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Montreal Union Wants a Camera On Every Policeman's Uniform
An anonymous reader writes "The Montreal Policemen's Brotherhood is proposing that officers be equipped with uniform-mounted cameras that can be used to record various interactions. The union says in other jurisdictions where police officers are equipped with point-of-view cameras, the use of force by officers and assaults on officers drops by as much as 60%. One system is currently being tested in Edmonton, Alberta."
The system turns itself off when the taser comes out of its holster.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
Started about a year ago. They are turned on when the shift starts and can't be turned off until the shift has ended.
Mounted on a hat above the right ear and they have sound.
Indiana, by the way.
SJWs are the new boogeyman. -Me
As long as there are penalties for 'losing' key footage. Whether by the officer or higher in the chain of command. Otherwise it becomes a selective evidence tool that is easily biased.
Silence is a state of mime.
With a camera mounted on each shoulder they'll look like they're doing the macarena dance while trying to turn the cameras off.
I approve of this.
-=This sig has nothing to do with my comment. Move along now=-
the use of force by officers and assaults on officers drops by as much as 60%
Uh huh, and do you know why that is? That's because if you annoy a cop, you get charged with "assault on a police officer" even if you didn't touch them. With a video recorder serving as a witness, the cops know they can't engage in what is commonly called "testilying."
In my city, the charges cops love to slap anyone they don't like with include AOAPO and "disturbing the peace" - the latter of which basically consists of "a crowd gathered because of you."
I knew someone - a sub-5-foot-tall, sub-100-lb girl - whose birthday party was ended by cops because it was too loud. Fair enough. She provides her information to one cop, and then a second cop comes in and asks her for her personal information again a few minutes later. She asks him why - she just gave it to the other cop. He refuses to say why, and she asks him again why he can't get the information from the other cop.
Next thing she remembers, her head is slammed on the countertop and she's in cuffs. Spent the night in jail, and the next day in court answering charges including disorderly conduct, resisting arrest, and assault on a police officer.
The judge looks at her, then looks at the cop, who's a burly nearly-6-foot-tall dude, then looks at the charges and says "Seriously? SHE resisted arrest and assaulted YOU? You've got to be kidding me. Dismissed."
Wasted thousands of dollars in legal fees, because some dickhead cop broke the law and filed false charges, lied in his report, and lied in court.
Please help metamoderate.
What do you mean by "go nowhere"? I was charged with assaulting a police officer in addition to pretty much every other contempt of cop charge and received a very generous plea bargain offer from the prosecutor with no jail time and only 6 months probation. My attorney argued for 3 months and the judge accepted it. I could only assume the generous offer was due to the fact that the prosecutor either didn't believe the cop's bullshit story or felt there wasn't enough evidence to convict me. There were at least 6 or 7 police witnesses who presumably would have backed up the guy's lies if it had gone to trial. So it does seem strange. It may be that even the prosecutors have stopped believing the cops.
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
I'm all for the video cameras on the police, provide the camera is "sealed" from tampering and the police are compelled to produce the video evidence else the prosecution fails and the courts charges the police for contempt.
Yes, I did notice it. I'm not sure if you are familiar with police practices, but "assault on an officer" is often used as a blanket crime by police to arrest people in any situation where the police use force, especially if they use improper or excessive force. It is completely logical to me that both would drop by 60% because very often they are the same thing.
That is, often a police officer will aggress against a person for whatever reason and then later claim that the person they aggressed against was the agressor. It basically allows an officer to arrest or even beat anyone up for anything and is a much more common tactic than you think. When the citizen gets to court, do you think a judge or jury will believe the police officer or the citizen?
We hear a lot about the minority of cases where a bystander taped the scene and the police did something wrong, but you don't hear about the majority where nobody was there to video tape it.
Big apple, new Yorik, undig it, something's unrotting in Edenmark.
...the anglos were in the street claiming their love and begging for them to stay a part of Canada...
... the anglos were in the street calling bullshit for segmenting Canada in half and having a secondary country extort them for transporting goods east/west.
As a counterpoint, I've seen quite a few cases where somebody ends up being charged with 'assaulting an officer' more or less for arguing with him.
I've seen videos of it. Sure, the person is normally being a douche while running his mouth a mile a minute and is sometimes failing to take action to officer directions that require active movement like 'Turn around', 'get on your knees', etc... But does failing to produce ID count as assaulting a police officer? Threatening a lawsuit? Complaining that the stop is illegal?
These charges normally end up dropped, but my point would be that if officers think they can get away with charges like this when the interaction is being caught on their car's camera, what are they doing when they don't think they're being video taped?
Maybe, knowing that they're being recorded, the officers are actually practicing their de-escalation techniques and they're working.
I don't read AC A human right