we get it. cops are cowards. why else would this be one of the only countries where officers are lethally armed around the clock. cowards.
this post was submitted on 18 Dec 2023
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cops should be tested for steroid use randomly and monthly.
My guess as long as 320 million people have 434 million legal firearms the cops are not going to give theirs up either.
There's a lot of things we need to do if we want police officers to remain armed.
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Require officers to always patrol in doubles or more. (Many of the police involved shootings are panic shootings. A buddy who can help would reduce this.)
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Require less than lethal force at least be attempted unless you're already getting shot at. (Currently police can shoot you if you twitch wrong or just have an object in plain sight like a gun, knife, or cellphone. We know this because they've done it and had no reprecussions. So now they lose the shoot first privilege.)
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Ban them from conducting traffic stops. Stand up an unarmed traffic specific force that doesn't have the authority to arrest anyone or run warrants. They are specifically for civil traffic enforcement. (Many police involved shootings stem from stupid things like something hanging from the mirror or even just going 10 over the limit.) To be clear, you'd still need police officers for things like DUI. Felony speeding and such can be handled with cameras and actually taking cars away. Yes that's harsh in the US, but see how fast people decide it's not worth their car to go faster. (And yes speed is directly related to more accidents and fatalities in those accidents.)
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Required marksmanship and tactical training. You don't get to carry a gun you haven't certified in and certification is a bit more intense than beer and bullets with your buddies at the range. If you want to tell us you're constantly at war then bring in some combat infantry veterans to design your certification program. Something like 90% hit rate on random targets while your heart is in the cardio zone and someone is randomly setting off artillery simulators. Yes that's well above what the Army or Marines officially requires but you keep telling us how highly trained you are and how dangerous your job is. Prove it with the drills we did before combat deployments.
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Always on cameras with gunshot detectors. When the detector goes off it automatically starts uploading a feed to the ACLU. If your camera is conveniently blocked then not only do you not get qualified immunity but it's also a sentence enhancement if you're convicted and charges for destroying evidence.
We act like there's a binary solution to the problem of police accountability. But it doesn't have to be binary. The only unacceptable thing at this point is to continue allowing police to have all the power and none of the accountability.
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Well you didn't do something silly like give control over the means of monitoring the police to only the police right? . . . right?
You bring up a fair point. This should be investigated. In the interest of fairness let the investigation be handled by the police.
They've investigated themselves and found that everything they're doing is completely acceptable. Carry on citizen.
Hear me out on this, but I don't think the public should be seeing most body cam footage. I don't think anyone should be seeing most bodycam footage, including the officer that shot the video and their department.
When I inform a cop of a crime, I don't particularly want that conversation released to the general public. While I don't technically have "privacy" while providing such a tip, I don't think it unreasonable that my identity and information should be held in fairly strict confidence.
Body cam footage isn't supposed to be released under public records requests. Metadata indicating that footage was shot at a particular time and place should be released, but the footage itself should only be accessible with a subpoena. Not even the cop who shot it should have access to that footage without a subpoena. That footage should go into a black hole, and only be pulled out with judicial oversight. Only the metadata should be widely available, to inform potential complainants of what video they can subpoena.
The video should be easily accessible to complainants, plaintiffs, or defendants through subpoena, but that's about it.
At the same time, I think a body camera should serve as an officer's time clock. They should only be paid while their camera is turned on, and they should not be entitled to any privileges, powers, or protections afforded to law enforcement officers (especially including qualified immunity) while scheduled to work, but not on camera.
A police victim’s family definitely has the right to see the footage, imo. Otherwise they can just mark everything as “accidental” or “unavoidable” like it already happens.
A police victim's family does, indeed, have the right to the video. As complainants. The video will be subpoenaed as part of the investigation that they demand.
The process by which the family gets access to the video is the exact one I described.
I think that already requires some legal knowledge poor families might not have. I’m not American so I don’t know the procedure, correct me if I’m wrong, but issuing a subpoena doesn’t feel like an easy thing from what I read.
I can see why you would think that, but that's really not the case. What I'm explaining is more a technicality than anything.
The family thinks the police did something wrong. They express that belief to someone. That someone is an investigator. It might be a prosecutor, it might be an attorney, it might be the executor of the deceased's estate, or a victim's advocate, or their insurance agent, or the sheriff, or the FBI... It might first go to the press or a family friend, but it is going to quickly be referred to some investigator or another. (This is all assuming the family isn't investigating directly; they certainly have the right to conduct the investigation themselves, and file a motion for a subpoena)
The investigator(s) assigned to the case will have need for all the evidence, and they will be the ones drafting the subpoena. The family can request the video from the investigator, or subpoena it directly, but the video will only be released with a subpoena.
Let me put it a different way:
"I am a family member of the deceased" is not enough to get the video.
"I am a family member of the deceased, and I think their death was suspicious" is enough to get a subpoena, and thus the video.
That’s reassuring, but then I’m confused by this:
In 79 of those deaths, ProPublica confirmed that body-worn camera video exists. But more than a year later, authorities or victims’ families had released the footage of only 33 incidents.
ProPublica’s review shows that withholding body-worn camera footage from the public has become so entrenched in some cities that even pleas from victims’ families don’t serve to shake the video loose.
If getting the footage is relatively easy, why can’t those videos be released even if the families want it? Am I misreading it and is the situation more “families have the video, but not the clearance to show it to the public”?
First, I described what I think the law should be, not what the law actually is. Under the current law, authorities are free to release the videos to the public for any reason. Under current law, families are free to release the videos to the public for any reason.
Second, ProPublica went to lengths to obfuscate the issue. The only videos that families aren't being allowed to release to the general public are those that are still under investigation. Charges can still be filed, and a jury constituted to determine the facts of a case. Releasing a video to the public can contaminate the jury pool, and prevent the family from getting justice.
Third, ProPublica only distinguishes between families who have and have not released videos. They do not ask whether a family wants such a video released. I can imagine plenty of circumstances where a family would not want the public to see how their loved one died.
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The problem with that is you're relying on these people to be honest, which we know is a huge problem.
That's the exact problem I am trying to address.
The main issue I see is that the officer does deserve some degree of privacy while on the job. Not much, but some sensible degree.
Think about the worst micromanaging supervisor you ever had. Now, give him access to watch a feed from your body camera, observing every move you make throughout the entire day.
I wouldn't work under those conditions. The only person I can think of who would willingly work under such working conditions would be a completely anal retentive stickler for every rule. That's not the kind of cop I want working in my community.
So, if I want a good cop to keep his camera on and collecting evidence against him, yet not be subjected to an unreasonable, intrusive degree of micromanaging supervision, I have to take away his supervisor's authority to arbitrarily view his camera footage.
So, he only gets paid if he turns on his camera. He only gets qualified immunity for his actions if his camera is on. He only gets to exercise law enforcement authority if he has his camera on. But, he is protected because his video can't be used for administrative purposes.
His honesty - or lack thereof - is no longer relevant to his camera usage.
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I agree though I’ll add another group: Internal Affairs officers. If a cop has been accused of habitual wrongdoing I want IA to have easy access to it.
That said the current problem is that even on camera they have a habit of intentionally blocking its view.
IA has access by way of a subpoena. They can present allegations or a complaint, same as anyone else, and request access to all related evidence. They shouldn't be going fishing. They should need some sort of justification before they should be allowed to pull tape.
Then they should be fired and charged with obstructing an investigation and destroying evidence.
Until there's actual accountability the police won't change.
Absolutely not. That defeats the entire purpose. Foia requests should 100% be answered.
An officer wears a body camera. A confidential informant against the mafia runs up to him in the street and starts talking to him.
A mafia lawyer files a FOIA request for the body camera video of every officer in the department.
Should the department comply with this FOIA request, give up the video and expose the informant to the mafia?
Should the officer be allowed to leave his camera off throughout the day, so as to avoid creating a record that he would be forced to turn over?
Suppose I were to SWAT you. I spoof your number, call the police, tell them I'm you, get them to raid "my" house. They get all geared up, turn in their cameras, raid your house, discover it was a prank. Should I, or anyone I tell, now be allowed to file a FOIA request for their video footage, and publish it "for the lulz"?
The idealistic, absolute position you took here would be ripe for abuse.
I want those cameras running all day long. They should be incorporated into the officer's badge, and have no "off" setting. It should be recording from the time they take it off the charger at the start of their shift, and should keep running until they put it back on the charger after their shift.
The only way that level of intrusiveness is feasible is if nobody - and I mean nobody - can view that video without a warrant or a subpoena.
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If nothing else, the lack of shown footage should be shifting some mindsets about police.
"What a load of criminals complaining about everything. Obviously, our boys in blue would never do anything suspect, as you'll see now that they can show you footage of their own perfectly orderly arrests."
"They all keep their cameras off and never turn over body cam footage."
"B-...huh? But...they're noble protectors that have nothing to hide...! Why would they...?"
Conservatives will literally reply to that with:
Sotimes you gotta rough up the bad guys so they learn not to do it. It's a cops god given right to sort out the bad apples like that, they just turn the cam off because the LIBRULS would take them over coals for doing gods work
Conservatives just like seeing police beat up those they disagree with.
Minorities*
same thing
The violence is the point, not an accident, which is kind of honestly hard to wrap your head around if you are a normal well adjusted human being.
...most of the footage is kept from public view
Well yeah, unedited video footage has this odd tendency to exonerate the innocent and impugn the guilty
It's almost like you can't force people to try to fix an irrevocably broken system because you're afraid of living without it
It's almost like we should have overthrown them or something
It's almost like everyone was propagandized into accepting band aid solutions and refused to listen when they were told it wouldn't work
How many of those same police departments willingly released certain footage though as defense of their own officers in court after careful review and redaction?
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Abolish police.
There's no "reforming" a system that was BUILT this way.
I don't want to hear it. Find another place to lick boots.
The system in the USA is built this way. There are countries in the world where police officers act professionally and can be trusted.
We don't want a lawless, free for all place without any law enforcement, we deserve a proper force, trained to behave in a professional manner, and monitored to do so.
You could describe the deep reform needed as "abolish and then build from the ground", but that's a matter of how to reach the goal, rather than a change in the goal itself'.
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The watering down of "Defund the Police" for more palatable public consumption was a travesty.
"Oh no, we're reasonable! We just want the police to have access to more training and better tools to engage with the public!"
No, we wanted them gone, from the ground up.
It definitely showed just how powerful and overwhelming copaganda is. "Defund the Police" really struck a nerve with the people who hold the power in US society, I think we should keep striking that nerve.
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You say it's boot licking to question you, which in itself is fucking retarded.
But I want to hear your plan.
Say we abolish the police - what next?
There is no such thing as reforming the Police. They are an evil collective of people.
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...isn't there a way to legally request any video footage? That's how all those body-cam yt channels get their footage from, by placing requests in. I thought it was a federal law that you can obtain any police cam video.
Yes you can request the footage, and they can also bury you in red tape until you give up the request.
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Pretty sure that's USA's Freedom of information Act.
Depends on your location. Washington has some of the best public records laws in the country. SPD releases all body cam footage when their officers kill someone. Unfortunately it's deceptively edited and when you request the full footage it takes about 2 years where they tell you every month they're delaying because of Covid or something.
Police will hide as long as possible and destroy evidence when they can get away with it. SPD has been sued for deleting vehicle footage after public records requests for the footage. Now they just edit the footage to look like there's nothing to see and hope no one requests the full videos.
Wonder why that is..
In 'news that was incredibly obvious from the start'.....no shit sherlock.
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