Nobody but the person writing this article thinks body cams will "solve the problem" but they do make us safer when they are used, and give us further investigative powers when they are turned off by accident/intentionally.
this post was submitted on 20 Aug 2023
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Abolish the police
So many more police have been found guilty and actually have consequences than before body cams. This article sounds like someone who is from the police union or one of those thin blue line types.
This article is from 2017. However, its claims from back then do seem to be supported (that body camera’s wont change much)
https://nij.ojp.gov/topics/articles/research-body-worn-cameras-and-law-enforcement
The problem is the court system, not the cameras. We still need the cameras to know when the crimes against citizens occur. We just need to fix the system that punishes them for it.
We still need the cameras to know when the crimes against citizens occur.
This is a silly statement. Bodycams aren't just "cameras". They are cameras whose physical operation is 100% under the control of the cops, and whose footage is 95% under the control of the cops, 99% in control of the criminal injustice system generally, and 1% in the control of defense lawyers and the general public in the most extreme of circumstances when we can actually force its release despite the fact that it's not likely to benefit the cops.
Bodycams are another weapon used against us. The cameras which have a chance of changing things are those which we have a chance in hell of actually controlling ourselves. Cell phone cameras have done far more for us than any increase in the surveillance state—including and especially bodycams—ever will.
All that said, it’s better to have them then to not have them. What would be the point of removing them? It’s just another possible data point.
No, it is absolutely, 100%, unequivocally worse to have them than to not have them. Almost all of their use is the cops gathering more evidence against people, NOT us being able to use them as evidence against cops. You have no idea how much of the use of bodycams YOU aren't seeing, because it is all within the halls of the police stations, the court houses, and the rest of the criminal injustice system. No. Get rid of them, along with every single other weapon, tool, and resource the cops have.
yeah id agree with that. I think body cams are good to have but don’t solve the underlying problems of police corruption and brutality
While we can all agree that bodycams don't solve the problem, the argument presented for why they are bad is incredibly weak.
If a cop is close enough for their bodycam to see or hear you, then you are already being surveilled, and you are already being intimidated. Anything you say or do can already be used against you. At least a camera (if it's on) will limit their ability to just make shit up.
It's also a bit strange for someone arguing for taking action outside of the system to also seemlingly think that the only meaningful repercussion for police murder would be conviction.
Because something doesn't fix everything then we can't have it? They're still great
Just make police testimony unadmissible to court if the camera is off
That would be ridiculous. So much important evidence and intelligence would be left useless because it wasn't filmed by a body cam
It's not hard to turn on a body cam. If they don't do it it's on them
But there are multiple reasons why a body can wouldn't be recording, other than the police deciding not to use it?
There's the scenario where the camera was made to malfunction on purpose to cover a crime done by a cop, and legitimate malfunctions. Let's say legitimate malfunctions are the large majority of cases to be nice to the cops.
You check the camera's function periodically. Yes, it is possible that once in a blue moon, it breaks during the day despite an equipment check being done every morning, and someone walks free. People walk free out of court all the time due to lack of evidence, the question we're asking ourselves is whether we'll be talking about reasonable numbers. My priorities are minimizing the number of innocents in prison, then minimizing the power an abusive cop can have, and only after all that minimizing the number of bad guys roaming around freely. You're free to think otherwise but do note that the justice system of every developed country adopts the same priorities I do in theory
OK - so, intense public interactions don't happen every day. Most camera malfunctions should happen on days where nothing happens, get a minor traffic stop challenged and dropped, mostly things that went fine. Occasionally someone will do something serious and walk free because of it. Due to the randomness of a malfunction and how often these events happen on a baseline, this is unlikely. Most of the time you're going to find out about a malfunction in the morning gear check anyway before the camera got a chance to render a cop interaction inadmissible in court.
Now, the minority of cases where the cop purposefully triggered a malfunction (puts the SD card in a microwave). These do not happen randomly. They happen when the cops needs it to happen, because he's done something wrong. These are the moments where a citizen got beat up, when someone got choked, when their weapon got discharged - the serious shit
Now you ask yourself the question, a bank was robbed and the cop is at the trial. His camera malfunctioned. How likely is it that he tampered with the evidence, and should you believe him? I believe no.