Another "I can't breath" death: Police Reform & Protests in the USA

[Edge-]

https://www.newsweek.com/florida-she...esters-1514788

"Somebody has to step up in front of the camera and say 'enough is enough,'" Daniels said. "Tearing up Clay County, that's not going to be acceptable. And if we can't handle you, you know what I'll do? I will exercise the power and authority as the Sheriff, and I'll make special deputies of every lawful gun owner in this county."

I can only imagine what deputizing a bunch of untrained nutters will be like. Floridaman really needs to retire, already.

[Shadowferal]

Ad hominem fallacy.

Attack the argument...not the individual.

A proven bias has no valid argument.

[Egomaniac]

A proven bias has no valid argument.

Prove the bias then. Show that his opinion is based on a preconceived belief with no merit rather than an opinion brought about through observation.

regardless of all of that...there is no point up bringing in anything about him being a "child porn apologist" into a discussion where it, even if it were true, has no relevance. ...unless you're just trying to attack him instead of his argument.

[Edge-]

https://thehill.com/homenews/state-w...elijah-mcclain

Bad news good news.

The good news: A good cop "snitched" on his coworkers for taking disrespectful photographs at a memorial for Elijiah Mclain.

The bad news: Multiple Aurora PD took inappropriate photos at a memorial for a man their police department killed. These were taken in October of last year.

They're suspended as the investigation goes on.

[Themius]

https://thehill.com/homenews/state-w...elijah-mcclain

Bad news good news.

The good news: A good cop "snitched" on his coworkers for taking disrespectful photographs at a memorial for Elijiah Mclain.

The bad news: Multiple Aurora PD took inappropriate photos at a memorial for a man their police department killed. These were taken in October of last year.

They're suspended as the investigation goes on.

Want to say here, in this case weren't there three cops who's body cams stopped working, all of them? for "some reasons"

[Edge-]

Want to say here, in this case weren't there three cops who's body cams stopped working, all of them? for "some reasons"

The body cameras on at least one of the police officers (Nathan Woodyard, Jason Rosenblatt and Randy Roedema) became unattached from their uniforms during the encounter, but the audio can still be heard. During the recording, when one of the body cameras was still attached to an officer, another officer can be heard telling him to move his camera. The attorney representing McClain's family accused the officers of purposely taking off their body cameras to support a false allegation that McClain reached for a gun, though this claim was never supported by any evidence during the subsequent investigation.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Elijah_McClain

They were working, but it appears a few may have intentionally prevented the cameras from capturing video.

[Endus]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Elijah_McClain

They were working, but it appears a few may have intentionally prevented the cameras from capturing video.

See, this is where I'm at.

You want to claim the victim was reaching for a gun? Show me the video. Give me actual evidence to work from. With a video, we can discuss whether it looked like he was pulling a gun or not.

Without video? There's no evidence to support your defense, so why should I believe a word of it? I have to presume there was no gun, until you provide me evidence to support that.

And before anyone says it; this isn't presuming guilt. The homicide has been confessed to, at this point. The officer admits he shot the victim. What we're discussing is the officer's defense of that shooting, and such defenses always have to be positively made, they cannot be presumed. You can't just shoot someone and then say you thought they posed a threat; you need to establish that you had a good reason for that belief, and that requires evidence to prove it.

At least, that's how it works for anyone not a cop. So why should officers get special consideration? If anything, the expectations should be much higher for a police officer, to be able to justify their actions. They've had training, where we wouldn't expect the average civilian to have such.

[Kasierith]

See, this is where I'm at.

You want to claim the victim was reaching for a gun? Show me the video. Give me actual evidence to work from. With a video, we can discuss whether it looked like he was pulling a gun or not.

Without video? There's no evidence to support your defense, so why should I believe a word of it? I have to presume there was no gun, until you provide me evidence to support that.

And before anyone says it; this isn't presuming guilt. The homicide has been confessed to, at this point. The officer admits he shot the victim. What we're discussing is the officer's defense of that shooting, and such defenses always have to be positively made, they cannot be presumed. You can't just shoot someone and then say you thought they posed a threat; you need to establish that you had a good reason for that belief, and that requires evidence to prove it.

At least, that's how it works for anyone not a cop. So why should officers get special consideration? If anything, the expectations should be much higher for a police officer, to be able to justify their actions. They've had training, where we wouldn't expect the average civilian to have such.

Not really how American criminal law works. The two issues are not separate; the crime itself, murder, and the affirmative defense, self defense, are rolled up together. While an affirmative defense must be put forward and argued in favor of, rather in defense of, it still falls under the overall mandate of criminal law, that being that the prosecutor must show beyond any reasonable doubt that no reasonable person in such a situation would have acted in self defense; Now no video evidence can be used to bludgeon them hard, but beyond any reasonable doubt is still a very hard bar to breach. It also isn't exclusively for cops. See George Zimmerman.

Just as a general reminder, the reason why the US has such a massive incarceration and conviction rate isn't because of the burden itself, but because the system is slated to force as many plea deals as possible to ease the burden on the judiciary. Once things make it to court, at least in criminal courts, it becomes far less favorable statistically for the prosecution.

(note: there are a number of states that do require preponderance of the evidence rather than plausible basis for asserting self defense. This still undoubtedly a higher burden than I mentioned above, but not nearly as much as beyond a reasonable doubt required for criminal conviction)

[Ripster42]

Now no video evidence can be used to bludgeon them hard, but beyond any reasonable doubt is still a very hard bar to breach. It also isn't exclusively for cops. See George Zimmerman.

I think he was saying that the fact that the camera was turned off should be enough evidence of foul play to weight the decision of proof that way, at least, if I'm understanding him correctly (pairing that post with the next sentence). I might have made this up, but I think he's said, either here, or in another thread, that malfeasance should be assumed if the camera gets turned off (or any statements by an officer akin to "point the camera somewhere else"). I may have gotten him confused with someone else.

[Endus]

I think he was saying that the fact that the camera was turned off should be enough evidence of foul play to weight the decision of proof that way, at least, if I'm understanding him correctly (pairing that post with the next sentence). I might have made this up, but I think he's said, either here, or in another thread, that malfeasance should be assumed if the camera gets turned off (or any statements by an officer akin to "point the camera somewhere else"). I may have gotten him confused with someone else.

Basically, yeah.

Cameras should be on. If your camera breaks, go back to the station and get another. Also, stop being terrible about maintenance. If your camera's off, unless there's EXTREMELY extenuating circumstances (some guy just attacked you with a 2x4, and the first hit smashes the camera, kind of thing), then you should assume the officer disabled the camera deliberately, and the reasons for doing so almost always boil down to "I'm doing sketchy shit and don't want there to be a record", which means it's malfeasance.

If you're trying to avoid being recorded in your professional conduct, it's probably because you're being highly unethical and don't want there to be evidence proving so.

[Kasierith]

If you're trying to avoid being recorded in your professional conduct, it's probably because you're being highly unethical and don't want there to be evidence proving so.

What about domestic disputes between two married individuals that, if recorded, would mean their momentary disagreement becomes public record?
Confidential informants, not just the established legal kind but simple eye witnesses in high crime areas where people who snitch to the police could be targeted?
Child victims who may be retaliated against for admitting what's happening at home if the law can't move quickly enough to protect them, or if there isn't enough evidence to get CPS involved yet?
Private conversations between individuals in the proximity of the officer?
Discussion of tactics related to policing, such as "let's switch to camping out X parking lot to check for warrants?" Which is something often done staking out businesses during slow hours to pick out people with active warrants.

If I'm going for a morning jog, I don't want to be caught on camera by a passing police officer on principle. It doesn't just capture the actions and conversations of cops and suspects. And a police officer being told that they have no legal defense period if something happens off camera means that any department remotely risk adverse will employ a 100% on during duty system.. which is frankly an invasion of privacy for everyone involved.

Personally, I like how my local department does it. Policy where camera has to be on or off depending on their purpose when going out to interact with the public. Going for a coffee? Camera does not have to be on, records getting food when leaving vehicle. Confronting possible shoplifting suspect? Camera on. Someone called from their home about hearing gunshots? Camera off. Executing an arrest for a warrant? Camera on. Uncertain about situation? Camera on, can be turned off if there does not seem to be a risk of a confrontation.

In other words, in our zeal to use cameras as a mean of protecting people against corrupt police, we should not be pressing such broad mandates that our privacy and security as citizens is compromised, and that the ability to take legal action is no longer possible if a simple equipment failure occurs. "Sorry I knew you called us that someone was breaking in and had a gun and I was the only officer nearby, but I'm at the end of my shift and camera battery was about to run out" is not something we want to happen.

[Endus]

What about domestic disputes between two married individuals that, if recorded, would mean their momentary disagreement becomes public record?

If they're having that dispute in a public place, they've already given up any presumption of privacy.
If not, then they're going to be opening the door to the officer to let them in, and that's where they can choose to change their conduct.

Confidential informants, not just the established legal kind but simple eye witnesses in high crime areas where people who snitch to the police could be targeted?

1> Get your police departments de-fucked so the gangsters can't access confidential police files in the first place.
2> If it's important enough, take the risk and turn your cam off. If it's not worth that risk, then I seriously fucking doubt the informant has anything all that important to tell you. You're telling me they're risking being killed, and the cop's not willing to risk being fired? That cop's a jagoff.

Child victims who may be retaliated against for admitting what's happening at home if the law can't move quickly enough to protect them, or if there isn't enough evidence to get CPS involved yet?

This is a systemic issue, not actually an argument against body cameras. Just fix that problem; it isn't actually related to the cameras at all.

Private conversations between individuals in the proximity of the officer?

Are you in a public place? Then it's not a private conversation.
Are you not in a public place? Then someone invited the officer in, or they had a warrant, and you probably knew this, and shouldn't be complaining.

Discussion of tactics related to policing, such as "let's switch to camping out X parking lot to check for warrants?" Which is something often done staking out businesses during slow hours to pick out people with active warrants.

100% should be part of the public record.

If I'm going for a morning jog, I don't want to be caught on camera by a passing police officer on principle. It doesn't just capture the actions and conversations of cops and suspects.

You're already being caught by everyone's video doorbell or security camera or selfie with you in the background or whatever. You're in public.

And a police officer being told that they have no legal defense period if something happens off camera means that any department remotely risk adverse will employ a 100% on during duty system.. which is frankly an invasion of privacy for everyone involved.

About the only circumstance I can see that being even a little bit problematic is an officer going to the bathroom. If they feel safe, sure, turn the camera off. First thing if things get fucky, turn it back on. You hear gunshots in the restaurant whose bathroom you're in? Camera on, pull your pants up, grab your gun, do your job. Camera first because it isn't pointing at your pants anyway.

Beyond that? The officer's either in public on in a space he's authorized to be in and everyone knows his camera should be on in that case. So no breach of privacy anywhere.

In other words, in our zeal to use cameras as a mean of protecting people against corrupt police, we should not be pressing such broad mandates that our privacy and security as citizens is compromised, and that the ability to take legal action is no longer possible if a simple equipment failure occurs. "Sorry I knew you called us that someone was breaking in and had a gun and I was the only officer nearby, but I'm at the end of my shift and camera battery was about to run out" is not something we want to happen.

This is an example of something that should be proactively prevented. Batteries should last, say, 20+ hours, or be hot-swappable. Pulling a double shift shouldn't run out the battery on a body cam. If it does, get better technology that serves the need. If you just didn't charge it, this is gross negligence that should all by itself warrant a major black mark, the kind where if you get 2 or 3, you're fired.

I'm also in favor of requiring an ethical duty to protect, so said officer would be obliged to involve themselves in that call even if their camera had just died. Take the risk, because walking away is definitely getting you fired, and probably charged.

[Kasierith]

If they're having that dispute in a public place, they've already given up any presumption of privacy.
If not, then they're going to be opening the door to the officer to let them in, and that's where they can choose to change their conduct.

You.... don't have experience with domestic disputes at all, do you.

1> Get your police departments de-fucked so the gangsters can't access confidential police files in the first place.
2> If it's important enough, take the risk and turn your cam off. If it's not worth that risk, then I seriously fucking doubt the informant has anything all that important to tell you. You're telling me they're risking being killed, and the cop's not willing to risk being fired? That cop's a jagoff.

Whether or not police recordings are subject to freedom of information act requests is currently still up in the air, though in general with enough pressure one is able to obtain that information if they dig deep enough. Also, you're pretty much just admitting that you are perfectly happy with an officer being put in a position where they can readily be fired or killed while doing everything that they should be doing, and you have no problem with that.

This is a systemic issue, not actually an argument against body cameras. Just fix that problem; it isn't actually related to the cameras at all.

You have a long standing problem of being presented with an issue with your argument, and simply saying a nebulous "well fix that too and it's not a problem." Are we going to fix the entirety of child protective services issues as well, in one fell swoop?

Are you in a public place? Then it's not a private conversation.
Are you not in a public place? Then someone invited the officer in, or they had a warrant, and you probably knew this, and shouldn't be complaining.

So why not mandate that every person must wear a body camera if they go out in public? Would be an incredibly effective policing tool. The logistics would be astronomical, but the impact it would have on crime and civil damages would more than make up for it.

100% should be part of the public record.

Why, exactly?

You're already being caught by everyone's video doorbell or security camera or selfie with you in the background or whatever. You're in public.

If I recall correctly, weren't you against the police being able to access private cameras in Ring devices and the like in Florida because it put information among private citizens into public record?

About the only circumstance I can see that being even a little bit problematic is an officer going to the bathroom. If they feel safe, sure, turn the camera off. First thing if things get fucky, turn it back on. You hear gunshots in the restaurant whose bathroom you're in? Camera on, pull your pants up, grab your gun, do your job. Camera first because it isn't pointing at your pants anyway.

Beyond that? The officer's either in public on in a space he's authorized to be in and everyone knows his camera should be on in that case. So no breach of privacy anywhere.

Beyond the logistical issues with servers needing to hold so many hundreds of millions of hours of video, the main issue with camera provided by smaller deparments, we're getting into a basic matter of human dignity. Everything an officer says, eats, goes to, conversations with family, conversations with things like lawyers and doctors whose confidentiality is established by existing law, all of that.

This is an example of something that should be proactively prevented. Batteries should last, say, 20+ hours, or be hot-swappable. Pulling a double shift shouldn't run out the battery on a body cam. If it does, get better technology that serves the need. If you just didn't charge it, this is gross negligence that should all by itself warrant a major black mark, the kind where if you get 2 or 3, you're fired.

We are back to inventing new things from scratch to resolve existing problems. Cameras can last for well over a full shift.... except when you're using them with 100% uptime. The most optimistic run times are for as needed use, not continuous, and even those are absolute top of the line models... which tend to need to be maintained and replaced far more frequently. Runs counter to defund the police. They also have limits on storage, unless you have them upload which causes a whole new line of problems.

By all means, though, if you think you have the solution go look for a job at Tesla. They're the standing experts on battery innovation, and I am sure your insights will prove invaluable.

I'm also in favor of requiring an ethical duty to protect, so said officer would be obliged to involve themselves in that call even if their camera had just died. Take the risk, because walking away is definitely getting you fired, and probably charged.

This reads as you hate police officers and are explicitly in favor of setting up situations where they are damned if they do, damned if they don't. This is a commonly held position, but you could at least be more up front and honest about it. I mean, I put forward an example of a department that is actually doing the right things, and is using cameras in such a way that both respects privacy and uses it as a tool in law enforcement, and you don't even care.


Honestly the sum of your response basically reads as "I have no issues with my own privacy, so no others should. And police officers knew what they were getting into when signing up, so even if they are doing the right thing I am perfectly happy if they get burned for it." Though I would wager that if you were to walk outside your door, and someone immediately started filming you and following you around continuously until you reentered a private space, you would take issue with it.

[Yriel]

Are you in a public place? Then it's not a private conversation.
Are you not in a public place? Then someone invited the officer in, or they had a warrant, and you probably knew this, and shouldn't be complaining.

Are you saying that when you leave your home the govenment is entitled to be able to see and hear everything you do?
That sounds horrible.

[the game]

Are you saying that when you leave your home the govenment is entitled to be able to see and hear everything you do?
That sounds horrible.

people like Endus are perfectly fine with forcing people to give up their rights.

[Egomaniac]

people like Endus are perfectly fine with forcing people to give up their rights.

What rights are people being forced to give up?

- - - Updated - - -

Are you saying that when you leave your home the govenment is entitled to be able to see and hear everything you do?
That sounds horrible.

"entitled" isn't how I would put it...but you do lose the expectation of privacy when you go out in public. That's pretty much consistent no matter where you are in the world.

[Zython]

What about domestic disputes between two married individuals that, if recorded, would mean their momentary disagreement becomes public record?
Confidential informants, not just the established legal kind but simple eye witnesses in high crime areas where people who snitch to the police could be targeted?
Child victims who may be retaliated against for admitting what's happening at home if the law can't move quickly enough to protect them, or if there isn't enough evidence to get CPS involved yet?
Private conversations between individuals in the proximity of the officer?
Discussion of tactics related to policing, such as "let's switch to camping out X parking lot to check for warrants?" Which is something often done staking out businesses during slow hours to pick out people with active warrants.

If I'm going for a morning jog, I don't want to be caught on camera by a passing police officer on principle. It doesn't just capture the actions and conversations of cops and suspects. And a police officer being told that they have no legal defense period if something happens off camera means that any department remotely risk adverse will employ a 100% on during duty system.. which is frankly an invasion of privacy for everyone involved.

Personally, I like how my local department does it. Policy where camera has to be on or off depending on their purpose when going out to interact with the public. Going for a coffee? Camera does not have to be on, records getting food when leaving vehicle. Confronting possible shoplifting suspect? Camera on. Someone called from their home about hearing gunshots? Camera off. Executing an arrest for a warrant? Camera on. Uncertain about situation? Camera on, can be turned off if there does not seem to be a risk of a confrontation.

In other words, in our zeal to use cameras as a mean of protecting people against corrupt police, we should not be pressing such broad mandates that our privacy and security as citizens is compromised, and that the ability to take legal action is no longer possible if a simple equipment failure occurs. "Sorry I knew you called us that someone was breaking in and had a gun and I was the only officer nearby, but I'm at the end of my shift and camera battery was about to run out" is not something we want to happen.

The phrase "closing the barn doors after the horses have bolted out" spring to mind.

[Levelfive]

Basically, yeah.

Cameras should be on. If your camera breaks, go back to the station and get another. Also, stop being terrible about maintenance. If your camera's off, unless there's EXTREMELY extenuating circumstances (some guy just attacked you with a 2x4, and the first hit smashes the camera, kind of thing), then you should assume the officer disabled the camera deliberately, and the reasons for doing so almost always boil down to "I'm doing sketchy shit and don't want there to be a record", which means it's malfeasance.

If you're trying to avoid being recorded in your professional conduct, it's probably because you're being highly unethical and don't want there to be evidence proving so.

I've mentioned this before in this thread but body cams without significant institutional reform are woefully insufficient for holding police accountable. This article on why is excellent, so rather than excerpt pieces, I'm just going to copy / paste the whole thing:

Why filming police violence has done nothing to stop it

After years of police body cams and bystander cellphone video, it’s clear that evidentiary images on their own don’t bring about change. What’s missing is power.

by

Ethan Zuckerman

June 3, 2020

The murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officers was captured on video, not once but half a dozen times. As we try to understand why a police officer continued compressing a man’s neck and spine for minutes after he’d lost consciousness, we have footage from security cameras at Cup Foods, where Floyd allegedly paid for cigarettes with a counterfeit $20 bill. As we wrestle with the sight of three officers standing by as their colleague killed Floyd, we have footage from the cell phones of witnesses who begged the officers to let Floyd off the ground. In the murder trial of Officer Derek Chauvin, who was patrolling despite 17 civilian complaints against him and previous involvement in two shootings of suspects, his defense may hinge on video from the body cameras he and other officers were wearing.

None of these videos saved George Floyd’s life, and it is possible that none of them will convict his murderer.

Officer Chauvin knew this. In the video shot by 17-year-old Darnella Frazier, you can see him lock eyes with the teenager. He knows she’s filming, and knows that the video is likely being streamed to Facebook, to the horror of those watching it. After all, in a suburb of nearby St. Paul four years earlier, Officer Jeronimo Yanez shot and killed Philando Castile while Castile’s partner streamed the video to Facebook. Yanez’s police car dashcam also recorded the seven shots he pumped into Castile’s body. He was charged and acquitted.

After Castile’s death, I wrote a piece for MIT Technology Review about “sousveillance,” the idea posited by the inventor Steve Mann, the “father of wearable computing,” that connected cameras controlled by citizens could be used to hold power accountable. Even though bystander video of Eric Garner being choked to death by New York police officer Daniel Pantaleo in 2014 had led not to Pantaleo’s indictment but to the arrest of Ramsey Orta, the man who filmed the murder, I offered my hope that “the ubiquity of cell-phone cameras combined with video streaming services like Periscope, YouTube, and Facebook Live has set the stage for citizens to hold the police responsible for excessive use of force.”

I was wrong.

Much of what we think about surveillance comes from the French philosopher Michel Foucault. Foucault examined the ideas of the English reformer Jeremy Bentham, who proposed a prison—the panopticon or Inspection-House—in which every cell was observable from a central watchtower. The possibility that someone might be watching, Bentham believed, would be enough to prevent bad behavior by prisoners. Foucault observed that this knowledge of being watched forces us to police ourselves; our act of disciplining ourselves as if we were always under observation, more than the threat of corporal punishment, is the primary mechanism of “political technology” and power in modern society.

The hope for sousveillance comes from the same logic. If police officers know they’re being watched both by their body cameras and by civilians with cell phones, they will discipline themselves and refrain from engaging in unnecessary violence. It’s a good theory, but in practice, it hasn’t worked. A large study in 2017 by the Washington, DC, mayor’s office assigned more than a thousand police officers in the District to wear body cameras and more than a thousand to go camera-free. The researchers hoped to find evidence that wearing cameras correlated with better policing, less use of force, and fewer civilian complaints. They found none: the difference in behavior between the officers who knew they were being watched and the officers who knew they were not was statistically insignificant. Another study, which analyzed the results of 10 randomized controlled trials of body camera use in different nations, was helpfully titled “Wearing body cameras increases assaults against officers and does not reduce police use of force.”

Reacting to the DC study, some scholars have hoped that if cameras don’t deter officers from violent behavior, at least the film can hold them accountable afterwards. There, too, body cameras rarely work the way we hope. While careful, frame-by-frame analysis of video often shows that victims of police shootings were unarmed and that officers mistook innocuous objects for weapons, attorneys for the defense screen the videos at normal speed to show how tense, fast, and scary confrontations between police and suspects can be. A 1989 Supreme Court decision means that if police officers have an “objectively reasonable” fear that their lives or safety are in danger, they are justified in using deadly force. Videos from body cameras and bystander cell phones have worked to bolster “reasonable fear” defense claims as much as they have demonstrated the culpability of police officers.

It turns out that images matter, but so does power. Bentham’s panopticon works because the warden of the prison has the power to punish you if he witnesses your misbehavior. But Bentham’s other hope for the panopticon—that the behavior of the warden would be transparent and evaluated by all who saw him—has never come to pass. Over 10 years, from 2005 to 2014, only 48 officers were charged with murder or manslaughter for use of lethal force, though more than 1,000 people a year are killed by police in the United States.

As he stared at Darnella Frazier, Officer Chauvin knew this, because it’s impossible to work in law enforcement in the US and not know this. The institutions that protect police officers from facing legal consequences for their actions—internal affairs divisions, civil service job protections, police unions, “reasonable fear”—work far better than the institutions that hold them responsible for abuses.

The hope that pervasive cameras by themselves would counterbalance the systemic racism that leads to the overpolicing of communities of color and the disproportionate use of force against black men was simply a techno-utopian fantasy. It was a hope that police violence could be an information problem like Uber rides or Amazon recommendations, solvable by increasing the flows of data. But after years of increasingly widespread bodycam use and ever more pervasive social media, it’s clear that information can work only when it’s harnessed to power. If there’s one thing that Americans—particularly people of color in America—have learned from George Floyd, Philando Castile, and Eric Garner, it’s that individuals armed with images are largely powerless to make systemic change.

That’s the reason people have taken to the streets in Minneapolis, DC, New York, and so many other cities. There’s one thing images of police brutality seem to have the power to do: shock, outrage, and mobilize people to demand systemic change. That alone is the reason to keep filming.

https://www.technologyreview.com/202...=pocket-newtab

[Kasierith]

What rights are people being forced to give up?

- - - Updated - - -



"entitled" isn't how I would put it...but you do lose the expectation of privacy when you go out in public. That's pretty much consistent no matter where you are in the world.

The expectation/right? Yes. But It should be a balancing act between security and anonymity. There's precious little left of the latter as is, without expressly handing it over.

[Endus]

You have a long standing problem of being presented with an issue with your argument, and simply saying a nebulous "well fix that too and it's not a problem." Are we going to fix the entirety of child protective services issues as well, in one fell swoop?

When that issue is an unrelated second problem, then yes. I don't address it, because it's an attempt to move goalposts. Bringing it up is an attempt to avoid dealing with the problem in front of us, by pointing out that there are other problems, too. So yeah; my response is going to be "we have to fix that too", and then stick to dealing with the problem being discussed, because I'm not letting myself get distracted. Want to discuss the failings of child protective services in general? Let's have a thread on that, and I'll discuss it. Here, we're talking about police brutality and how to address and reduce/eliminate that.

Frankly, I see this tactic all the time in my work in climate change. That's what's called a "wicked problem", having a thousand disparate causes and contributors, and addressing it properly involves addressing them all, at once. And you manage that by having people pick one problem and fixing it as best they can, and moving on to the next. Because delaying doing anything until you can do everything is essentially just an argument that we should do nothing, and that's why things got so bad so fast. So I have little patience for that kind of argument.

So why not mandate that every person must wear a body camera if they go out in public? Would be an incredibly effective policing tool. The logistics would be astronomical, but the impact it would have on crime and civil damages would more than make up for it.

Are those people all agents of the government, paid to by on-duty at the time?

No?

Then you understand why your argument is silly.

Why, exactly?

Because I'm generally of the opinion that all records created by the government should be public record, outside the narrow circumstance of national security, which should be given a hell of a lot of scrutiny. You could put some light restrictions on access to such in cases where cameras are taken into private locations, so the public can't just pull up the footage of when their neighbours were talked to about the noise from a party, because their neighbours want to see inside their house because they're snoops. But if there's a claim of some kind of wrongdoing, a civil suit or the like? Should be readily available without needing a subpoena.

If I recall correctly, weren't you against the police being able to access private cameras in Ring devices and the like in Florida because it put information among private citizens into public record?

And that's predicated on the ownership of the device more than what your video doorbell device is filming. It wasn't about the idea that it was filming the public street, it's that it's your data and the police don't have any right to it without a warrant or subpoena.

Beyond the logistical issues with servers needing to hold so many hundreds of millions of hours of video, the main issue with camera provided by smaller deparments, we're getting into a basic matter of human dignity. Everything an officer says, eats, goes to, conversations with family, conversations with things like lawyers and doctors whose confidentiality is established by existing law, all of that.

I never said they should be unable to turn the camera off.
I said that, in cases where an accusation of abuse of power against the officer has been made, if their camera was off, that should cause everyone to question the officer's motive in doing so. If something happens, first reaction by the officer should be to turn that camera on. If you're on the phone with your wife talking about your divorce and your camera's off, and someone starts shooting at the McDonalds you're in, get cover, turn your camera on, and then grab your weapon. It's a split second reaction.

Are there perhaps very niche cases where this will be an issue? Sure. But the status quo right now is that cops are murdering people and getting away with it, pretty damned regularly. So let's keep some perspective.

This reads as you hate police officers and are explicitly in favor of setting up situations where they are damned if they do, damned if they don't. This is a commonly held position, but you could at least be more up front and honest about it. I mean, I put forward an example of a department that is actually doing the right things, and is using cameras in such a way that both respects privacy and uses it as a tool in law enforcement, and you don't even care.

I'm setting up a situation where a good cop won't have anything to worry about. Sure, a bad cop who's doing bad shit and trying to get away with it, he's going to be screwed either way, and that's sort of the point, yes.

Are you saying that when you leave your home the govenment is entitled to be able to see and hear everything you do?
That sounds horrible.

You're in public, so anyone can film you at that point. About the only limitation is that they can't make money off your likeness without permission. Not just the government is entitled to observe you, everyone is entitled to observe you. This is what being in public means.

people like Endus are perfectly fine with forcing people to give up their rights.

What right? Be specific.

I've mentioned this before in this thread but body cams without significant institutional reform are woefully insufficient for holding police accountable. This article on why is excellent, so rather than excerpt pieces, I'm just going to copy / paste the whole thing:

It's one step in an issue that should be multifaceted in its approach; I'm not pretending that body cams are a one-step fix.

And maybe there's significantly better approaches, but I'm focusing on changes that could be made with minimal adjustments.

It's also very much not about preventing abuse, but just trying to ensure we can garner evidence to prosecute that abuse. Your article makes the point that surveillance doesn't actually reduce bad behaviour, but that's not what I think it would help with.

A much bigger component should be the ethical reforms I've discussed elsewhere; a duty to protect, a duty to to report malfeasance by colleagues, etc.

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The expectation/right? Yes. But It should be a balancing act between security and anonymity. There's precious little left of the latter as is, without expressly handing it over.

If you want to talk about whether the State should be implementing facial identification software on their cameras, I'll talk about why I think that's a step WAAAAAY too far, and why it implicitly makes a case for wearing a mask for privacy reasons, not health reasons.

Outside of that, I don't see that public cameras are an attack on your anonymity. Security cameras are already everywhere. Like I said; every video doorbell is capturing a feed of the street in front of their house. The only way around this is to start passing laws banning security camera coverage of any public space, and I seriously doubt that's going to get anywhere.