3 ms·
The answer to that is body cams and a strong body cam policy. I live in a city with one of the 100 largest police forces in the country. All officers are requi
by austincheney 6y ago
The answer to that is body cams and a strong body cam policy.
I live in a city with one of the 100 largest police forces in the country. All officers are required to wear and activate body cams when performing a police action. Once the video starts the officer cannot interfere with it, though they can pause audio, since it is transmitted to a precinct building and not stored on the officer or their vehicle. Access to stored videos is limited to oversight authorities.
In that case there is little to nothing a thin blue wall can do to protect police officers from misconduct, because it would require destruction of logged evidence on the part of a supervisor or oversight authority.
- js2 6y agoBody cams allow police to be held accountable after the fact, but haven't conclusively led to a reduction in violence. They are part of the solution, along with use of force policies. https://www.joincampaignzero.org/ https://www.joincampaignzero.org/
- glangdale 6y agoBody cams are only part of the solution; if the rest of the system is broken, police misconduct won't be punished regardless of how hi-res and accurate the images of the misconduct are. We've been this before: brutality all the way up to homicide caught on tape, then let go with a slap on the wrist.
- austincheney 6y ago> We've been this before If you are speaking to videos from bystanders they are often problematic as evidence because usually they do not capture the entirety of the police encounter. In that case they could capture excess behavior but not the preliminary conditions that resulted in escalation of force. That was the valid legal defense for the officers involved In the Rodney King incident even though the conduct in the video looked grossly excessive. Police body cams exist to solve for gaps like that. Perhaps if additional video evidence had been present from the start of the Rodney King incident the officers would not have been found innocent. The goal, after all, is accountability.
- onemoresoop 6y agoHow you’re kidding yourself, the police force+friends would do anything to hold onto that psychological power, they would not let a fellow cop who may even be a cold blooded murderer face justice, that would dent their projected power and would make being a cop a lot less glamorous and more like a regular job. It would be ideal but you’re forgetting this is America, a police state, more and pronounced lately
- austincheney 6y agoIs there data to suggest the frequency with which police supervisors regularly destroy restricted evidence and what their motives are?
- gremlinsinc 6y agoIf there were do you think we'd be having these discussions? I mean the point of destroying evidence is to leave no trace, and you can't really do a study of things lost and forgotten... like you can't do a study or trace all the destroyed works of art and writings of the ancient world that have been destroyed and don't have copies of which nobody has ever seen except the original eye witness, who if they're alive - couldn't recite the book or re-paint the work of art...
- ineedasername 6y agoThe blue wall extends beyond obstructive police: prosecutors have to work hand-in-glove with the police and risk compromising that relationship by bringing charges, leaving only incidents prominently in the public eye or extremely egregious. The rest they let IA and discipline boards handle.
- austincheney 6y agoWhat you are describing is a legal process problem opposed to a police enforcement problem. The courts are a whole different set of problems that also need refinement, but is a completely different beast.
- ineedasername 6y agoThere's a bridge between the two though, they do not exist in a vacuum separated from each other. Perhaps I lack imagination, but I don't see court reforms that could fully address this issue of the working relationship between police and prosecutors