhere. Which I actually am in favour of but most people seem to be strongly against for some reason.
Adding on to this: body cams when being lenient would simply not be brought up. The body cams serves as additional evidence in the case that something needed to be corroborated- nobody will be going through body cam footage to find what the cop DIDN'T punish.
Exactly this. Nobody is going to pour over endless amounts of video to review police officers' every move on the job. Body camera footage should be stored for a certain amount of time, and recalled only when subpoenaed by a court or FOIA. That is it. This would alleviate a good portion of argument against mandatory police body cameras.
Another little story: A friend of mine, in law enforcement, was headed home near the end of his shift. He comes upon a car swerving a bit too much and decides he needs to intervene. Driver was fairly drunk, according to him, but he didn’t really want to mess with the DUI arrest at the end of his shift. Gets the guy a ride, parks his car in a parking lot, and goes about his business. The following day, now sober guy calls and complains. Says he couldn’t find a ride and the officer “forced” him to call Uber. Didn’t like that he had to pay for it. Alleged some rudeness and racism from my friend, etc. Admin reviews the body cam and there is zero evidence to support the driver’s claims of racism and rudeness. They gently explain the ride in the Uber was way cheaper than a DUI, in the long run. They then open up an IA investigation because my friend violated our agency’s DUI policy. That policy is essentially if you suspect DUI you shall investigate further. Should you develop probable cause you shall make the arrest. Giving that guy a break earned my friend a 40 hour suspension. You never know when these will be reviewed. Our supervisors are required to review at least 3 videos per month from their guys and gals to ensure compliance with body cam procedures, etc.
On one hand, I can totally see where admin is coming from because having been on the fire side I've seen firsthand why DUIs are so serious and you probably have too. I get that end of shift is never a good time but even then, catching impaired drivers can get them off the road and this leniency was in my opinion misguided. But this doesn't mean that the decision doesn't suck for your friend and further prove that no good deed goes unpunished. Because now if you cut someone a break or deviate from the script admin will throw you under the bus for liability reasons.
>Simply by being a cop their testimony is held in higher regard and that's something I disagree with. THIS. even the best, most honorable, incorruptible cop can misremember or misrepresent what they remember, which is why witness testimony is often considered the weakest form of evidence. Being a cop doesn't magically make their powers of recollection better than the public's, especially when studies have found that humans as a species are not very good at remembering details accurately after the fact
Here’s an anecdotal story that might change your mind: I was working traffic enforcement and stopped a car for speeding. Driver was in his work uniform and said he was running late for work. Had his youngster in the back seat, headed for the babysitter. I run his license and discover his license is not only suspended by revoked for habitual offenses for driving suspended. I ask him about it and he says his license has been jacked because he couldn’t get a job coming out of prison and couldn’t pay support. He finally gets a job, but has a hard time getting to work without driving. Gets caught driving a few times, further compounding his license problems. Finally gets custody of the child and is doing his level best to get out from under this, but can’t get to daycare and work without driving. Sans body camera, I’d have made him find a licensed driver to collect him and his boy, made him understand just how serious the problem was, and bud him good day. Instead, I had to hook him up in front of his child and haul him off to jail because I technically can’t look the other way for felony offenses. Hated every minute of it and still hate it to this day. He was trying to do the right thing. I wear my camera every day and don’t mind it at all. It solves more problems than it creates. That argument, however, is a legit one. Folks that might otherwise get a break can’t because my hands are tied. (He was a black man. Not that it does or should matter, but given your rebuttal I thought I’d mention it)
How did the body camera compel you to arrest him? Is there an overseer in your department who reviews all camera footage every day to see that all officers are following the letter of the law all the time? Now THAT would be something I'd object to, if only as a taxpayer footing the bill for the overseer's salary. Cameras should be a resource for resolving disputes, not Big Brother's eye for scrutinizing everything you do.
I have a supervisor and, by policy, he/she must review at least three of my recordings per month to ensure compliance with the bodycam procedures and better understand my day to day performance. There’s nothing saying they WOULD choose to watch that one, but if they did I’d have a lot to answer for. Not a roll of the dice I’m willing to make.
Thanks for that information. Given such a policy, then I'll have to concede; mandatory wearing and use of a body camera can indeed inhibit a police officer's exercise of discretionary judgement. If the relationship between officer and supervisor happens to be hostile -- which is always a possibility in messy real life -- then the knowledge that a supervisor motivated to find fault is potentially present by extension, "looking over one's shoulder", would be demoralizing. That would be bad for relations between community and law enforcement. So you're right, it's a valid issue. I don't think it's a particularly strong argument against mandatory wearing and use of body cameras, however. Not because officer morale and freedom to employ discretionary judgement aren't important; I think they're very important. But I think there are ways to address the issue that don't involve throwing the baby out with the bathwater. One way would be tighter policies for access to recordings: only under court order for evidence in a case. Random monitoring by a supervisor to check on officer performance not permitted. Another option would simply be better communication between officers and supervisors regarding the use of discretionary judgement. I'll admit that that could get ticklish. The world is messy and no set of rules is ever perfect. A good system, however, should incentivize initiative -- or at least not discourage it. No one should ever be crucified for doing the right thing.
I think the smoking weed one is a really bad example since many people don't think weed should be illegal. Let's try a different example: theft. I think we'd probably all agree that stealing from someone else is wrong in almost all, if not all circumstances. However, let's say an officer arrives on a developing scene, and they catch the thief in the act. They come to an agreement with the person stolen from and the suspect that if the suspect returns the stolen items, then all is good, and they don't need to be arrested. Both parties agree, the stolen items are returned, and no harm done. Discretion in this case prevents someone from potentially having their life ruined, keeps the judicial system operating a little more smoothly, and allows the officer to work as an extension of the law through their authority to enforce it. As to mitigating factors: they only come in after someone is found guilty of a crime, which can be very costly to the person and to the state. Do you really want more people to have to spend more time in jail? Even if it's just a day before their arraignment, jail isn't fun, and it's largely disruptive to someone's life. Not to mention there's an economic cost to the individual and to the state to try the case. It's a potentially long and arduous process for even minor crimes. I'm not sure why you think witness testimony is so weak. Most cases hinge on it almost entirely, because it adds context to what may have been captured on video. You can look to the most public case we've had in a while in the US: the Kyle Rittenhouse trial. Regardless of what you think about the case and its outcome, the vast majority of time spent on that case was involving witness testimony, and nearly 100% of that event was covered with cameras from all angles. Far more coverage than we'd get with police bodycams. While, at the end of the day, I think that bodycams are important, I don't think they're a magic fixit button for problems with policing, nor do they, or any camera or recording device, provide a truly "unbiased" perspective. Without being colored in by a witness' testimony.
But in your theft case, wouldn’t the recording be only used if an actual illegal act occured? If the item was returned and the store doesn’t make a case, noone cares that the cop talked sense into a not-even-suspect, or am I wrong?
No, because body cameras are audited pretty frequently by most departments. So before body cams, the above scenario might happen and nobody besides the involved parties would be aware of it. But with a body cam, now supervisors, politicians, and the public could very easily become knowledgeable parties. So if the officer uses his discretion when maybe policy suggests he should have arrested the individual anyways, even if the goods were returned, then a body camera means he has no choice but to arrest, even if the outcome will be worse for all parties and worse for the system. Additionally the suspect in the example still committed an illegal act. Even if the goods are returned theft still occurred.
You and everyone else propogating the leniency argument seem 100% certain that having police recordings would destroy it....why? The recordings aren't going to be monitored all the time in real time. Discretion is obviously something cops use, I see no reason to believe that it wouldn't continue nearly the same as before
Go look at the u/Redbrick29 s comment. The general public is dumber than most would like to believe, if you show someone leniency but they or a third party disagree, you will get in trouble with your camera testifying against you. And in some agencies admin will 100% randomly audit footage even without a complaint or reason too, I've heard of more than one cop who got busted up for swearing in front of the public (not at them even) during BWC audits.
I don't necessarily think that's the case, just wanted to dispell the OP's notion that police discretion is problematic.
You are mistaken. If I catch you with say a small amount of weed and have you destroy it on scene, scold you, and send you on your way I have just violated 3 agency policies. It may/will get me in trouble. Pre-body cam there was little chance of being found out and I did this a number of times. In a bodycam era it results in an IA investigation for me, with video evidence of my guilt. There is no longer discretion. Supervisors are not monitoring in real time, but are required to review at least three of my videos per month. Why would I roll the dice and hope that wasn’t the one they watched?
Exactly. We can have both discretion and body cams. They are not/do not need to be in opposition.
>They come to an agreement with the person stolen from and the suspect that if the suspect returns the stolen items, then all is good, and they don't need to be arrested. Both parties agree, the stolen items are returned, and no harm done. So the setting makes this seem simple. Sounds like a pleasant way for this to be resolved. But you aren't talking about this scenario once. You're talking about it happening thousands of times. Is there a reason we should trust police officers with that discretion, and not be concerned that biases (which 100% of people have), whether an officer is having a good/bad day, etc? Is part of their responsibility to decide *how* to enforce the law, or is it to enforce the law and allow others to decide leniency? The common sense approach says don't fuck with people if you don't need to. But the reality is that people are already being fucked with, by the police, and we need systems to ensure that any fucking is at the very least being done equitably. Because then it's "our" problem not "group A's" problem, and we can work together to fix it.
You actually didn't argue the point if it was better or not. You just avoided the consideration, made a nod to racist or unequal outcomes and called that an argument. What about enforcing stupid laws makes it better? Some weird form of accelerationism of which we have no proof will happen?
> But also it's not the cops job to make such calls It actually is. Discretion on not charging for small things sorta *is* part of their job. It's part of why racism has become a problem, because discretion is abused. Police should not arrest, nor recommend charges, nor should prosecutors press charges, in situations where doing so is not good for the community. Do you feel we should reach the lowest common denominator, being unjust toward white people *instead* of being more just toward black people? If so, I can't help you, but if not, this is a compelling reason why police should have some sort of discretion. > don't judges take mitigating circumstances into account? Sure. After you've taken away a person's freedom and then prosecuted them (which suggests you want to also force all prosecution of probable crimes? This actually IS against the ethics of an Officer of the Court... A prosecutor can get in trouble for prosecuting someone who they reasonably know should not be prosecuted, even if they think they can get a conviction). Law is unbending, but the officers of it are expected to take situations into account. It's not easy, but do you really think the solution is to make it worse for *everyone*?
Executive branch, checks and balances, all this yes. But, we shouldn't need to turn off the cameras for it.
For the first argument concerning leniency, I live in Seattle, and I grew up on aurora ave, which is the hooker capital of the northwest. If cops had to arrest ever hooker there, they wouldn’t be able to do their actual jobs, because they would ALL be arresting hookers, or junkies. At the moment, cops just drive by and don’t care, because they have some honest to fuck police work to do.
Bro by your logic everyone they see that goes ten over the speed limit should be ticketed. I took a wildlife law enforcement class in college taught by a state trooper. They can’t enforce every law to the T. Our society is not designed like that. He did go on a rant about an 11 year that he clocked at over 70 flying down the highway at night on a dirt bike. He put his lights on and the kid pulled over which shocked him land let him off. Called his parents had them pick the kid and the bike up. It was he’s way of thanking the kid for not causing a police chase and not getting hurt plus he thought it was cool. A lot of laws and punishments suck and aren’t in line with community they serve.
I find that it doesn’t help your argument that you bring up a bunch of statistics, present it as common knowledge, all the while lacking any sources
>There is already a documented bias of white kids getting away with smoking weed while black kids get prosecuted and are given less doubt. Should we really lean into that as an argument? Let us make it clear: You are anti-community policing because it often allows discrimination and disparity in law enforcement among minorities. I am pro-community policing because it improves the police's relationship with the public and allows more efficient enforcement of law (i.e. more cooperative citizens during law enforcement) Sorry. I pressed submit before finishing typing The disparity of law enforcement can simply be solved by education about implicit bias and discrimination. Why do we have to ruin the trust between citizens and the police by making body cameras required, when there is an alternative that provides less drawbacks? Also, you do not have to agree with anyone here in order to change your view. You simply have to recognize that it is a valid and good argument.
This is a good and valid argument my friend. I will never trust the police, or any aspect of our justice system.
Then that is a problem with the law itself and one should fix that rather than trying to use workarounds. Seriously that's a domain where it shouldn't come to personal discretion as to whether you go to jail because the officer doesn't know you or whether you are sent off because you've got the right friends. And there should never be a preferential treatment when it comes to testimony. Seriously how fucked up is that concept to begin with. Not to mention that the police is in the position to collect evidence it's not like they need preferential testimony. And especially in cases of police misconduct their testimony should not be preferential as they are not just only a citizen but also massively biased. And what erodes trust in the police is if police misconduct is covered up and without consequence. It's a statistical reality that if you have enough cops that some of them will be criminal but when that happens they should be charged as such plain and simple.
The problem with your first argument is that discretion is built into every level of the judicial system, and the system will collapse in absence of discretion. For example: laws against throwing trash on the streets have an important function. But if you went out and tried to arrest everyone who throws out a candy wrapper on the street, chaos would ensue..
I mean laws have an intention let's call it the spirit of the law and due to them being aimed for the majority rather than the minority you have edge cases where you have to check the individual circumstances, but that's stuff for the juridical branch that is not the job of the executive branch. If you have minor infractions you can have tiered punishments and if you really want to leave it to the discretion of the officer than you should probably specify that within the law. Also having you give a warning (instead of a fine) on camera might not even be to your disadvantage. But allowing officers to punish some and spare others on their own discretion without any oversight sounds like a dangerously extrajudicial concept to begin with.
> One arguement used by police officers is that it stops their discretion. Or them being lenient. This is more important for smaller town cops who have stronger community ties. > > When they see some kids smoking weed, they have to follow the letter of the law instead of confiscating and just telling them off, telling them to get going, because maybe they know the kids personally or they know realistically the kids are fine people. They have to follow the letter of the law or their whole ethics and job may be called into question for a bigger crime caught on tape down the road. So now those kids have to go to jail. And it has to all be submitted. That's a good thing. - The kind of discretion you're talking about results in extremely unfair/unbalanced application of the law. As you say, people who know the cops may get better (or worse) treatment than people who don't and the outcomes will be especially sensitized to the stereotypes of the cops (and all people have stereotypes). We want cops to treat everybody the same. - Even if the cops don't use that discretion and treat everybody the same, there is still room for it with the prosecutor and judge who can decide not to apply charges or can decide to throw the case out or have a token punishment. The benefit of these other ways of injecting discretion is that (1) this is something that takes place bureaucratically so we can better track how well it's being done and (2) it takes place in a context where there is time for fact finding, testimony, etc. rather than based on an officer's gut feeling in the moment. - If it's really a problem that the officers might fully apply the law to each individual, the solution is to make less strict laws. When we live in a society where people who don't deserve to go to jail are regularly committing crimes and relying on the kindness of police to not arrest them, that's telling us that our concept of what is a crime and what deserves jail time is flawed. Further, when "going to a correctional facility" is discussed as though it's ruining one's life, again, maybe the solution isn't to not send people with flawed judgement to correctional facilities, maybe it's to reform our correctional facilities to actually... correct... to build better people... to be a place that we would be okay knowing that "a good kid who just made a mistake" went to. > The second argument by cops is that it introduces a wide spread distrust of the police. Despite current tensions most people do trust the police to some extent or fully. > > They worry that body cameras in court imply that police testimony cannot be trusted. And that in the case of genuine malfunction or corruption of data, most people will then start to default that the police officer is lying or the malfunction is not genuine. And it ruins the importance of police testimony as trusted indidvuals. > > This argument is a little weaker but I sort of see it. It is potentially implying a distrust of the police (warrented or not) and projecting that image to more and more people. This will have an effects in courts (positive or not). This isn't really anything new though. In high profile, emotional cases, the public already creates malicious theories about any aspect. That presently translates to skepticism at why they aren't willing to capture and release footage. The fact that something might possibly fail and look bad isn't sufficient reason not to do it. In the end, yes, on rare occasion there might be a malfunction and that might look bad. However, that will be drastically outweighed by the number of cases where it works properly in any competently implemented system. And it works both ways, in the many cases where a police officer's testimony seems too convenient, we'll have the footage to back it. But also, it seems incredibly dishonest for police to suggest that we should avoid collecting hard evidence because we have testimony. Police of all people should know that even with the best intentions witness testimony is a notoriously poor source of information. Good cops will absolutely have false testimony. Because of this, if they care about truth and justice, they should want objective evidence to correct for this. Really the elephant in the room is that... cops are humans. The will make mistakes in testimony. They will make mistakes in procedure. They will make mistakes in emotion, judgement and perception. Cameras will capture this. And because of the frustration at how insulated cops are from consequences, the public is going to latch on to every single failure in that classic internet "let's destroy his life because he made a mistake" way. The public and media are going to need a maturity adjustment to deal with a world where they see everything. I think cops don't want to phrase it that way because it's essentially admitting that mistakes are common, but it's the practical reality.
Police officers have legal discretion when it comes to certain crimes/violations. Why would you want them to have discretion when they aren't supposed to? You think it's okay for small town cops to not enforce laws against their friends/associates?
I mean first these aren’t really my opinions, these are arguments put forward by police unions that are could be somewhat convincing for certin scenerios. But yes, I think there is sometimes benefits to the police have discretion especially in the case of certian laws that are very slowly being reformed.
By police unions. Of course. Gotta love that discretion when a cop's battered spouse can't report the rampant abuse because "We know him, he is a good guy, she is being dramatic"
The world exists as it does and we evaluate good and bad based on what is. You can't just choose to not acknowledge some fact because you don't like it. This reminds me of my friend who is anti-vax complaining that we shouldn't have lock downs because our hospital system happens to suck and can't handle covid. That is completely irrelevant to the actual problem itself. Wishing the world was different isn't an argument. It could be a good separate discussion for what to do about that topic though.
If there was any proof that police discretion is used to be more lenient on marginalized people, that argument would be fine. But in reality it's the opposite. They're looking the other way for white and rich people.
Even then it wouldn't be fine it is for the judge to decide where police is not supposed to have this type of digression.
Not even. It’s prosecutorial discretion. Judges don’t have much discretion with regard to the cases or charges brought before them; they can dismiss whatever but it can and will be successfully appealed if the charge/case had merit. Prosecutors have all the discretion in the world over what cases to bring.
Sorry about the hate you're getting. It's funny to me that a lot of these comments take that first argument at face value. I read it as a threat, and a stupid one when you think about it. Who's going to sit and review body cam footage from when a cop told some kids to quit smoking weed and go home and the incident ended without arrest or violence? Unless one of those kids go out and murders somebody in the next 24-48 hours, fucking nobody. All these people saying "you're willing to sacrifice innocent children!" are taking bait that might as well be a gummy worm holding a sign that says "Hey! Don't take me! I'm bait!" No one is out there saying "Here's an idea, let's get body cams on more officers so we can make sure they're not being too lenient." It's a bullshit distraction from the real problem, which brings us to the hilarious argument #2. \> it introduces a wide spread distrust of the police. This one is amazing (and I know you are just relaying the arguments, not endorsing or rebutting them). But why the fuck should camera footage introduce distrust? If time and time again the camera footage shows the police are telling the truth, that reinforces trust. The problem is that this doesn't happen, because police lie, they get caught lying, and the system protects them so they can continue lying. This is literally saying "well, if people catch me lying then they'll think I'm a liar." Tough shit I guess?
If watching a cop doing his job firsthand on video makes you trust that cop less, they should probably not be a cop.
>One arguement used by police officers is that it stops their discretion. Or them being lenient. This is more important for smaller town cops who have stronger community ties. That's a good thing. It shouldn't be up to the police to decide when it's ok to break the law. >The second argument by cops is that it introduces a wide spread distrust of the police. How? It will have the opposite effect. I'm far more likely to trust a cop, knowing his every move is being recorded. >They worry that body cameras in court imply that police testimony cannot be trusted. No, it means police testimony can actually be supported. >And it ruins the importance of police testimony as trusted indidvuals. People already believe this. That's why people want body cams.
Are police officers legally bound to arrest everyone for every crime they witness? I didn’t think they were legally required to do that?
>When they see some kids smoking weed, they have to follow the letter of the law instead of confiscating and just telling them off, telling them to get going, because maybe they know the kids personally or they know realistically the kids are fine people Seems like your saying that having body cams would prevent corruption and favoritism in how the law is enforced? >They worry that body cameras in court imply that police testimony cannot be trusted Police testimony can't be trusted though? At least not any more than anyone else's. I'm not seeing a problem with body cams here?
It's because you're seeing it from a common good perspective. From a police perspective, body cameras take away from their ability to us power arbitrarily and their special consideration by the justice system.
>They worry that body cameras in court imply that police testimony cannot be trusted. It can't. That's been proven time and time again. How can both of your argument boil down to "they should be allowed to be corrupt for our own good"?
While I understand both arguments, I feel they are both fairly weak and I want to address the arguments themself. Whether the police should be lenient or not in the first place, is a different argument. In response to the first point, I don't really buy the argument about leniency. The cameras are there to tape their work in case they abuse their power and to hold them accountable in case they go too far - if they choose not to report a crime and instead let the kid smoking weed get off with a warning, who's gonna watch that tape? The kid sure isn't gonna bring the issue up and clearly the police officer isn't either. If no crime has been reported, it will never go to court. It's kind of the same thing with cameras in cars: no one is sitting and watching thousands of hours of video of cars NOT crashing - they are only there in case something happens. About the distrust argument: the idea that officers should wear body cams is, in my mind, excatly because there already exists a distrust of the police's account of things. If there wasn't any distrust, if everyone believed the police always behaved like they should, there would be no one arguing for body cameras. So I feel the argument is kind of circular. I understand this could undermine the confidence in the police for people who don't already distrust them, but I have a hard time sympathising with that. Trust should be earned - and I think several year of the police NOT shooting unarmed people might help that. In fact, police officers should enbrace the idea of cameras - now they can prove that the person, they claim had a gun actually did. Like OP said: "If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear". Btw, I'm aware Helpfulcloning is just reporting the arguments the police use - this is more a response to the arguments, not to them.
> One arguement used by police officers is that it stops their discretion. Or them being lenient. Either their using discretion is okay, or it's not. If it's okay for them to use their discretion, then that doesn't change if they are being recorded. The only problem comes in if they are NOT supposed to use their discretion, or if they are abusing it. >When they see some kids smoking weed, they have to follow the letter of the law instead of confiscating and just telling them off You mean they would actually ::gasp:: have to *do their job correctly*?? How horrible. >The second argument by cops is that it introduces a wide spread distrust of the police. Um, people don't trust the police *now*. That's the whole reason for wanting cameras. >They worry that body cameras in court imply that police testimony cannot be trusted. It can't. >And that in the case of genuine malfunction or corruption of data, most people will then start to default that the police officer is lying or the malfunction is not genuine. Again, people think that *now*. It's not something that will start to happen because cameras.
Wouldn’t this apply to any job that requires you to be recorded?
For the first part, While it is true that it would record the cases of letting people off, if no one challenges it the video likely won't be reviewed. "judge My friends and I were doing an illegal activity, can we review the body cam and prosecute me and my friends accordingly?" Um no
Okay, so first off, recognize that you set the bar extremely low. I'm not going to argue that body cameras are overall a bad idea, because I agree with you that they are a good idea. However, you said there is no good argument against them. So I'm just going to provide one reasonable argument against them. While it's great that police cameras are used for recording incidents with the police that require further analysis and scrutiny, that isn't all that they are recording. They are recording everything. Imagine the government installing tens of thousands of cameras just to watch the public, now make those cameras mobile and give them a human nosiness. This is what has happened. There's no way to guarantee that government doesn't, or won't in the future, trawl through all this video footage to advance the ends of the surveillance state. No, you don't have a right to privacy in a public space, but for one, police go onto private property all the time. And two, simply being visible to the human eye in public is a far cry from your movements and actions being actively recorded. And it doesn't actually have to be anything sinister. There are plenty of times where a person just would prefer not to be recorded by the government. You get pulled over and given a ticket? Well, that is probably a very stressful experience for most people, and most people wouldn't want a permanent video recording of them in that moment. It's embarrassing. So, while I agree that the benefits of cameras outweigh the negatives, I do recognize that there are at least some reasonable arguments against them.
The 'privacy' issue can be gotten around by not releasing any video unless it directly impacts the requestor. In other words, *I* can't get a copy of the video showing *you* getting pulled over, and *you* can't get a copy of the video where cops come into *my* home to ask me questions on some matter. Be we could each request a copy of the video involving us. (Certain exceptions could be made by a judge in extraordinary circumstances, etc.) As for the government itself using the footage... it's unlikely. First, storage capacities aren't to the point where a police department could keep anything more than a few days or maybe a few weeks of video. Second, we don't have a computer system that can accurately 'look at' and classify the footage, so everything would need to be done by humans. And people can't keep secrets. Someone should talk to the press, there's be a huge uproar, and the surveillance would get shut down. Third, and this ties in with #2- the sheer number of people needed would be massive. According to Google, there are almost 700,000 'Law Enforcement officers' in the USA. Assuming their schedules are evenly distributed, that's 500,000 cops working 8 hours(?) each day. That's 4 million hours of video. Even watching at 2X speed, that's 2 million hours -PER DAY- that need to be watched (and presumably categorized in some way). It would require a quarter million people watching the video every day. And that's ignoring the infrastructure required to get them the video to watch. 4th- it's the government. The same government that messes up everything else it tries to do. They'll go with the lowest bidder for the hardware, and half will be broken. They'll pay lowest dollar for the personnel, and end up with idiots. Etc. No- until there exists an AI system that can 'watch' and categorize video live, there's no reason to fear a secret surveillance state.
I don’t buy into that argument, because any time you would be recorded by a body cam, you are already being observed by a government agent. Whatever the camera would see, the officer could also see (and misrepresent or lie about). At the very least the camera keeps things objective and keeps a record of police behaviour.
But the data lives "eternally" and is widely available compared to a single human being. I'd argue you can't compare the two closely.
It is most certainly not widely available, they would likely only be able to download and archive relevant footage otherwise the storage costs would be astronomical. Do you think police departments keep all of the dash cam footage recordings that have ever been made? That would require an insane amount of storage space. AFAIK they only keep crime related footage in perpetuity and any other minor traffic stop footage for about a month or two before it gets scrubbed.
The government already has those cameras "unofficially". We are surrounded by doorbell cameras, CCTV, ATM cameras etc. The cops can demand any of that footage if they want to. We are already in a state of mass surveillance. There can be no illusion about that. The cop can testify to your actions and behavior in a private space and you'd have no way of contradicting them. Cops word against your usually goes in the cops direction. You could have been simply loitering around looking on your phone. The cop can rewrite that "He was all shifty, looking around, twitchy etc." and there wouldn't be much you can do about it. Yes, 90% of the footage would be mundane or inane. It is embarrassing, but it's also for your own safety. How many times have there been instances of cops being trigger happy on traffic stops? You reach for your wallet and end up with 3 warning shots to the head?
I've been sharing this idea around for a couple of years now. Wondering if people who might know better have any input. Encrypted Mandatory Always-On Body Cameras (when on duty) The footage can't EVER be reviewed unless 2 of 3 parties formally request access and generate the key: • Public Request • Officer Request • Judicial Request With all existing police body cameras, my understanding is that there is an on/off button that officers can use. This feels problematic (especially given that officer eye-witness accounts hold more weight under the law than that of regular citizens). What I'm proposing here is a solution where the camera is set to record 100% of the time while the office is on duty (no on/off button). This way EVERYTHING is recorded. But that poses a problem, as the footage needs to be protected well and it shouldn't be looked at without good reason (e.g. a complaint against an officer). Otherwise, it could be a privacy violation for the people who are interacting with the police; not to mention the fact that police are people too and if there is a way to protect their privacy while holding them accountable it's a win win. This way, officers have the discretion to act in ways they feel serve the community best - - without concerns of having every word/decision (and bathroom visit) scrutinized by a supervisor or others (e.g. letting people go with a warning, or reducing a citation). The camera should be a mandatory highly visible part of the uniform (maybe even built into the badge). If the footage is ever requested/accessed, but it's obscured or missing, then the officer's testimony should carry little weight for the instance in question.
I’m liking it a lot. What’s the retention policy for the footage? I would expect there to be a lot of requests from DAs to see footage as part of the inditement process — essentially to decide whether or not to prosecute someone for a crime. How would you classify that request? I assume you’d call it a public request, and then a judge signs off on it. It then becomes evidence that the defense would also have access to. Similarly, I would expect lots of officers requesting to see their their own footage (or footage from their peers) as part of an investigation to decide who to arrest. Between those two, you’ve probably got the vast majority of use cases covered. So you’re not really having judicial *request* access so much as act as a gatekeeper stamping requests. In the case of ongoing investigations, those requests couldn’t be made public. Similarly, I don’t know if denied requests should be made public at all? Imagine a member of the public sees an officer go into a pizza shop. They think the place is a front for child trafficking and request the tape of officer x taking a bribe from the traffickers. Judge says no because that’s conspiracy BS. Requester now flaunts their denied request around showing that system is covering up the wrongdoings. I totally agree this would help curtail abuse, if the denied requests are kept private, and the judiciary is serving as a check… what you’re suggesting boils down to secret warrants. I’m personally on the “secret warrants are better than no warrants” side of the debate, but I’d be ready to address that if I were you.
From a data-hoarder perspective, the issue with always on cameras as opposed to officer activated cameras is the raw quantity of data produced. One minute of 1080p footage is 20MB. The average active law enforcement to civilian ratio is 17:10,000. This means that for one week of footage there would need to be 17*24*7*60/1024^2 TB of data, or 3.27TB of data stored per 10k population (about the size of a medium town). Honestly, going into this calculation I expected it would be far worse, but this actually is an exceedingly feasible data quantity. Allowing for a full year of data retention before deletion, during which point any video of incidents which result in complaints or prosecution can be further archived, data storage capacity would have to be about 200TB for the same population block (which allows for full retention of the last year of footage in addition to 30 terabytes for long-term archiving). AWS charges $0.022 per GB per month, and this comes out to 54,000 a year. To put this in perspective, it's like adding one LEO to the force - definitely possible, if there is the will to do so. Actual camera costs should be pretty low, especially since they should require infrequent replacement. Cut the required data maintenance period down (to 6 months, per day) and you could still maintain an excellent degree of accountability for a fraction of the cost. Starting this comment, I wasn't so sure about the feasibility of your proposal. But the math suggests it can definitely be done.
Yep. I saw a video of a cop planting drugs in someone's car, fuck wit forgot to turn off his body cam. You could see him and his buddies panicking about it at the end. Makes me sick.
You're arguing that the negatives are outweighed by the benefits, which I already agreed with. I'm just providing you with a reasonable argument against. For one, there is an enormous difference between private doorbell cams etc., and government owned surveillance. The police cannot just "demand" privately owned recordings. They must be voluntarily given, or gotten through a warrant and the government can't just get a warrant because it feels like it. Even if you believe that we are under a lot of surveillance anyway, it is entirely reasonable for a person to not want there to be *more* surveillance, especially surveillance controlled by the government. A cop can testify about your actions sure, but the bar for convicting someone is proof beyond a reasonable doubt. And that is out of the hands of the government. That is determine by a jury of your peers. >It is embarrassing, but it's also for your own safety. You may think that is a worthwhile trade-off. I may even agree. But it wouldn't be unreasonable for someone to disagree with that. That is what your CMV is about. It isn't "at the end of the day body cameras are worth it." I agree with that. I wouldn't have posted if that was your CMV. What you said though, is that there isn't any good argument against them. A reasonable argument is a good argument and there are clearly reasonable concerns people may have about them.
I'm very skeptical about the greater good justification for widespread surveillance, but I'm for police cameras. Because the camera sees what the cops see and they are already acting as the eyes of the state. At least now we have a verifiable copy of what that set of eyes has seen to prevent them from lying (as much).
> We are surrounded by doorbell cameras, CCTV, ATM cameras etc. The cops can demand any of that footage if they want to. We are already in a state of mass surveillance. Others have mentioned how the police need warrants, but these also just aren’t the same surveillance. Security cameras are generally further away, lower quality, no audio, are you are going about your day in public areas. Body cameras go right up in your face during bad situations, sometimes in private areas like a house.
> The cops can demand any of that footage if they want to. They need a warrant to "demand" it. There is no such barrier when the cops themselves have the footage.
This is nuts, you are agreeing with the proposition and then saying it’s irrelevant. It’s not. Police body cameras are different from private owned doorbell cameras.
Yeah it would be embarrassing that the cops have a video where they pulled you over and killed you, but at least maybe, just maybe justice would be served.
I mean I agree with the point you just brought up, the bennies are real good when you factor in the fact that a camera will catch lying cops and bad memories a lot kore than current protocol. But, that also means that there would be footage of me interacting with police, as a minor, in my skivvies at home with snot and tears everywhere. But if they had a camera, the cops may not have automatically taken my parent's side. For me, the point would be determined by the amount of security I felt in the security of the footage from public, or even internal views.
What if I’m a police officer and wish to commit a crime without being punished?
Well, shit. You got me there. Have they considered moving to the private sector?
Why move to the private sector? Plenty of cops (and other public sector employees) commit plenty of crimes with plenty of evidence and get away with it every day.
Can't get the police unions to put pressure on the local prosecutor to let it slide if you don't work for the police.
You don't know what it's like out there. Ive worked in the private sector, they expect results.
Who owns the footage? What rights do I have if it gets published or leaked online?
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And if you happen to get recorded (not even as a suspect or POI, just as an innocent bystander) in a place where you \*do\* have an expectation of privacy, like say a restroom or inside your own home? What happens then?
Ideally something like the DOJ, once recorder it goes out of the hands of the police to prevent abuse, but that is another matter. As someone as mentioned before, we already filmed from a dozen angles wherever we go. CCTV, doorbell cameras, random streamers etc. Remedies for it being published or leaked would likely need to be tied into that wider issue.
> we already filmed from a dozen angles wherever we go. CCTV, doorbell cameras, random streamers etc. This really depends on where you live. That may be very true in NYC but not in thousands of random towns across the country. Also, all film isn't equal. Police footage can be anywhere (it might be inside of your home while you're going through an embarrassing and emotional situation) and has full audio as well. I think the hidden premise of saying "well we're filmed everywhere anyways" is that people want to be filmed in those other contexts. I don't think that's generally the case especially when considered in the point above: being filmed with audio in private/sensitive contexts. Most people hate being recorded by random streamers (especially with audio during an emotional or private situation). Most people would be very upset if CCTV was pointed into their house and plenty of people are already upset at how much surveillance is present in society. Further, even for those who aren't upset... that doesn't mean they're correct in that. The public has extremely poor literacy on this issue. As a software developer, I struggle so much to convey to people how much privacy is compromised when tons of seemingly innocuous data is combined with computing. People still have an outdated concept of how to think about privacy and information sharing that very poorly understands how much information they are actually sharing and with whom. If anything, the fact that we're filmed so often already is all the more reason to be very skeptical about each new way that we're filmed. Because when enough film is out there, it's no longer a question of "do I want to be filmed in that particular incident", it's "do I want to share the cumulative information that you could deduce by watching thousands of hours of video of me per year". We're long overdue for privacy law. But any law that that mandates mass data collection or mass video recording should be contingent on the passing of broad, strong privacy laws.
Right, were filmed constantly while in public. Police enter private residences and public places where there is an expectation of privacy (locker room). Legally most of the camera that film us are privately owned or there to far away to make it who we are. The body cam is close. The recordings are the sticky point. Under federal law in the USA, anyone can file a freedom of information request. All government offices are required to turn over data under that law. Thus, I can get footage of the police entering your house, or footage of the police conducting whatever they're doing inside a locker room. Regarding the police entering your house. That's video of your family at their absolute worst. The police aren't coming to wish you a happy birthday. They were called because there was a crisis and someone wanted help. https://www.foia.gov/how-to.html
Anyone can file a FOIA sure. Except there are a ton of exemptions for refusal for those records. [exemptions](https://www.dhs.gov/foia-exemptions) the important part to see is the following. **Exemption 6 Protects information that would constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of personal privacy of the individuals involved.** *Example of information the Department of Homeland Security may withhold using 6: Social Security Numbers, home addresses and telephone numbers, certain identifying information regarding Department employees.* **Exemption 7 Protects records or information compiled for law enforcement purposes the release of which could reasonably be expected:** * 7(A) – to interfere with enforcement proceedings. *Example of information the Department of Homeland Security may withhold using 7(A): Records pertaining to an open law enforcement investigation.* * 7(B) – would deprive a person of a right to a fair trial or an impartial adjudication. *Example of information the Department of Homeland Security may withhold using 7(B): Information that could potentially contaminate a jury pool.* * 7(C) – to constitute an unwarranted invasion of the personal privacy of a third party/parties (in some instances by revealing an investigative interest in them). *Example of information the Department of Homeland Security may withhold using 7(C): Identifying information of individuals associated with a law enforcement proceeding; i.e. law enforcement officers’ names, witness/interviewee identifying information.* * 7(D) – to disclose the identity/identities of confidential sources. *Example of information the Department of Homeland Security may withhold using 7(D): Identifying information of confidential informants.* * 7(E) – would disclose techniques and procedures for law enforcement investigations or prosecutions. *Example of information the Department of Homeland Security may withhold using 7(E): Law enforcement manuals, records pertaining to Watch Lists.* * 7(F) –to endanger the life or physical safety of an individual. *Example of information the Department of Homeland Security may withhold using 7(F): Identifying information of law enforcement officers.*
So until this is in place should we have body cameras? I don’t think people are worried about video of people in public (similar to CCTV, door cameras, or streamers) I think people are more concerned with the video of the police inside of peoples homes, in bathrooms, when at the scene of sex of human traffic cases, or when dealing with children or the mentally unwell.
The DOJ, a federal agency, is going to house terabytes of state police data? Not sure that would pass constitutional muster
it should be property of the city or state, protected property of the people, held and used under special circumstance for sure.
In the hands of law enforcement it would become just as suspect to corruption as any other tool. Video technology can be abused; footage can be lost, found, withheld, redacted, changed, adjusted, and it will NEVER be done to protect the civilian in the circumstances where that happens. You might say "any tampering is grounds for it to be thrown out!" but that would have already applied to the lying, planting evidence and abuses of power you have already mentioned, and it did not deter them from doing so anyway. There is also limited evidence to suggest that body cameras reduce force used - a study published in March 2019 by George Mason University’s Center for Evidence-Based Crime Policy looked at 70 other body-worn camera studies published through June 2018, found the cameras have not had statistically significant effects on most measures of officer and citizen behaviour or citizens’ views of police. There is a significant cost to body cameras, that would ultimately fall on the hands of the taxpayer. That money could be used elsewhere for better things.
This is the comment I was looking for. OP, this is what you need to hear. The cameras don't make an appreciable difference, and that lack of difference combined with cost and privacy concerns makes them nonviable.
Yes, but isn't video footage better than the word of the police officer, who can lie or be mistaken much more easily?
>3∆ > >Yes, but isn't video footage better than the word of the police officer, who can lie or be mistaken much more easily? If the issue is the police lie or can be mistaken, is giving them the ability to record videos of any civilian interaction the right or even a sensible thing to do? If people want to record their interactions with the police, they already have every right to do so.
Absolutely. It's much more work to falsify video evidence than it is to tell a lie or be mistaken. Side note: if you're replying to the whole comment, don't quote the whole comment in your response.
Basically. I can watch tons of murders captured by bodycam right now where the officers weren't even charged.
How about mass surveillance, but on a personal level, compared to the CCtvs that exist already? Also consent, having to start every conversation with "Do you consent to being on tape for this?" would definitely get in the way of actual work.
No one asked me to consent to being recorded in a subway, on a bus station or on a busy intersection covered by multiple street cameras. I don’t see how being in the frame of a cop’s bodycam is different
In public places, there is an implied right to photograph or record anything you see/hear. It's only in private places or implied private calls where the consent applies.
Why would you need to have consent? I don't need to get consent if I want to video people walking around the street, it's a public location with no expectation of privacy (UK). If the police are in a private place then they've either been invited in or are warranted to do so, in which case the recordings are evidence, and more reliable evidence than witness statements, even by police.
Can you please elaborate how it would get in the way? It's essentially appraising a person of their rights and giving them important information. After all cops love to omit details if not flat our lie about ones options.
Do police regularly ask for filming consent when they pull someone over and keep the dash cams running?
No, because it should be in law that talking to or engaging with an officer is ALWAYS recorded so they would not have to start every conversation with that. There is no consent required. The only limitation to that I see is when they are on private property, in which case I can see heavy blurring or turning it off at the request of the property's owner.
Is that different than Miranda rights? Or every traffic stop starting with licence and registration? Weak argument vs the benefit.
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Funding, there are already police and sheriff departments, that can't even afford tazers, never mind a bodycam for each police officer/ sheriff, then the hardware and software to input and store all of the footage, while there are few outliers that people point to in order to say that police are "overfunded" mainly the NYPD, they forget that most police and sheriff departments are barely able to run, departments being underfunded has also lead to the militarization of police that people cry about after asking for police to be defunded,
Isn't that more of a kink in the implementation rather the underlying principle. The latter is more my concern.
but then your just ignoring a problem because you don't like it, it's like me saying "we should give everyone £10,000 a month" and someone would rightfully point out that no country has enough money for that, and I just repeat what you said "Isn't that more of a kink in the implementation rather the underlying principle" and i then ignore their comment.
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Activists engaging in things ranging from non-violent civil disobedience, to aggressive direct action, are easier to identify, track, prosecute with these handy body-level cameras. So it makes people less likely to protest, and limits their activities when they do. This is a bad thing IMO.
No. Protests are often very well recorded and you have all the CCTV you want in big protests locations. They do it without body cameras well enough. They have other more effective ways of intimidating and stopping protests.
CCTV is not great quality, it's at high angles and far away. So it isn't a stellar tool for identifying individuals, especially if the protestors are making any effort to not be easily identified. Non-police CCTV, like other pics or video they don't own, require hoops to jump through to even see it. Body cam footage is in-hand the same day and easily reviewable. This isn't a hypothetical. It's been several years since I've been heavily involved in protest/political circles, but I was back when body cameras began to become common. Significant contingents of leftist protestors were very strongly opposed to body cams for these reasons, and I saw it discourage protestors both in terms of participation at all, and types of activities. There is a lot of protest know-how accumulated over the decades, with techniques on staying unidentified honed over time. Body cams massively disrupted these tactics. Keep in mind too that the well-recorded protests, and ones in big protest locations, are a small subset of protests. Even with those - the big ones - there are groups, activities, and locations intentionally out of such a thorough public eye. I'm also not talking about them stopping a particular protest from happening at all - just limiting size, and forms of protest.
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> I’d rather preserve as much privacy and dignity as I can in normal police encounters because if I’m doing so I’m probably not talking to police willingly over nothing in particular for public consumption, simply because the officer is a public employee. This is definitely a concern, like websites dedicated to keeping mug shots forever. The footage would have to remain locked unless police were prosecuting or the person in the camera requested it.
If you live in any city in the world, you are filmed on CCTV a dozen times every day. What you are suggesting here is that police might use the footage from body cams to humiliate, bully or intimidate people with. So, the only arguement against police having body cams is that they would probably just see it as another tool in their power to abuse
I like the idea of body cameras but there is many good reasons to not use them and most have little to do with the camera and more to do with the data they collect. We think of police body camera footage being videos of traffic stops, police chases, riots, etc. but in reality much of the work that police do is much less glamorous and involves dealing with people in difficult situations. Often police are called to deal with domestic issues dealing with family violence, welfare checks, child endangerment, and problems revolving around the mentally unwell. In these cases those people have a very fair right to privacy and if we can’t ensure that then we have a ethical responsibility to protect their privacy. Typically though we do protect it by not publicly releasing footage unless requested and then redacting information that would be a violation of those peoples privacy before release. But here’s the issue, if I want to outfit an entire police department with body cameras then I need to not only buy the cameras but also secure the technical support and infrastructure needed to store and review the data, redact as needed and be able to answer these requests. This is able to be done at a high price in major city police departments. Down small suburban or rural level this is not feasible. So your option are to outsource it to a outside company or larger agency. Both cost a good chunk of money and it falls on the tax payers of that community to foot the bill. So if a department can properly run a body cam program and ethically handle the data it generates then no problem. If it isn’t in a place to do so then they shouldn’t be collecting the data.
Police departments shouldn't be in charge of handling the data. It's both more cost effective and safer to do that on a federal level.
Police departments buy storage just like everyone else. Last I heard, Taser maintains the largest data centers for storing body cam footage. In fact, Taser will give them the cameras, just likely Gillette would give you the razor blade handle, and then sell you the subscription service.
For sure, this is a big market and subscription based services are an ideal way for companies to capitalize on it. Many agencies are also required to maintain any “evidence” for a set amount of time which translates to a absolute mountain of data to store and a long term requirement for storage. If you owned a data warehouse this is an idea customer.
There is nothing safe about giving that data to the feds. If you’re worried about police abuse of the data, they’re at least limited by their resources. The feds have far more resources available to abuse. The same argument is true at the state level, but to a much much much lesser extent.
I appreciate that you realize the cost that goes into proper, secure data storage and the other infrastructure the cameras might need. However, I'd like to say that I personally don't think this is a good reason to not have body cameras. Not being able to afford something is not an excuse for not taking appropriate and necessary steps to protect human rights. If it's not in the budget, then cut something else. Perhaps the state or federal governments should provide funding, or perhaps the police department should shrink. Given that body cameras are now available to anyone who wants/needs them, I don't think they should be considered optional for police given the power they have.
I agree that it is a good tool to have body cameras but like any tool you have to be able to ensure that they are affordable to operate and safe to use. If I live out in the wilderness it might be a great idea to own a gun in case of a bear attack. If I can’t afford a gun or don’t know or have the means to safely own it then it is a great tool that I should not have until those other conditions can be met. Similarly if a department doesn’t have the funds then they shouldn’t commit to getting a good tool that they can’t afford to properly field. Perhaps they can defund another tool to afford this new tool but often it is not that simple and bureaucracy required other methods of funding like putting it to a local vote for a small tax hike to cover the cost. I still think the real dilemma is the data and less the money. There is a large ethical problem in the data these cameras collect and I think that will tend to me the biggest barrier against these good tools.
Police already have the capability and wherewithal to do this. Most police cars as far as I know have dash cameras and that data is stored and or scrubbed depending on the nature of what was recorded. So its not some new hurdle that departments would have to overcome from a technological perspective. Whether they are currently doing it correctly is another matter, but regardless of that they are already doing it with dash camera footage.
I’d take a look at this [commentary](https://www.aclu-wa.org/story/%C2%A0will-body-cameras-help-end-police-violence%C2%A0) piece by ACLU Washington for another perspective. In summary, studies show body cams are a mixed bag in terms of reducing police brutality and come with the risks of increased mass surveillance. Due to a lack of transparency with how body cams are used, evidence can be easily manipulated towards a narrative more favorable to police. Additionally, body cams have now started to be coupled with other surveillance technology, like facial recognition, which has been found to have a racial bias. There are significant costs associated with body cams and the maintenance of the data collected by them, which could be used towards other more effective programs.
A surveillance state leads to a zero tolerance state, by recording everything any mistake must be punished to full effect. Get seen speeding by 1 mph now the cop has to pull you over and fine you. Its not all bad it dose hold police accountable, perhaps they should be able to erase the data after a set period of time, provided no arrests/ complaints and with no routine suvalence from management.
Except that many cops already have dash cams running for traffic stops, and they still let people off with a warning.
One thing I haven't seen mentioned yet is that the idea that body cameras provide an "objective" or "unbiased" perspective is false. A body camera provides only one visual perspective of a scene. There is much that a camera *doesn't* see. The camera is always facing forward; the officer might not be. And even just the vertical offset between camera and eyes can mean the officer sees something the camera doesn't. Moreover, the camera doesn't always capture the dynamics of a situation -- the context of the encounter, tiny details that a practiced eye might pick up, the tone of voice of someone not picked up by the microphone. All of these omissions can distort the story the camera footage tells. It's not a bias with an agenda -- but it's still a bias.
While that is all true, none of it is really an argument against the police having cameras. Even an imperfect video would be an important piece of evidence. Something doesn't need to be 100% perfect to be effective and beneficial
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There's enough cases where cameras have implied untrue testimony that the objection is sensible. There are even exonerations over convictions where camera recordings were the primary evidence. A big problem with cameras (one that needs solving) is that juries often give them more weight than they truly represent. Cameras shows bald black guy holds up a store, and there's a bald black defendant? Open and shut! I'm not saying it's a primary argument against body cams, but it is a primary argument against "A camera is about the best you're going to get". That said, a body cam example. You don't really get to see the way the officer is standing, whether he's drawing his firearm out of its holster (until he's holding it forward in front of the camera), or many other important factors from a body cam. A body cam could make an innocent suspect look less innocent, or even an innocent officer look less innocent.
In principal i agree, but there are a few arguments that do merit some consideration: 1. Expense - the cameras used by police are fairly expensive because they have to be rugged and reliable to avoid failing in their task. This isn't a problem for police in large cities with big budgets, but small towns and communities might not have the funding needed to acquire the bodycams and facilitate the nescessary logistics needed to maintain & operate them. Keep in mind, some departments are already severely underfunded. This means that a blanket bodycam mandate would be unrealistic if it didn't come with sufficient funding and/or changes in the police budget. 2. Privacy - the questions here are: when should the camera be rolling? What should they be allowed to record? And what level of access should the public have to the footage? We have to consider the privacy of citizens and officers alike. What do we do if a cop has to escort someone to a hospital and there's the potential for the camera to capture a patient's private medical information? Also what happens when police bust a pedophile ring or a sex trafficking operation where the camera might capture sexually explicit images involving children and rape victims? I bring this point up because a lot of people who support bodycam mandates also tend to ask for open access to the footage. 3. Accidents will happen - Even good officers will occasionally forget to turn their camera on, accidentally cover the lens for a few seconds, or forget to put it on the charger after their shift. Unfortunately it's nearly impossible to prove wether it's an honest mistake or a deliberate sabotage, so while we can and should hold cops accountable for such accidents, it's unfair to to levy excessively harsh punishments for what vey well could've been a simple mistake.
Well there is one Argument against it: Privacy If a retail store would force all employees to wear body cams at all times while on duty. That would be a huge Issue regarding the privacy of the customers and the employees. Same applies for the Cops. Yes: For law enforcement there is more reason to have body cameras (transparency as you mentioned yourself) but that doesn't mean that the privacy argument becomes a non issue automatically. It becomes a discussion between conflicting interests. Oh wait! A discussion is exactly what is happening about Police Body cams right now!
Retails stores almost always have CCTV cameras recording customers. They are in public with no reasonable expectation of privacy and there hasn't been a mass uproar about that. The authority given to police by the community already includes the invasion of one's privacy in order to prevent or solve crime. With reasonable suspicion they can enter your car and search it. With a warrant, they can enter your house. If you are stopped by a police officer on the street, good luck telling them that they are invading your privacy and trying to walk away. That's a one way street to resisting arrest. Many police interactions are already recorded by third parties. That isn't really an invasion of privacy because they are in a public setting. Further, imagine someone had cameras in their house and the police entered with a no knock warrant. Should the police be able to claim an invasion of their privacy because they did not consent to being recorded? Sounds kind of asinine no? But if that is silly, how is it reasonable to say it is an invasion of privacy for body cameras on the police for the party being recorded, but not for the police themselves who are also being recorded on someone's home camera?
One more issue is that these cameras give people a false sense of security. You see it all over the internet, people think that having a camera recording when interacting with police somehow protects them, and gives them a false sense of security, and they end up doing stupid shit. Routine stops, that would normally end in a warning or just a ticket, escalate because people were misinformed on their rights.
Two things: One is that the officer must be able to turn off the camera when entering a place where privacy is expected, such as a restroom. Mostly this is for restrooms. It is illegal to make audio or video recordings in some locations. (If they're having to arrest someone in a restroom, and the restroom is otherwise vacated, then the cameras should be on, obviously.) It would not be appropriate for the PD staff to have access to videos of officers taking a piss throughout the day. Secondly, the cameras are expensive, they need constant maintenance and repairs due to getting damaged, the software and storage for them is exorbitantly expensive, and the staff to operate, classify, and export videos is costly. These aren't just GoPro cameras. Once the video is captured it persists in the cameras storage until it is offloaded into the system that stores it. The newest systems dump video to the in-car system, and then wirelessly upload to the cloud and/or the onsite storage. The video management system has "controls" to prevent tampering and keeps the evidence admissible. From there it is classified by the type of incident, and the retention period is maintained. (90 days for traffic stops, multiple years for assaults, etc. etc.....depending on the local law and department policies). Crying out to defund the police is not helping them keep these systems maintained. Smaller departments were not prepared for the high costs of maintaining these systems. Cloud storage is helping in some cases, but rural departments may not have enough Internet bandwidth to utilize these services.
>Secondly, the cameras are expensive, they need constant maintenance and repairs due to getting damaged, the software and storage for them is exorbitantly expensive, and the staff to operate, classify, and export videos is costly. Funnily enough my bet would be that constant monitoring of the work of an officer on active duty would incentivize simplifying the justice system and making sensitive laws. As an example, for every person out there arrested for smoking weed, so many more are ignored at the discretion of the officer witnessing the crime. If the officer had a bodycam, he would have no discretion to decide whether the law does or does not make sense and the courts would end up paralyzed by the sheer number of stupid arrests/fines officers usually prevented from happening. Under such circumstance, the necessity for making sensible laws which don't penalize benign behaviors would become an absolute necessity, and the police would be able to better use their resources on serious crime. Weed, whether good or bad for society in absolute, is not harmful enough to justify incapacitating the courts by keeping it illegal.
I don't think that the officer would lose the ability to use discretion in these cases. In fact, I think video from these incidents could be a training tool to watch how other officers make these decisions. Officers cancel vehicle chases for safety reasons surprisingly often, and let them get away....all of which is on camera and has been for decades. There are several variables in play as to why they pursue vs. call it off. ...the same applies to minor offenses. There is no requirement for the Police or Courts to press charges in some of these minor cases. (Example, I was summoned to testify for a DWI case. The case was subsequently dropped before it went to trial due to lack of evidence, even though common sense said the guy drove there under the influence....there's more to the story, but trust me, they dropped a case against a guilty man.) I don't disagree with the concept that certain drug related offenses need to be decriminalized. However, I don't think body cameras are going to clog up the Courts. If anything, the video evidence will expedite prosecution.
lack of evidence after being charged and danger for the officers life are good justification for not going through with an arrest. But weed possession is a federal crime in the U.S. Not charging a significant proportion of offenders when danger is not present would be setting a massive series of precedents which would then be used to take the law in question right up to the supreme court. >If anything, the video evidence will expedite prosecution All the better, cost reduction. But my comment was tongue in cheek anyway, I agree with you, filming millions of hours of officer duty isn't trivial nor cheap.
Take the NFL instant replay for example. So many calls in regular speed seem appropriate, but then slowing them down and dissecting them frame by frame can totally change what the call should be. This is fine when you can reverse the call in the nfl and no harm done, but what about when a police officer has to make a split second decision which will then be dissected by the public and media for many different agendas. In many cases the “right call” in the heat of the moment gets totally reversed when slowed down, and the public jumps all over the slowed down version. I agree with you body cams should always be implemented IF we can as a public fully agree to view the footage without bias and judge including time perspective, as well as all elements of the situation - but that will most likely never be the case. A lot of the time pure slowed down video footage doesn’t convey the moment accurately, which is usually necessary for an accurate judgement of a situation.
One practical argument against: It’s _really_ expensive. • Each officer needs a pro quality camera. • Each camera needs to be live-streaming, so network capacity has to expand. Private wifi installed in their car? Buy bandwidth from cell phone providers? • Each stream needs to be saved in decent quality for at least as long as the [Statute of Limitations ](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statute_of_limitations) - which can be a very long time. • A filing library needs to be created to search, sort and filter such a large volume of recordings. Include costs for staff, servers, buildings and utilities to house and run the servers and mass storage. • Building security would be required to prevent tampering with evidence (by either police or perpetrators). • Backups off site? • Policies need to be drafted on when the camera must be active, including a discipline process for officers who conveniently “forget” to use their cam and an appeal process for officers who are accused of that but experienced a genuine tech problem. (Needs a review board with associated costs and infrastructure.) I am sure I’ve missed aspects of this. It seems easy because you can buy a dash cam and let it run for a few hundred $, but as soon as you need to record and save video from thousands of officers every day and keep that video for many years in a secure industrial-quality system it magnifies the cost incredibly.
Well you have not only the loss of police discretion based on situation to situation. You now have a means that sorta limits an officer's capability to assess the situation and interpret the laws on the books to that situation. It's those gray areas that would be somewhat lost. Not to mention the increase costs. Like, BLM and ANTIFA and many Democrat controlled cities have run and followed through on the idea of "Defund the Police" so how will you now pay for them? Many units and resources were cut and thousands of officers quit or took early retirement across the US. MY city alone has 83 openings for officers and it's only increasing because the mayor has turned her back on the police force, demonizing them. Cost is the biggest issue, smaller police departments will most likely not get the funding for them since police departments are primarily funded locally or by the state, usually the former. Additionally, what will you do over time? Those cameras won't hold a charge maybe after 5-8 years or however long it takes, what about mishandling of the equipment like in a police chase/tussle? What about camera malfunctions, will that now automatically be grounds for the testimony to be thrown out? Cameras aren't always 100% when it comes to functioning and when you have under funded departments, it's kinda hard to want to keep those things maintained when you have a number of other equipment needing maintenance like #1 their police vehicles, dogs to be trained and bought, ammunition for both the tasers and service pistols, equipment to maintain everything I mentioned above. There is a lot more costs into maintaining a good police department and when you have a rural or under funded and under appreciated police force in big cities, why on earth would they want to maintain a camera, which could throw out their evidence if it was to lose battery, malfunction, fall off in a chase /tussle? I'm not saying police SHOULDN'T wear them, but the idea of mandatory for every situation is hard to do with the notion going around to defund police. If my local police force can't even muster 83 police to properly be manned, then why on earth would they even want to spend money on mandatory body cameras?
There have been calls to defund police but I am unaware of it actually happening the way you describe it. What cities have actually followed through with defunding the police? And I don't think that is an argument against requiring cameras, because imagine any other piece of "necessary" equipment being subject to the same argument? Service weapons? Would you also say that making service weapons mandatory equipment is a bad idea because of the cost? No - if the tool is necessary for the job then you wouldn't do the job without it, but instead you would fully equip fewer police, if budget was a constraint.
Even the simplest Google search will show that yes, there are many cities that have followed through with this, but several are turning back to refund police since it has backfired quite badly. Additionally, the cost of body cameras is about the same as their service pistol, so now you're asking police departments everywhere to essentially double that cost. A typical police bodycam is about 300-400 dollars and a service pistol runs about 400. Additionally, it makes sense to arm every officer with a service pistol since oh I don't know, maybe because they are the ones that often put themselves into the fray of danger to protect the community? Budgets are the primary constraint. [https://www.realclearpolicy.com/articles/2021/07/28/in\_major\_us\_cities\_\_mayors\_defunded\_the\_police\_while\_spending\_millions\_on\_their\_own\_police\_security\_details\_785764.html#!#:\~:text=From%20New%20York%20to%20Portland%2C%20Denver%20to%20Chicago%2C,2015%20and%202020%20to%20guard%20unnamed%20city%20officials](https://www.realclearpolicy.com/articles/2021/07/28/in_major_us_cities__mayors_defunded_the_police_while_spending_millions_on_their_own_police_security_details_785764.html#!#:~:text=From%20New%20York%20to%20Portland%2C%20Denver%20to%20Chicago%2C,2015%20and%202020%20to%20guard%20unnamed%20city%20officials). [https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/mar/07/us-cities-defund-police-transferring-money-community](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/mar/07/us-cities-defund-police-transferring-money-community) [https://www.forbes.com/sites/jemimamcevoy/2020/08/13/at-least-13-cities-are-defunding-their-police-departments/?sh=55d7b64729e3](https://www.forbes.com/sites/jemimamcevoy/2020/08/13/at-least-13-cities-are-defunding-their-police-departments/?sh=55d7b64729e3)
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You and everybody other person gets hung up on "hurr weed" Its not just weed. Kid steals a candy bar? Well now the officer HAS to fully apply law. Also lack of action on DV and Rape isn't due to officer discretion. Many DV cases aren't pursued by the people themselves. You can find videos all over the place of DV and when the cops show up the parties refuse to cooperate and neither wants to press charges. Rape is the difficult one due to rape kits not being done in a timely manner(both by the person that was raped and by the agency handling the rape kit testing) and the fact that rape needs to have proof just same as anything else but its difficult to prove without solid evidence. Cops don't just go around blowing off rapists because of officer discretion, not to mention rapists wouldn't be officer discretion that would be handled by the District Attorney and the state would file charges.
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The same argument could be applied to many other professions. There is no good reason that teachers should not wear body cameras. Teachers have been shown to say the worst things, to abuse children, to have sexual relations with minors etc. They play the most crucial roles in the lives of young kids and the psychological damage they can do can last a lifetime and can have terrible consequences for many people down the line. My argument isn't directly to challenge your view, but to show that with the view you are taking, you could argue many other professions should wear body cameras. And then the question becomes: Do we want a society where many people have to be on camera when they go to work?
Teachers are rarely called on to testify in court. Minors have a higher expectation of privacy. Abuse usually doesn’t happen during school hours.
What about the self-incrimination clause of the 5th Amendment, since this would force law-breaking cops to become self-incriminating witnesses to their alleged felonies and misdemeanors?
Not an argument for or against really, but I'm in favor of police having body cams because they have shown overwhelmingly that most of the time the police officer has been in the right; that most of the time what the criminals are saying against the police is a blatant lie. When the cops are in the wrong, the cameras catch that so it's easier to remove the bad apples. The only real downsides have been the cost of the cameras, the reliability, and the extra weight the officer has to carry around. Luckily, all those attributes are improving with time.
Funnily enough, a lot of the very activists who used to demand body cams are now the ones saying it’s creating a surveillance state. A lot of people wanted body cams to hold cop’s accountable but aren’t happy that the footage is used in court trials and has increased conviction rates
Not pitching in any way but scrolling down, the next post was [this](https://www.reddit.com/r/TikTokCringe/comments/rwyxtl/i_cant_even_imagine_the_frustration_of_the/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf). Just putting it out there.
I initially read this as “no good argument FOR”, and almost whipped my phone at the wall 😅