There’s a debate going on over the merits of police using body cameras while on the job. At this point I’m not convinced one way or the other on the long terms benefits.
The advantages are obvious: audio/visual recordings of the kinds of encounters that have left several Black men dead at the hands of White police officers in the last several months would give us something other than the killer’s word to go on. A public parsing of what exactly went down between Michael Brown and Darren Wilson has taken up a lot of the oxygen in the room while yielding relatively little new insight. Rather than arguing over policing policy, the war on drugs, or the legal system in which the aftermath of them is adjudicated, a lot of time and energy has been invested in one theory or another about what really happened.
And in the instance of Eric Garner, a video showing how he was killed has been crucial in expanding the coalition of people who think reforms of one kind or another are urgent. It’s not as if the police only just started killing people with impunity. If it weren’t for the fact that so many shootings have happened on video this year, I doubt it would still be the national story it has recently become.
I am not interested in aiding the growth of state surveillance, however. And I also agree that body cameras are not un-problematic when it comes to issues of privacy, not just for the public at large but also for the individual officers who would end up being required to wear them. The tragedies and injustice on display here are systemic, and go far beyond the agents tasked with enforcing that system.
Which is why not getting derailed by the body camera question is more important than whatever the particular cost-benefit analysis turns out to be. The President is working to secure the funding necessary to eat half the cost of supplying police departments with cameras. That’s, for the moment at least, a distraction. It doesn’t come close to rectifying widespread inequality before the law. It’s an embarrassing attempt at appeasement and shamefully inadequate. To support this limited action is to accept the possibilities allowed by the current regime instead of asserting new ones. Even if you’re for putting a body cam on ever cop, now is not the time to be for putting a body cam on every cop. It’s too early to tacitly admit defeat and settle for so little.
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I am trying to think of examples of state-recorded crimes, and the only thing I can think of is that Nixon’s recordings didn’t save his ass, or set a precedent that what he pulled was lawful.
Or the release of military drone videos from the ME, where the actions may or may not have been deemed ‘lawful’; but a discussion was generated from the videos, and it is in part that discussion that helps set future precedent.
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Unless you mean cops will realize “man, I can walk away even AFTER I choke a guy to death *on camera*…wonder what ELSE I can get away with?”
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Without a video, there would have been even more uncertainty and discussion about exactly what the officer did, and whether or not he used a chokehold, but a reasonable NYPD officer might still have thought that actually getting caught using the banned maneouver could get him/her in hot water. With the video and the outcome of this case, s/he now probably thinks that’s less likely.
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I don’t think that privacy concerns outstrip this. I think those arguing that this proves that body cameras won’t help are using a counterproductive threshold of success. That if it doesn’t stop all of them, or lead to indictments convictions in all cases, that it’s useless or nigh-useless.
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http://triblive.com/news/allegheny/6969202-74/cameras-officers-police#axzz3KxTNwT4j
There’s another good reason for body cameras, though — reducing the culpability of the police officer’s memory for the result of the trial. “I remember this” becomes “I remember this, but the camera says that… and I trust the camera, because in my long years of being a cop, i’ve never met someone who could remember anything 100%, particularly under stress.”
Good cops like the sound of this.
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However, that being said, David Ryan is right. Cops/DAs will still work to bend the system to their own benefit, so we need to make sure that the public has easy access to these videos and we need to change the culture of the LEO/DA community so that they are encourage to drive the problem children out. Perhaps those in the legal community can recommend solutions to my last comment?
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(this prevents false accusations, though I don’t know how many there are, I can see a lot being filed just to mess with cops — after all,if you’re in jail, what better things do you have to do?)
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at least in PA, cops can’t record where folks have a reasonable expectation of privacy (read inside people’s houses).
Still, most of the incidents appear to be cops reacting inappropriately on the streets (I’m including the taser accidents I’ve heard about — the ones where someone died).
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Not in north/south carolina, where you have private police.
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Sure, there are no data retention or public access laws for those cameras, but by the same token, there are no laws at all that limit what the owners of those cameras can do with them. Who gets to see the footage? Anybody the owners want. Does it get uploaded to the Internet? Sure, if they like. Uploading “The Best of Employees Picking Their Noses on Security Camera, Volume 2” to YouTube is, to my knowledge, totally legal if you’re the owner of the business and the employees know that there are cameras there.
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Actually no, it generally isn’t, unless those employees explicitly signed a release for video footage of themselves to be publicly distributed. Most states have right-to-privacy laws that allow control of image, likeness, voice, and so on.
I suppose the employer could make signing such a release a condition of employment, but that sounds like one of those “can your boss say ‘have sex or you’re fired’ ” things.
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How sure are you about those limitations? I know that there are rules for commercial use of somebody’s image, and I know that there are tons of rules for covert surveillance, but if everybody knows and agrees that there are cameras, I’m not aware of much in the way of legal protection. From what I’ve been able to gather, footage from overt recordings tends to be treated a lot more like footage from public places.
I’d put it more in the category of, “Give us your facebook password.” Some employers have the balls to ask for just about anything as a condition of employment. Even use of the footage without permission is severely legally restricted, it’s easy enough to put it all into the pile of boilerplate that goes into an employee manual if the employer wants it.
All this isn’t to say that I’m in favor of those recordings being open public records. It’s just that the officer’s privacy while at work means just slightly more than jack squat to me. I’m more concerned about having private citizens’ interactions with the police being available for snooping without a good reason. Cops are privy to some seriously private stuff, so the have to be protections there. I’d be all for a policy of the video being locked down and only retrievable by the parties listed in the report or by a court order. But the “no video” solution doesn’t seem like a winner.
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Sadly, that wasn’t true here in Illinois until just recently. Someone could be charged with a felony for filming a cop while the cop was in the line of duty. The legislature just a few days ago legalized it (although I believe a court ruled it unconstitutional, but again, that ruling was quite recent).
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Agreed.
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2. There is a seemingly interesting split among the left and libertarians about whether police cameras are good or not.
3. The Gardner case raises an interesting question about whether there is a difference between the police wearing their cameras and the police just happening to be recorded and seems to suggest yes there is a difference. IIRC there was a case a few years ago where an NYC officer was caught beating a homeless man on a security camera. The homeless man was given permission by a pastor or someone else to sleep where he was sleeping.
4. My conclusion from #3 is that there is some kind of psychological effect to knowing you are being recorded by your own superiors and the reasons for it are to prevent excessive violence. It is like a constant performance evaluation perhaps.
5. Another debate I’ve seen involves lamentations about how college graduates usually do not want to become police officers (there are also studies that show police officers with college degrees are not as likely to use excessive or deadly force) and whether we should basically turned police officers into armed social workers.
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re: 5. selection bias. uni police tend to be ones with degrees, and when do you see uni police roughing up homeless?
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Where do you see the split you describe in #2? I personally can see why a libertarian or a liberal could consistently support or oppose or be ambivalent about body cameras.
For #5, I think cops already are and have been for a long time armed social workers. But of course, that doesn’t mean the debate you describe isn’t real or isn’t good to have.
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(also, may allow supervisors to say “you’re getting more violent. talk therapy or you get desk for 6 months”)
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http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/12/police-officer-fired-for-refusing-to-turn-on-body-cam/
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And yet. I still think I’d rather have ineffective cameras than no cameras at all.
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It’s better to try to slowly ratchet up the accountability that our systems for providing it provide, forcing it out of the unions bit by bit. A frontal assault on the unions themselves would be pointless and risk instability, which might well backlash among the public into greater trust for police. The people who are police will always band together and condition their risk taking on certain demands, whether you allow them to call themselves a union or not. You’re not going to undo that. You need to try to move those demands in the direction you need them to go, gradually if as steadily as possible.
Beyond that, I can’t for my own part imagine asking people to serve as police officers while denying them the right to form an association to collectively provide strong representation in criminal, civil, and bureaucratic/professional proceedings in which their official actions are reviewed, with stakes up to and including conviction for felonies and attending deprivation of liberty. To me, if we’re going to ask people to be police officers, then we’re choosing to create a group of people with a common interest in protecting police officers. We have to set up systems of accountability that are strong enough to contend with this fact. There’s no reason to believe that’s not possible. We’re just not doing it.
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, as far as I can tell, things like filing grievances, lawsuits, press releases, and providing criminal defense are the kinds of things MRS is saying police unions needs to be barred from doing. That is, after all, how they wield the kind of power he’s trying to strip from them. It’s just not doable.
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Last time I checked, the military has no union of any kind, it’s members endure considerably more danger & hardship, and yet it has lots of people who stay in for life despite it.
No other union in the US provides criminal legal defense to it’s members. I think many offer civil defense, which is fine, but only cops get criminal defense, which I find to be something of a conflict of interest & well beyond the scope of the function of a union in securing something of fairness for it’s members.
None of that is to say I disagree with you as to how unlikely we are to untangle that knot anytime soon absent an upsetting event. One thing we could start with is doing away with the Police Officers Bill of Rights, and the like, which affords officers rights & protections in criminal investigations we private citizens don’t enjoy.
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It is not even remotely reasonable to expect cops to individually provide for their own criminal defense for things they do in their line of duty. Given the work they do, even when they do it completely correctly, they expose themselves to risk and deal with criminals. Nuisance lawsuits happen, if a cop has to defend themselves out of their own pocket for any potential thing done in the line duty no one with any sense would ever do the job.
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Read over what you just wrote again. Almost every instance of trouble a cop might get into you reference or allude to is a civil suit, not a criminal one. I have no issue with police unions offering civil defense, and agree with you that such is arguably a good thing.
If a cop does their job right, there is almost zero reason to believe they should regularly, if ever, face a criminal charge. Hell, most cops who do it blindingly wrong ever face a criminal charge.
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For cops unions seems to the make the most sense to provide criminal or civil defense. I’m not a particular defender of cops, and i don’t’ think i’m doing that here, but there is conflict of interest in how cops could be prosecuted and how they get their defense. There are problems with cop unions but i don’t think one of them is that they get their lawyers through them. Take away the deference juries and much of the public gives to cops and it wouldn’t matter where they get their lawyers.
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Yeah, just going to have to disagree with you regarding criminal defense. However, I will agree that of all the things police unions do to contribute to the problems we have with police, it’s probably a minor point & one that is least likely to be tackled anytime soon.
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The Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association had sued then-Commissioner Ray Kelly for overriding disciplinary provisions in the police contract — including a rule requiring NYPD superiors to wait at least 48 hours before questioning police officers accused of misconduct.
I don’t care if that is in the contract, it should not even be legal to place such provisions in a contract.
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From what I recall, his last day was on a July 31st. Given the calendar followed by most colleges, that read to me more like “his contract was not renewed” rather than “he quit”.
Of course, in both cases, nobody can say that he was fired for misconduct…
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Why characterize this as a defeat? Either putting cameras on police officers is an incremental improvement or it is a step backwards. If it is a step backwards, then it’s probably not something that we ought to do.
If, however, it is an incremental improvement, then it’s not a defeat. Unless you are contending that settling for incremental improvements is, itself, a defeat. And if that is your contention, then how do you we ever move forward? Justice is not generally something that jumps ahead by leaps and bounds. It is a slog.
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The end of segregated bus seating in Montgomery was only one step, but it wasn’t a defeat. Only 4 kids being admitted to Little Rock Central was a small step, but not a defeat.
We can sit around bemoaning the lack of change while we wait for the big complete change, patting ourselves on the back on our purity for not settling for half-measures, or we can grab increments wherever we can manage them.
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I’m not sure that I agree with this. That is, I think cameras are a political move, not one that solves many problems (and will likely raise a bunch of new ones), but I don’t know that getting cameras will appease many people.
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Anecdotally, I can tell you that IRL I am starting to hear this sentiment from people far to my right, who are not normally prone to saying it.
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Maybe I’m too cynical, and I have no doubt that cameras will help with some individual cases, but I’ve yet to see any evidence that people, white people at least, are starting to believe the system needs serious work.
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If the argument is that “cameras may be a net gain, but not enough, so why bother,” that seems, as says, a not to purity over actual progress.
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Who is arguing they will? And is there any logic to being hesitant about improvements because they only help solve “a” problem instead of “the most important problems,” when we don’t actually any such have clear solutions on tap?
and I understand the worry that cameras will cause white people to think the most important problem has been solved, and stop paying attention again.
Is there any concrete proposal you couldn’t, or wouldn’t, launch that charge against?
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So if it’s the case that a necessary, larger reckoning stemming from this moment is/was possible (specifically relating to the legal processes for police accountability), and that a focus on cameras would displace that, and that cameras wouldn’t then lead to that reckoning themselves, then it could be argued that the focus of cameras was a net loss from what was possible to wring out of that moment. It wouldn’t just be a question of whether the cameras alone would be too little to get, therefore not worth having. If they’re the best that can be gotten, then obviously we should get them. But if there’s an opportunity cost to them that could potentially be greater in value than widespread cameras themselves would be (accounting for the possibility that they would/wouldn’t lead to recovery of said cost, which I don;t think we can know, which is what makes it a tough call), namely reform to the accountability systems for polio officers, then it’s possible that a focus on cameras alone at this time, or a set of foci that resulted only in getting cameras when a larger gain was possible that can;t be recovered, then, yes, it’s possible you could be looking at a net loss from that choice. But it depends on the choice of focus actually leading to not getting something that was otherwise gettable, and that thing not being gettable/recoverable through the route that was chosen.
–Whew!–
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For me, certainly removing the prosecution of police for misconduct on the job from the jurisdiction of the regular DAs and GJs and appointing special prosecutors for the job, or studying how to set up another structure that would be even more institutionally independent from police.
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Giving the green light to the Doolittle raid and focusing the main effort on the ETO didn’t mean Roosevelt was throwing in the towel after Pearl Harbor.
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Also, it’s a delight to see something from you. Always nice to have a healthy commotion even if I disagree with it.
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What the murders of Brown and Garner have shown, to a lot of white people (though not enough), is that the police really do treat black people differently. Now’s the time to build on that awareness.
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My own belief is that, tactically, the stronger the focus on race, the less tangible results will be achieved. Like North, I think, I am skeptical of roping the smaller and difficult issue with the bigger and more intractable one.
(Please note I am speaking purely on a tactical level. I’m not saying that this isn’t a racial issue.)
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Honestly, I think if you subtract out the incidents of white cops murdering and brutalizing people of color and vulnerable females, there wouldn’t be enough left over to even make you suspect any systemic problem with police brutality at all.
But purely politically speaking it may be useful to de-emphasize race. More folks need to imagine themselves or a family member on the receiving end of that kind of treatment.
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I am definitely guilty of sometimes using the word “solve”, when what I really mean is “help improve”. So it’s a good reminder to me to be more careful with my terms.
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As for police oversight; ya know what’d help achieve that? More cameras and more cops behaving badly in the public eye.
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“Addressing the racial component” is notably lacking any kind of mechanism for achieving it. Yes, cops need to change how they view minorities, but what is going to make that happen?
Cameras are an actual mechanism that can help us hold police accountable when they get abusive. Yes, they may still treat minorities differently, with more suspicion, less respect, or greater aggressiveness of tone than they treat white people. But if we can reduce the frequency with which they shoot or assault minorities that’s a definite gain.
I am truly confounded by this apparently wishful thinking that we can set aside the small steps and hope for the big change, without ever there being a clear mrchanism explained for achieving that big change. Talking about desired outcomes without specifying the mechanisms for achieving them is wishful thinking, of no help to any real people. It’s not that it’s wrong as a goal. It’s obviously the goal we should keep moving toward. But there have to be mechanisms for achieving each step toward a goal.
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I think Jamelle Bouie has it about right, trying to thread between these two things:
1. Police brutality is a systemic problem that goes beyond how law enforcement treats black folks. It’s not hard to find stories of unarmed white and latino kids getting shot.
2. The system problem is at crisis levels when it comes to African-Americans.
I do think it’s important to mention #2. Not just morally, but I think it’s tactically important to emphasize why it is that blacks are so incensed right now. That it’s not just Al Sharpton riling people up. But I think it’s important to say (one way or another) “Hey, you don’t have to like Al Sharpton to be with us on this.”
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Are all of these actually good, in the sense of being implementable?
Improve oversight? We have concrete ideas for doing that.
Improve training? Concrete ideas for doing so.
More consequences for cops? They’re already in the law, if we can figure out how to get prosecutors and juries to employ them.
Real conversations about race? You jumped from concrete to amorphous. What does it mean? How would we implement it? How do you have a real conversation with someone who doesn’t want one? How do you have a real conversation with someone who might be willing to talk, but sets some conditions on it. I’m thinking if your “conversation” with Brooke, where she had a condition which you objected to. Let’s grant your objection as correct, but how did it affect the chance to have a real conversation with her?
If you want to have real conversations about race, you’re going to need a strategy for overcoming that. Otherwise what you’re really saying is “we need the enemy to cede the battlefield,” and that’s no strategy at all.
As well, you’re assuming a particular outcome of these conversations. What if we have a real conversation about race, and your side fails to convince their side? Or can it only be a real conversation if they are persuaded? If the latter, haven’t you rigged the definitions in your favor?
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However, while again I do not doubt that cameras will help, as the study Tod’s linked a couple times now shows, when white peole see a system that treats black people worse, they like the system better. That may be undermined by the visceral reaction to violence that some videos give us, but overall, I’m not sure cameras even address the racial component, at all. So we may get fewer shootings and fewer unnecessary tasings, and fewer unnecessary rough take downs, of all people, and that’s wonderful, but we’ll still have a deeply dysfunctional relationship between black people and cops that results in, among other things, cops, cameras or no, and white folks, cameras or no, seeing their actions towards black people as justified.
Seriously, I have a hard time watching the Crawford shooting and thinking it was justified, or the Kajieme Powell shooting and not thinking that there were a hundred ways the cops could have, and should have avoided it, but neither video taped shooting seems to have upset the same people who see the Garner case as a pretty straighforward case of unjustified violence. That’s the problem. And I understand the worry that, if we focus on cameras, people will feel like they can go back to their lives with the comfort that cops will behave now, and only shoot people we think they should have shot, like Crawford and Powell. So Crawford and Powell still die, because we’ve taken the first step and decided that means we’ve crossed the finish line.
So, cameras in every direction, but remind people constantly that this doesn’t help much, it’s just the start. Next, let’s train and retrain the fuck out of cops.
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I wonder if training is really going to do much. I mean, there are white cops, but there are also Asian cops, and Hispanic cops, and black cops, and cops of all races; but when the shooting is questionable, it is almost always a white cop in the hot seat. Hell, most shootings, even the clearly justified ones, involve a white cop. Now I think white folks make up more than 50% of cops, but still, you’d think if it was just a training issue, we’d see other races/ethnicities involved in lethal force encounters.
Of course, it is possible I have some confirmation bias going on, or the media only headlines stories of white cops doing questionable things. so some actual numbers would be useful. Too bad despite federal law requiring departments do such record keeping & reporting, most departments don’t. Perhaps we could shut off the flow of federal money to departments that can’t provide the data?
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http://thefreethoughtproject.com/police-beat-taser-shoot-man-23-times-killing-walking-street/
White, but no surprise, WV.
http://www.nbcmiami.com/news/local/Man-Dies-in-Altercation-with-Hollywood-Police-280576372.html
They’ve got a black guy on the scene.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/03/07/israel-hernandez-taser_n_4919108.html
Betting money this cop was Hispanic, judging by the name.
Tasers get more attention for “omg, nonlethals kill”
and may be better for “train the damn cop when not to use them”
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The Powell shooting is a great example: a man suspected of stealing cokes and donuts was pacing around a bunch of people who were clearly not feeling threatened, but the cops showed up, jumped out of their vehicle with their guns drawn and pointed, and immediately placed themselves between the suspect and their vehicle. I’ve talked to a couple ex-cops about it, and they’ve both said that they did pretty much everything wrong in that situation. Now, they also lied about what happened, and training can’t help that while video might, but they did everything possible to escalate that situation, and training could help with that.
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OK, yes, training can help with some aspects of it, like tactical judgements. But it can’t overcome bias except in narrow circumstances.
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some of the research on deprogramming anxiety/PTSD has been rolled out already. It may be useful in this field.
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http://urban.hunter.cuny.edu/~tdennis/pdf-files/There%E2%80%99s%20an%20App%20for%20That%20ABM%20APS%20Poster%281%29.pdf
Imagine if this task is done, but gradually rewarding folks for not focusing undue attention on black folks (no judgement implied, naturally) Or angry black folks.
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In the wake of the Garner decision, people are wondering if the proposed federal program to put cameras on police officers is “worth it” or just another “waste of money” (thanks in no small part to the framing provided by our lovely media, who report things terribly).
This is phrased something like this: “If a cop can use a forbidden choke hold on somebody on camera and kill him and not even get indicted, what use are cameras?”
I understand the frustration, absolutely. We cannot rely on anecdotes to drive public policy, however. We need to study things systemically.
There is limited but positive evidence to indicate that having police officers recorded in their line of duty reduces use of force incidents, decreases the severity of use of force incidents, and reduces the number of citizen complaints about police misconduct (such as this study, here: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1596901). There are benefits to the police, in that their testimony can be regarded as *more* credible in normal criminal investigations, and false claims against the police are far less likely to proceed.
While there are implementation details (the cameras have to be used properly, there needs to be systems in place to ensure this is the case), there is no reason at the present time to suspect that increasing camera use won’t correspond to a larger decrease in both police liability and misuse of authority.
We absolutely should do this, period. It’s a win. It’s a win, generally, if it decreases false citizen complaints, erroneous testimony, and enables better police behavior with the citizenry overall.
Even if it doesn’t fix everything. We have to stop thinking about changes as “solutions” and “fixes” where they are magic pixie dust that we can rub on social policy problems and have them go away entirely.
Complex solutions don’t work that way. The question can’t be “Will this ‘fix’ that, if it doesn’t, why should we do it?” The question should be “Will this address that in a way that makes it better, then why shouldn’t we do it?”
If the Garner and Brown cases tell us anything about our legal system, they tell us that we have a weak point in how the legal system deals with officers *procedurally* that needs to be addressed.
I think we knew that already.
Officer-involved shooting complaints need to be investigated by agencies other than those that employ those officers, held accountable by people who are outside the same direct chain of authority that guides those officers, and those investigations can’t be handled by the same district attorney offices that rely upon those police forces to produce credible evidence in their criminal prosecutions.
There are too many perverse incentives… a DA can decide not to pursue a police investigation for all sorts of reasons that have to do with their existing relationship with the police.
This isn’t an insoluble problem. It will require political work, and political will. And we absolutely need to tackle that problem, desperately.
But that’s not a reason *not* to spend 0.00005% of the budget on recording devices in the meantime.
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What difference should it make to a jury if a guy is a hod-carrier, stockbroker, candlestick-maker, or cop and he shoots a guy in a bar?
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Also, at least theoretically, when they do so they are acting as individuals, not agents of the state, and the rules governing use of force or the carrying of weapons should be exactly the same for them as for anyone else.
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On video!
http://blogs.dallasobserver.com/unfairpark/2014/08/off-duty_police_officer_shoots_unarmed_suspect.php
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2014/10/15/tests-show-gunpowder-residue-on-teen-shot-by-off-duty-st-louis-cop/
Not on video.
Just the most recent cases I remember.
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In any case, I still maintain that off-the-clock/out-of-uniform carry/shoot rules should be whatever they are for me.
I want them videotaped because they are agents of the state with, essentially, licenses to kill; I don’t want them videotaped as private citizens, which they also are, especially in their off-hours.
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Obviously, cops shoot people more on duty, because they’re interacting with people in different ways, and more often, but if cops can a.) carry their service weapons, and b.) feel like they can intervene in potential crimes, then they need to be wearing cameras, on duty or off. If they don’t want to wear cameras off duty, there’s a simple solution: no gun, no intervening. If they carry their gun off duty and intervene without a camera on, they lose their jobs, period.
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If we do this, we are not only intruding into their lives and rights as citizens (breaking down a conceptual distinction I think is important to maintain – we are not just what we do, and we are not one thing all the time under all circumstances) you are also intruding into the lives of people who interact with them out of uniform, and may not realize they are being recorded.
In fact, I’d go further – I ONLY want cops using cameras when in uniform, because I don’t want Officer Friendly walking through the neighborhood in plainclothes on a fishing expedition so he can surreptitiously grab video evidence to come back later and bust people with.
When you are interacting with someone in uniform, you should have the full expectation you are on the record, and so are they.
Out of uniform, you and they are private citizens. I don’t expect every guy who passes me on the street to be taking video of me, and I CERTAINLY don’t want to mandate that agents of the state MUST do so.
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fewabsolutely zero cops who have resisted the idea of being able to carry at all times. Guns being cool and all.Report
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#NotSureIfSerious
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Never mind!
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How many people who are advocates of the concept of jury
notificationnullification are also comfortable with the idea of a jury choosing to ignore video evidence of police misconduct and exonerate and accused officer?Report
While I’m not comfortable with juries ignoring video evidence, I don’t think it really undermines arguments for jury nullification because 1) juries will ignore other evidence when it suits them to do so and I don’t see why ignoring video evidence is any more or less outrageous, and 2) although I advocate for cameras on cops, I recognize that film can lie, that what it appears to show is not the whole story and isometimes distorts the reality.
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And a JNOV only applies to civil cases and is an unusual occurrence applied not to interpretation of the facts, but to interpretation of the law (often when no actual facts–evidence–are presented for a particular claim)?
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True, but being true, the statements (or at least the first one) also seem to suggest juries serve as an unquestioned bulwark when they protect those accused of a crime.
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Yes, I know that other people can, and have, used the same logic to acquit people who have committed truly horrible crimes. So no, I’m not really comfortable with jury nullification, but I am less comfortable with the alternative.
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You mean like what grand juries are doing with criminal cases against white cops despite a supposed stigma against jury nullification?
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But here’s an idea: why not reform how grand juries work? Require DA’s to disclose exculpatory evidence for all accused, and not just cops (if such disclosure isn’t required already)? Raise the standard of proof necessary for an indictment? Give other protections for all the ham sandwiches brought before it?
If all persons put up for indictment got the same treatment as the Ferguson officer did, maybe that would be a good outcome of all this.
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*See Glyph’s excellent (because it’s excellent, but also because I agree with it) comment: “In fact, I’d go further – I ONLY want cops using cameras when in uniform, because I don’t want Officer Friendly walking through the neighborhood in plainclothes on a fishing expedition so he can surreptitiously grab video evidence to come back later and bust people with.”
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The story we always hear is “well, you only stopped him because he was black, you say he was violent but that’s just because he was black, you let that guy go for the exact same thing because he was white”. What if we end up with gigabytes of video footage that prove those statements wrong? Do we just quietly lose it because it doesn’t fit the narrative of Racist White Cops?
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I don’t think that officer behavior and suspect behavior would be equally affected by cameras. The officers always know that they’re being filmed and a lot of suspects probably won’t realize it until they’ve taken a swing. And of course, all else held equal, it’s pretty likely that the set of people being investigated for crimes are more likely to do something dumb like getting violent on camera than the set of people who investigate crimes. So I’d expect cameras to reduce everybody’s tendency to escalate, but I’d expect officer-instigated violence to decline more than suspect-instigated violence. But I don’t think there’s ever going to be a way to figure out what the true proportions were.
How this fits into everybody’s fantasies about how their preferred political/social narrative will be totally vindicated, I don’t really know.
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