Study: Police Body-Cams Reduce Unacceptable Use of Force

An anonymous reader writes: Incidents like the Michael Brown case have recently put police body-worn cameras into the public consciousness, but they're not a new idea to criminology experts. In fact, researchers at Cambridge began a study in 2012 using law enforcement in Rialto, California as a test bed. Their results are now in: "The experiment showed that evidence capture is just one output of body-worn video, and the technology is perhaps most effective at actually preventing escalation during police-public interactions: whether that's abusive behavior towards police or unnecessary use-of-force by police." The simple knowledge that both parties are being watched puts a damper on violence. "During the 12-month Rialto experiment, use-of-force by officers wearing cameras fell by 59% and reports against officers dropped by 87% against the previous year's figures." This was enough for the city of Rialto to decide it wants to move forward with body-worn cameras; hopefully the study will encourage other police departments as well.

Comments

No s**t Sherlock

[Anonymous Coward]

Who woulda thunk it.

Re:No s**t Sherlock

[Runaway1956]

Yep - seems a no-brainer to me. Anyone who ever went to school knows that the bully isn't going to hammer the snot out of you while the teacher is watching. He waits until Teach has gone back inside to grade paper!

Re:No s**t Sherlock

[Gliscameria]

And whatever said bully says is taken as truth unless there is concrete evidence against it, and even then it's a tie. If the police don't want to wear cameras then their testimony shouldn't be allowed.

Re:No s**t Sherlock

[Imagix]

Or, as mentioned in the summary, the customer is not being abusive towards the officer as often and thus avoids escalation to where the officer feels that they need to up the force.

Re:No s**t Sherlock

[cyberchondriac]

Yes, it goes both ways. Very often the viral videos you see of police brutality does not show what led up to the transgression, so, a portion of the cases may be misrepresented by way of missing context.
This way, everyone has an objective look at the entire encounter. The cameras are a win-win for everyone.

Re:No s**t Sherlock

[Anonymous Coward]

Although just as often the escalation was
"Sir, is this your car?"
"Yes, I`m the owner"
"... I`m gonna have to ask you to step out of the vehicle slowly"

Re:No s**t Sherlock

[Anonymous Coward]

Very often the viral videos you see of police brutality does not show what led up to the transgression, so, a portion of the cases may be misrepresented by way of missing context.

On the other hand, the Police, being the trained professionals, should be able to handle "abuse"... professionally.

Also, 'what led up to it' is irrelevant in many cases. The fact I called your mother a whore 5 days ago, 5 hours ago, 5 minutes ago, or 5 seconds ago doesn't make it right for you to choke me to death, shoot me, or tase me.

Re:No s**t Sherlock

[ndavis]

Yes, it goes both ways. Very often the viral videos you see of police brutality does not show what led up to the transgression, so, a portion of the cases may be misrepresented by way of missing context. This way, everyone has an objective look at the entire encounter. The cameras are a win-win for everyone.

While true many videos do not show the suspects transgressions that still should not be a reason that the police get to go above the and beat someone when they are restrained or not resisting. The problem is that the officer can break the law when really he should be the one upholding it.

Re:No s**t Sherlock

[cyberchondriac]

You're obviously assuming "the problem" is always the officer. Confirmation bias. Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn't. I think the camera has a quelling effect on both cops and suspects.

Re:No s**t Sherlock

[NatasRevol]

Exactly what happened last night in Berkeley, MO.

Cop 'accidentally' didn't have body camera on. Shot another black kid dead. Claims he pulled a gun.

In spite of 3 other cameras just feet away from the incident, the cops released a blurry video from far away. I wonder why that is?

Odds they get away with it again? 110%.

Re:No s**t Sherlock

[DaHat]

Care to cite a single case where that 'twas the sole provocation and the related result?

Re:No s**t Sherlock

[Anonymous Coward]

The fact I called your mother a whore 5 days ago, 5 hours ago, 5 minutes ago, or 5 seconds ago doesn't make it right for you to choke me to death, shoot me, or tase me.

Unfortunately, lots of cops seems to disagree. Based solely on their actions.

And they also don't seem to get the consequences of their actions, like protests and revenge killings.

Re:No s**t Sherlock

[pastafazou]

Your comment is horseshit. Commenting about choking you to death is obviously alluding to the Garner case. Garner was resisting arrest. The police are authorized to apply force to enforce the laws. Resisting arrest allows the police to use force as necessary to apprehend the suspect. Did the police officer draw his gun and shoot Garner? No, he applied a choke hold in order to subdue and cuff him. Unfortunately, Garner died as a result of this altercation. However, the intent of the officer was not to kill him. It's unfortunate that Garner died, but had he not resisted, he'd be alive today.

Re:No s**t Sherlock

[ndavis]

I never said it was always the officer and I was not assuming that what I said was many videos show where the suspect is already restrained or not fighting back but where the officers are showing full or excessive force. Many videos typically depict that scenario and in these cases whatever happened prior does not matter when a police officer is beating you with a nightstick while you are down on the ground. Police do not get to dole out punishment which it looks like some of this is.

Re:No s**t Sherlock

[Anonymous Coward]

What a little brain you have.. I'm sorry for your descendant, I just hope for a Darwin award for you before it's too late.

Re:No s**t Sherlock

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't think that the other cameras just didn't show anything? I know it's trendy to hate cops, but just because there's a cop involved in a shooting doesn't mean that it's murder. Most of the time the dead people are dead because they did something they shouldn't have and the officer had little choice.

Sure there are cases where that's not the case, but police departments aren't always murdering people without cause.

Re:No s**t Sherlock

[eneville]

Or could it be that the customer can't produce a false claim of unreasonable force after the incident?

Re:No s**t Sherlock

[Anonymous Coward]

I know it's trendy to hate cops

As it should be. The US is supposed to be "the land of the free and the home of the brave." Everyone should be extremely cautious of authority, based on history alone, and should prefer freedom of safety (real or imagined). It baffles me when people support mass surveillance or the TSA, but that land of the free thing was always just propaganda.

That doesn't mean this specific case was an abuse, but being cautious of authorities *should* be a trend. Sadly, it is not.

Re:No s**t Sherlock

[Free Censorship]

Looked like a simple example to help people better understand the problem to me.

Re:No s**t Sherlock

[Free Censorship]

Garner was resisting arrest.

Barely at all.

The police are authorized to apply force to enforce the laws.

But not excessive force, and not when someone is saying they can't breath. Certainly not that choke hold which was against policy.

It's unfortunate that Garner died, but had he not resisted, he'd be alive today.

Why don't you move to North Korea? I don't know if you realize this, but the US is supposed to be "the land of the free and the home of the brave." Everyone should be extremely cautious and critical of authority figures, not give them the benefit of the doubt or let them off when they screw up (intentionally or not).

If the cops hadn't applied overwhelming force and had actually listened when he said that he couldn't breath, he would be alive. Why don't you blame the people who actually used the force? They made their own decision to do so.

The bottom line is, the cops are supposed to respect people's liberties, have legal authority over others, and are supposed to be trained professionals. They deserve no mercy when it comes to being prosecuted, but prosecutors are of course biased in their favor, so good luck punishing them.

Re:No s**t Sherlock

[NatasRevol]

Well, the video that they released didn't show anything either. It was blurry AND from a distance. And they tried to justify that he had a gun from it. Absurd at its best.

Perhaps the other videos showed more than the cops wanted?

the officer had little choice.

Like choking people to death and beating unconscious people?

Re:No s**t Sherlock

[DamnOregonian]

Seriously, fuck you with a hockey stick.

Re:No s**t Sherlock

[DamnOregonian]

You're obviously of the opinion that a minor transgression justifies overwhelming and potentially fatal force.

Re:No s**t Sherlock

[Runaway1956]

Go look at that video again. It wasn't a "choke hold". FFS - did you never wrestle as a kid? Have you never watched collegiate wresting? PLEASE don't cite any of the professional wrestlers - they are all as queer as a three dollar bill. You may cite just about any martial arts expert with a belt. Ask Chuck Norris, if you like.

It wasn't a choke hold.

Re:No s**t Sherlock

[HiThere]

I'm sure that happens too. But given the punishment that is applied to the one against whom the claim is made, I'm not going to believe that happens very often. It exposes you to retribution, and you don't get any result (except PR).

Re:No s**t Sherlock

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe this public service message from Chris Rock will help you understand. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ACKmYhlTx5k

Re:No s**t Sherlock

[Maxo-Texas]

Do you realize that american police officers kill united states citizens at over 50x the rate UK and German police officers kill their citizens?

Do you realize that american police officers kill more children each year (including 7 year old girls) than UK and german police officers kill all citizens (including adults) combined? And basically at an infinitely higher rate.

United states police have reported* killing over 400 citizens per year since 9/11. Meanwhile, germany and uk have killed reported killing under 4 citizens per year in the same time period.

*United states police forces are NOT required to report citizens killed and many do not so the actual number of citizens killed in the united states is higher than reported.

Re:No s**t Sherlock

[NoKaOi]

Regardless of how you want to argue semantics, what the officer did was against policy, and it was against policy for a reason. What happened in this situation is the reason - because it could kill or do serious harm to somebody, especially if they have certain medical conditions. The existence of the policy proves that the officer should reasonably have known that this move could have killed somebody, therefore he is guilty of negligent homicide.

Re:No s**t Sherlock

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's the problem with your argument. At least under the legal system the Garner case is under, it is illegal to resist arrest. Yes. But it is not punishable by death. He was also entitled to a trial by a jury of his peers and to be provided legal representation. The point where lethal force is warranted is if the suspect is attempting or threatening to use lethal force against the officer. Yeah, this might come as a shock to you, but if I were to go to punch an officer in the face, the officer is not legally allowed to use lethal force because I'm not attempting to use lethal force against him. There, that's what the club, the mace and the Taser is for. And however you try to swing it, the officer was using a banned choke hold. A choke hold that was banned because it was known to cause.....death. The officer used lethal force, when lethal force was not being threatened against him.

Of course, the one nobody is talking about is, who really needs to be taken to force here is the DA. It's the DA who is ultimately charged with keeping police in line by holding them accountable. There seems to be a systemic failure of DAs charging officers when they commit crimes, and I'm referring to petty crap, like parking in the fire lane to get a cup of coffee or parking on sidewalks to radar people, which allows the police to feel they're above the law which then leads to the serious stuff happening. The DAs are the ones ultimately who should be taken to task for their abysmal behavior. And if you want to argue this one, I raise a challenge. Look at what a normal person is charged relative to the crime they committed versus what a police officer is charged with relative to the crime he committed, on the rare occasion that an officer is actually charged. Yeah, police always get minimal charges while normal folks get everything the DA can think of to charge them with.

Re:No s**t Sherlock

[Anonymous Coward]

But not excessive force, and not when someone is saying they can't breath. Certainly not that choke hold which was against policy.

Except that the "choke hold" had nothing to do with Garner's death. His death was caused by lying on the ground with a man kneeling on his back. As clearly evidenced by the fact that he was still able to talk. If he was being choked, he wouldn't have been able to move air through his neck at all. Because he was being crushed instead, he could move air *out* but not in. He could speak but not breathe. Later, when he was moved into a position where he could have breathed, he had difficulty because he was asthmatic. Then he had a heart attack because his heart was working harder to move oxygen around his body. Then he died.

When you talk about the "choke hold," you distract from the real issues. They should not have thrown an obese man onto a hard surface. Given that he was lying on a hard surface, they shouldn't have kneeled on his back. Those are areas where a policy change and training could help. Yet instead of concentrating on the tragedy, your narrative tries to assign blame. By doing so, it distracts from taking actions that could prevent similar tragedies in the future. Instead of looking for policy changes, you are focusing on blaming the officer. If you succeed, people will say that the choke hold was already banned and no policy changes would be made.

Every time you say "choke hold," you open yourself to debunking. The proof that there was an illegal choke hold goes like this: the officer's arm was near Garner's neck; Garner said he couldn't breathe; therefore, the officer's arm was choking Garner; NY police ban a particular hold that can be described as a choke hold; therefore, the officer was engaged in an illegal choke hold; Garner died; therefore, his death was caused by an illegal choke hold. However, Garner saying that he couldn't breathe proves that he was *NOT* being choked at that time. Police claim that the officer's arm was not in a position to apply the particular hold that was banned.

That's the problem with false narratives. They don't hold up under scrutiny.

Of course, there's another problem now that will likely prevent policy changes. The deaths of the two officers leave the police much less likely to compromise on new training to prevent incidents like this in the future. They're dug in now and unlikely to engage rationally.

Re:No s**t Sherlock

[Free Censorship]

Except that the "choke hold" had nothing to do with Garner's death. His death was caused by lying on the ground with a man kneeling on his back.

I just said that he was given a choke hold. And it's unjust excessive force either way.

If you succeed, people will say that the choke hold was already banned and no policy changes would be made

Incorrect. The problem is that officers are rarely prosecuted for anything. It's a separate problem.

Every time you say "choke hold," you open yourself to debunking.

No, you open yourself up to pedants who think they're debunking you with their nonsensical pedantry to distract from the fact that government thugs murdered someone.

Re: No s**t Sherlock

[Anonymous Coward]

Resisting arrest? Death by inflicted choking.

Sounds fair to me.

Re:No s**t Sherlock

[Runaway1956]

Cite the policy. Please, cite the exact policy.

The real policy is, that officers will not obstruct the airway - that is they won't "choke" people. The hold used by the officer in question did not obstruct the airway. There was no "choking" taking place.

Some fat slob resisted arrest, he was taken down to the ground so that he could be cuffed, and his medical problems killed him. The cop didn't kill that fat man, his own medical conditions coupled with his unwillingness to cooperate with police killed him.

I am not arguing semantics here, not at all. There is a very definite meaning of "choke hold". No choke hold was used here.

Talk to any wrestler, talk to any martial arts expert, talk to any cop. Get any of those individuals whom you have trust in to demonstrate the difference between a choke hold, and any number of other holds.

A reasonably healthy person can be held all day long in any hold which is not a choke hold, and he may suffer some pain, but his life will NOT be in jeopardy.

A choke hold, by definition, is a life threatening hold, which WILL kill the healthiest of men within minutes.

Semantics my ass.

Re:No s**t Sherlock

[Ol Olsoc]

Care to cite a single case where that 'twas the sole provocation and the related result?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Howzabout no provocation. When the prosecution got hold of the video refuting everything they said happened, teh lying, and the completely unnescessary violence and needless property damage, the prosecution dropped charges, and the police were put on trial. Watch the whole thing, it was shown that they started going on the resisting arrest rant, busting out the windows, punching the guy, and accusing him of "tring to grab my gun" while his hands were up.

Then again, I suspect with your ridiculous, "Cite a single case" comment, you fully approve of the way they handled this, the way they hid the evidence, don't ya?

Hey, here's another one for you.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Oh yeah, I'll bet that lady cop doing the strip search had a good time, especially since she used the same glove to insert her finger up the woman's vagina after she stuck it up the woman's rectum

Enjoy, and Merry Fsstivus.

Re:No s**t Sherlock

[Anonymous Coward]

Beautiful example of anecdotal evidence. No one has ever said there is no such thing as an abusive cop. That's not the issue here, that's a side distraction. The accusation that ALL cops are abusive and not to be trusted is the logical fallacy, and coupled with the rather immature insults and name calling I see getting flung around here tell me all I need to know bout those who believe this like it's religion.

Re:No s**t Sherlock

[cyberchondriac]

Really? How exactly is this "obvious"? I just said, sometimes the problem is the officer, sometimes it's not. Reading comprehension, or did you just forget to go anonymous for your troll?

Re:No s**t Sherlock

[cyberchondriac]

I agree with you that sometimes excessive force is used, there's no denying that. Maybe it's the adrenaline; sometimes, it's just part of a power-trip of a dickhead cop. Sometimes it's from nerves and cautious experience, there are times when a suspect under apprehension will act submissive temporarily as a ruse.
I figure there are roughly three different reasons anyone joins a police force:
1) It just runs in the family. Same is true of firefighters, it often just becomes a family legacy, and feels like a duty to join. 2) Probably most rarely, you get a truly altruistic guy who wants to try to better society and get thugs off the street. 3) You get a loser (very often someone who was always in trouble with the law themselves when they were younger) who goes on a power trip and orgasms over authority they're given.. essentially a bully.
I've met all three types. Number 3s are scary, but not representative of all or even most cops. If they were, we'd hear of a lot more incidences than we do, since there are roughly 1.1 million police officers in the US.

Re:No s**t Sherlock

[Ol Olsoc]

Beautiful example of anecdotal evidence. No one has ever said there is no such thing as an abusive cop.

Beautiful example of completely discarding a simple provision of evidence as asked for, then trying to change the argument.

Re: No s**t Sherlock

[Anonymous Coward]

That's a good point: the citizens of the US are much more dangerous than the more rational, complying citizens of the UK and Germany.

Re:No s**t Sherlock

[DamnOregonian]

No reading comprehension problem at all. I'm taking issue with your assertion that the problem person has justified lethal force.
Frankly, unless the officer's life was in danger, if he employed lethal force, the problem is *always* the officer.
If his hard is too dangerous, hard, or scary, he can go dig ditches or flip burgers.
The quelling effect a camera has on the suspect is to prevent them from triggering an abusive officer's propensity to use excessive force. It doesn't stop the subject from physically assaulting the officer. Nobody willing to cross that line is giving a rat's ass about a camera.

Cameras work

[Anonymous Coward]

Use my phone to record my better half when she starts to get obnoxious, and guess what? She immediately changes her composure. Nice little tip for those with hot temper wives.

Re:Cameras work

[Anonymous Coward]

If you need to record her to change her behavior, your relationship is doomed. I wonder what she does when you aren't around.

Re:Cameras work

[rubycodez]

how about when she's feeling kinky and feisty? does that put the damper on or stoke her fire?

links to video in your reply as proof, please

Re:Cameras work

[Anonymous Coward]

If you need to record her to change her behavior, your relationship is doomed. I wonder what she does when you aren't around.

Seriously, how many more warning signs does anyone need?

Re:Cameras work

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder what she does when you aren't around.

Clearly, more hidden cameras are required.

Re:Cameras work

[BarbaraHudson]

If you need to record her to change her behavior, your relationship is doomed. I wonder what she does when you aren't around.

The usual stuff. Spit in his food, starch his underwear, throw out / erase his pr0n, set up a dating profile for him under "men looking for men", drive the car until there's just enough gas left to get home and park, unplug his phone at night while it's charging and plug it back in just before he gets up, redecorate the house, bake chocolate exlax chip cookies, stop replacing the toilet paper when he uses the last of it, ball up his clothes so they get good and wrinkled before she puts them up, wash his favorite jeans in hot hot water so they shrink ... you know, the usual stuff. :-)

Re:Cameras work

[Anonymous Coward]

If you need to record her to change her behavior, your relationship is doomed. I wonder what she does when you aren't around.

Has sex with me because of her overbearing husband. ;)

good news

[Noah Haders]

I really don't care about violence against police, but if this bullet points helps convince PD's to adopt cameras then super!

Re:good news

[Anonymous Coward]

What a callous person you are. I'm sure you fashion yourself enlightened.

Re:good news

[mrsquid0]

Then why should the police care about violence against you?

Re:good news

[Charliemopps]

Then why should the police care about violence against you?

The police in question... already don't care. So it's kind of a moot point.

Re:good news

[Anonymous Coward]

Am I the only one who thinks this situation is depressing, rather than good news? Why are we in a situation where people only behave if they think they're being watched and there's some punishment to them if they are caught misbehaving? We used to be able to trust the cops. Trust their word, trust that they would follow the law themselves, that they wouldn't shake people down for money or beat them for no good reason. Wouldn't the solution be to bring back that trust, rather than throw yet another band-aid on top of things?

I suppose it's no different from religion being used as a means of keeping the public in line, or Santa Claus as a threat for kids to behave. Still, sad to see this trend increasing, rather than decreasing.

Obviously

[gurps_npc]

To quote a very stupid cop who was arguing against cameras:

"People react differently when they know they are being watched".

What this cop was too stupid to realize was, the response to his comment is:

YES! THAT'S EXACTLY WHY WE WANT THE CAMERAS.

Re: Obviously

[Anonymous Coward]

But what will be the reaction of the "activists" when these cameras capture indisputable footage of, say, somebody like Michael Brown launching an unprovoked physical attack against a police officer?

Will they actually admit that maybe the thug involved wasn't such a "good boy", and that maybe it's incorrect to claim "but he didn't do anything wrong"?

Will they just repeatedly deny what the footage shows?

Will they start demanding the removal of these cameras, after the cameras repeatedly capture footage of incidents in which the police acted perfectly reasonably, and some thug did not?

The response to the convenience store footage in the Brown case may be a good preview of how they'd react. It clearly showed Brown acting very violently, and clearly up to no good. Yet instead of accepting what it so obviously showed, the "activists" came up with all sorts of excuses, denials, and even outright fabrications regarding it.

Re:Obviously

[s.petry]

Accountability is a good thing, and something severely lacking today. We have enough independent footage to know that events that happen should not, but since the footage is from "independent" sources they are all labelled questionable. A source that can be held with fewer questions, such as the body cameras by cops, would add much to a case like Michael Brown. Even if the camera was not facing Michael Brown at the onset of the encounter, audio could have been used to determine who's story was most accurate.

Thirty/Forty years ago I would have always taken the cops word over an encounter. Today, not so much. What you point out is exactly correct. People behave different when they are being watched, which includes "people" in Law enforcement.

Re:Obviously

[halivar]

And in cases where officers do show appropriate restraint, these cameras will prove exculpatory. Police officers should want these. If Darren Wilson was innocent, such a camera would have prevented local riots and a national headache.

Re: Obviously

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course the situation doesn't make sense to you. As you just demonstrated (proving the GP right, I may add), you willfully ignore facts that you happen to dislike, leaving behind a nonsensical patchwork of your feel-good fabrications mixed with 5% of the reality of the situation. The picture is actually much clearer and consistent when you stick to the facts of the case, instead of injecting make-belief nonsense like you have a propensity to do, apparently.

Re:Obviously

[memnock]

Why do you think that cops were more accountable 30 or 40 years ago? Do you think the mindset that cops are above the law only recently developed in police forces?

Re:Obviously

[meta-monkey]

Not that they were necessarily "better" but I think the attitudes of police towards the public have indeed changed over the past forty years. Forty years ago there weren't SWAT teams. The cops did not bash down your door, throw in flash bangs and shoot your dog to serve a simple search warrant. They....knocked on the door.

Did they always lie (well, they have to and there's nothing wrong with that so long as it's not under oath), plant drugs on people, shoot black people? Yeah. But damn if they weren't more polite about it.

The "us vs them" mentality wasn't so readily apparent. Maybe it was there and we just didn't notice because there weren't cell phone cameras, and they were mainly doing it to black people. Still, I don't remember cops 15 years ago driving APCs, in body armor, all black, and referring to citizens as "civilians." Now I hear that routinely. If we're civilians...what exactly are you? And what exactly is our relationship?

Re: Obviously

[Anonymous Coward]

Lovely strawman you've constructed. And your immediate use of the term 'thug' shows which camp you're placed your flag. You're doing the right-wing thing of associating Brown's actions in the convenience store with him somehow deserving to die, and that's bullshit.

Re: Obviously

[Anonymous Coward]

It was proven? By who, MB's family? Pffft... Link please...

Re:Obviously

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you sure the camera would of prevented riots? You're talking about a rational outcome to a difficult situation. Was burning down and looting local businesses a rational thing to do? Nope... People rioting and looting were in it for themselves so they could have a very merry Xmas, they don't care about MB or the truth.

Re: Obviously

[Anonymous Coward]

why did MB approach the vehicle?

Probably because he was asking to?

if he is 6'3" and 300lbs how could he be leaning into the car?

The same way everyone else would. The real question is, if he was down on his knees and executed as some nut-cases say happened, or running down the street when the officer was chasing after him shooting as other nut-cases say, then how the fuck did bullet holes end up on the inside of the police car scattered about as if there was some sort of struggle over a handgun?

Oh... you just listened to the blatant lies that was on the news rather than the actual facts of the case. You know, the ones that the court case was rules on, not the ones that were made up to fit a narrative.

Re:Obviously

[Anonymous Coward]

Do we? This is also the argument against panopticon, big brother, et al.

Please do explain why "it's different" in this situation.

Re: Obviously

[Anonymous Coward]

But what will be the reaction of the "activists" when these cameras capture indisputable footage of, say, somebody like Michael Brown launching an unprovoked physical attack against a police officer?

Relief that they don't have to rely on the testimony of a police officer, but can instead use video evidence that is hopefully reliable.

The response to the convenience store footage in the Brown case may be a good preview of how they'd react. It clearly showed Brown acting very violently, and clearly up to no good. Yet instead of accepting what it so obviously showed, the "activists" came up with all sorts of excuses, denials, and even outright fabrications regarding it.

The response was that...there was no reason to release that evidence except to shape public opinion, rather than have people honestly question the conduct of the police officer, who didn't witness any such event, and that even if the Police officer had seen it, that use of a firearm would not have been appropriate.

Of course, you remember the false X-ray claimed to be showing the injury suffered by the police officer, so what was up with that?

Re:Obviously

[Anonymous Coward]

[...] such a camera would have prevented local riots and a national headache.

LOL. Implying these idiot are rational peoples. All they got is a strong opinion of being oppressed and they are looking for excuse to loot.

Re: Obviously

[Charliemopps]

But what will be the reaction of the "activists" when these cameras capture indisputable footage of, say, somebody like Michael Brown launching an unprovoked physical attack against a police officer?

They'd probably ask why he tried to apprehend someone twice his size without any backup. Then ask, why after he'd already shot the guy 4 times he had to put 2 more bullets in his head.

Cops should be able to defend themselves, but they seem to be throwing themselves into needless danger over and over again. He was a moron to try and wrestle with this guy over a pack of cigars. If he got away, so what? Then, I don't think I've ever heard one of these police shootings that didn't involve the cop emptying a 16rnd clip. This isn't a western. That, again, is stupid. How many bystanders had bullets whizzing past them? What if the guys friend then turns on the cop? He's out of ammo! And worst of all, you just shot someone to death over a box of cigars. That's not ok. Maybe we should instal missile launchers in their headlights to? There's a jay walker! Lets nuke the intersection, he might be armed!

Re:Obviously

[fustakrakich]

"People react differently when they know they are being watched".

Yes, we are quantum beings.

Re:Obviously

[Talderas]

referring to citizens as "civilians." Now I hear that routinely. If we're civilians...what exactly are you? And what exactly is our relationship?

That's a very curious question. What term would you prefer that is likely to be universally correct way to address any given member of the population?

Re:Obviously

[s.petry]

Why do you think that cops were more accountable 30 or 40 years ago?

Before an answer, I will say that a large part of that trust came from being ignorant to the way the world actually works. I was young, delusional, and believed that authorities would never lie. Outside of Nixon and Kissinger of course. Hindsight is 20/20 as they say, and looking back I don't believe they were as accountable as I wanted to believe.. but there are several differences between today and then in attitude and training of law enforcement.

Back then, police were not held in a higher regard than the public. Respected, sure.. but a cop's actions were measured by their risk to the public. For example, the commando style raids we see today are a very new phenomenon. 30-40 years ago this would not have happened unless someone's life was in eminent danger. Today we have commandos chucking grenades into houses to serve warrants. We have commando style raids for non-violent crimes like drug dealing. Cops shooting family pets because they claim "I was afraid of the dog". Those things simply did not happen back then. Police were expected to respect the public as much as the public respected them.

There are many other differences in training and actions found to be acceptable then and now. A cop shooting someone today can simply use the excuse "I thought I was in danger", even when it's a kid playing army with his buddies. That would have had an officer suspended without pay 40 years ago, and back then there were many more kids out playing army/cops & robbers, etc.... Toy guns were much more common, hell we brought them to school to play at recess.

Lastly hiring practices are much different then and now. Then, there was more worry about public perception of officers. Cops were expected to outsmart the bad guys, not kick their asses. Today agencies want the ass kickers, bad asses, and bullies. "Gangs" are not something new, so that excuse does not work as the justification.

Re: Obviously

[ItsJustAPseudonym]

FYI, it had nothing to do with a pack of cigars. The officer was unaware that Michael Brown may or may not have purchased any cigars at a store earlier.

Re: Obviously

[Anonymous Coward]

He didn't shoot him over a box of cigars. He defended himself against someone who was trying to disarm him of his service weapon.
Tell me, what would you have done? Handed over your gun?

Re:Obviously

[meta-monkey]

Citizen? They use the word "civilian" like it's something we are and they aren't. They're civilians, too. They're not in the military.

Re: Obviously

[tlhIngan]

But what will be the reaction of the "activists" when these cameras capture indisputable footage of, say, somebody like Michael Brown launching an unprovoked physical attack against a police officer?

Will they actually admit that maybe the thug involved wasn't such a "good boy", and that maybe it's incorrect to claim "but he didn't do anything wrong"?

Will they just repeatedly deny what the footage shows?

The activists will be activists.

HOWEVER, if they repeatedly deny the scenario that the video shows, it discredits THEM, and the general public would regard them as whackos that need a reality check.

And activist video can be shown in context - often times when something happens those who capture it only show the aftermath, and not the entire scenario. Being able to see before and after what activists record is extremely useful.

So yeah, perhaps the video you see on TV shows Brown getting shot. Then the source video the body cam shows what happened before the camera started recording putting things in even more context.

Re: Obviously

[Anonymous Coward]

Cites?

I thought not.

Re: Obviously

[zlives]

I believe Eric Garner was on tape in a choke hold... wonder what the activists are saying about that.

Re: Obviously

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, Michael Brown just walked up to the cop and tried to steal his gun, that is exaclty how this played out. You dont think your missing/glossing over a few other tidbits do you?

Note: I think the guy was a sleaze, I am not defending him or his actions. Just pointing out that it isnt as simple as someone tried to take a cops gun.

Re:Obviously

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, then... 'such a camera would have denied them such an excuse'.

Better?

. /captcha: drones

Re: Obviously

[Anonymous Coward]

"""facts"""

yeah, I triple quoted your citation of facts. Because you didn't have any.

Re: Obviously

[Anonymous Coward]

Same if the video discredits the cops. As it already has done, repeatedly.

Both sides benefit from actual facts instead of relying on humans.

Re:Obviously

[NatasRevol]

Careful. You're ruining his world-view there.

Re:Obviously

[Anonymous Coward]

Interesting. Considering out of town undercover cops were pointed out for inciting riots there...

And they fucking got away with it.

That's pretty idiotic.

Re:Obviously

[Talderas]

I asked for a universal term that can apply to any given member of the population. Citizen does not meet that criteria. Citizen is a term with a specific meaning. Immigrants are not citizens until they achieve it yet they are still part of the population. Please try again.

Re: Obviously

[d34thm0nk3y]

But what will be the reaction of the "activists" when these cameras capture indisputable footage of, say, somebody like Michael Brown launching an unprovoked physical attack against a police officer?

Who gives a flying fuck? You're all worked up over some blowhards on the internet. The Jury are the ones who will see the video and are the only ones anyone should care about.

Re: Obviously

[Anonymous Coward]

After watching the convenience store surveillance footage, how can somebody honestly say that Michael Brown wasn't a thug?

When I look up the definition of the word "thug", the first entry for it is:

a cruel or vicious ruffian, robber, or murderer.

Was Brown's attack on the store clerk "cruel"? It absolutely was.

Was Brown's attack on the store clerk "vicious"? It absolutely was.

Was Brown's attack on the store clerk something a "ruffian" would do? It absolutely was.

Was Brown's attack on the store clerk and the taking of merchandise things that a "robber" would do? They absolutely were.

Thus it's clear that "thug" is a perfectly appropriate word to use to describe the person shown in that video.

Re:Obviously

[meta-monkey]

"Person."

Re:Obviously

[dfn5]

To quote a very stupid cop who was arguing against cameras:

"People react differently when they know they are being watched".

What this cop was too stupid to realize was, the response to his comment is:

YES! THAT'S EXACTLY WHY WE WANT THE CAMERAS.

I think he meant that cameras will also reduce the level of police engagement within a community.

Re:Obviously

[DamnOregonian]

You're dead-on. My military friends are fond of using "civilian" as a pejorative, and now several friends of mine who are police. Those friends are also former-military. I think that may be part of a trend, or at least it seems to be from my perspective. A lot of people are getting out of the military and going into law enforcement. I'm not sure those people have the right mind-set to be civil servants in a lot of cases. One of those friends recently made his first heroin user bust, and was bragging about ripping the guy out of his car and how hard the take-down was. This was just a dude shooting up in a car. Non-violent, breaking a law, sure- but did he deserve that?
My friend sounded like he was bragging about taking down a terrorist.

Re:Obviously

[DamnOregonian]

"Sir", or "Ma'am" work if addressing directly. "The gentleman", or "The lady" if not? I can think of a dozen different terms to use when referring to or addressing a non-LEO, that aren't pejoratives used by the military, which the police now seem to fancy themselves as. Police used to the civilians. Constabulary officers who kept peace and enforced laws. Not this crazy fucking gestapo trend where they increasingly consider themselves a branch of the government/armed forces.

Re: Obviously

[BarbaraHudson]

why did the officer shoot a man who was unarmed ane 150' away?

If the officer pulled that off with a hand gun at 150', he's probably the best shot with a handgun in the world. Sign him up for the next biathlon, where the distance to the target is 160' and he gets to use a rifle.

Re: Obviously

[Anonymous Coward]

This post should be rated -5 (Fallacious) for being so free of any logically sound arguments that are in any way connected to the issue at hand.

Your strawman arguments completely misrepresent the position of those you refer to as "activists". And, by referring to these persons as "activists" you are committing an ad hominem attack on their character.

Your prejudice is showing in every question you pose, creating a massive red herring from the discussion of the real issue. You are arguing from a position of ignorance as you were not a witness to what happened that day.

And, you are committing a faulty causal generalization fallacy by arguing the behavior in the convenience store to be the cause of the behavior in the street when there is not enough evidence and no relationship.

Re: Obviously

[Maxo-Texas]

They are out protesting in large numbers because the video evidence of the obvious unwarranted and undeserved death motivated them more than simple hearsay.

The police department is changing its training policies as a result. The police department lost a lot of political capital even tho the two police officers were nobilled.

The city and the police department are spending a lot of extra money and going thru a lot of unpleasant times because of the video which will hopefully encourage them to be more careful next time they might want to illegally choke someone to death.

And two officers may have been killed* which is really terrible. But hopefully the police will work on community relations to regain the trust and support of the citizens.

*Or it may have just been a whacko who would have shot the police officers anyway.

Re: Obviously

[HiThere]

Well if he'd had his camera going, this would be made clearly obvious. So why are the police against camera? (To be fair, many of them aren't. But I'm talking about the ones that are. Which to me means they've got something to hide, if nothing more than a feeling that their privacy is being invaded, and where they were dominant, now they are supervised.)

Unfortunately there have been enough instances where the police are obviously lying and at fault that I prefer objective evidence that doesn't require that I theorize to fill in the pieces. E.g., there are power stains on someone's hands, but how do you know that he got them when you think he did? A reasonable hypothesis is that he got them struggling to take the officer's gun, but it this actually what happened? And if he was 150 feet away when he was shot, was he fleeing? A camera would remove uncertainties...provided it was secured against tampering. (Yeah, OK, nothing's certain. It could reduce uncertainties quite significantly.)

And why is anyone against having a camera to prevent this kind of uncertainty?

Re: Obviously

[HiThere]

Well, not the only ones, but certainly some of the most important ones. I wish I could believe that they would fairly see the evidence, but there are so many games played with what evidence juries are allowed to see that I'll be a bit dubious until it starts happening.

Re:Obviously

[Maxo-Texas]

Try reading some old dragnet scripts for a feel of what it used to be like.

I think they used "citizens" sometimes in the bits before the show talking about the city and more often they used "people" but also used "the public" and "man" and "woman".
I don't recall "civilian" being used.

http://www.otrr.org/FILES/Scri...

There's a blog from 2009 about this
http://pl.atyp.us/wordpress/in...

It looks like the international definition of civilians includes police officers. ("A civilian under international humanitarian law (also known as the laws of war) is a person who is not a member of his or her countryâ(TM)s armed forces or other militia. Civilians are distinct from combatants." )

I've been unable to google when the police started using "civilian" widely. Most states still advertise for "civilian police force" jobs. So the police are explicitly civilian in the state's eyes.

Re:Obviously

[Anonymous Coward]

There are plenty of evidence that the protester are really just a bunch of niggers that loot liquor stores.. with their pants down too. And yet, these idiot SJW still claim it only a peaceful protest and that they get abuse by the police for no reason. Some idiots go so far as to claim these looter are police "agent provocateur", as if a PD denounced for being too white had enough black officers to stage a fake chimp out riot and rob stores. The citizens are bad, the police is bad. Nuke Ferguson already.

Re:Obviously

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's what I can say, 30 years ago, the slogan of the local PD was "To Serve and Protect". Now, and I'm not making this up, Colorado State Patrol, at least up until very recently had/has a banner in their headquarters stating "We're Your Worst Nightmare" with the officers posing around a Corvette. Now, what the context was meant to be, I can't tell you, but the context was given that it's hanging in their lobby for anyone who goes in there to see. And I'm sorry, but I'd prefer them to be working in societies best interest, rather than acting as a "worst nightmare".

Re: Obviously

[Anonymous Coward]

but everyone ignores the fact that there is no evidence of Brown's arms were raised in the air. The picture is clear for anyone willing to look. He strong armed robed a store, and attacked an officer in his car and tried to grab his gun.

There was not the evidence to bring the cop to trial. A prosecuter could not win that case. Unfortunately you can find someone guilty based on what other cops do. I assume that is what the protest is trying to change. "this guy is just like you and he was guilty, so you are too!"

Re:Obviously

[Anonymous Coward]

A camera on a police officer will not show what the police officer is doing. It will point where the police officer wants it to point, it will be obscured when the police officer wants it obscured, it will break when the police officer wants it to break.

The cameras that matter are the ones you train on the cop while he's brutalizing someone you know, which cameras get smashed once the policeman discovers you were filming them, and which earn you a powerful beating afterwards.

Re:Obviously

[Anonymous Coward]

I think before you post something like that you should make sure that the term is actually universal. "Citizen" does not apply to immigrants, for example and one might wonder why you would exclude them....

Re:Obviously

[Anonymous Coward]

Most other people that are paid to provide me a service call me Sir

Re:Obviously

[Anonymous Coward]

Person? Human?

Re: Obviously

[Maxo-Texas]

They say, 'Wow that kid was stupid. What was he thinking attacking the cop like that? I can see why the cop shot him!"

Or they'll say, "What the hell? Why did the cop shoot that kid who did nothing?"

Or (unfortunately) they'll say, "Man, the cop waited too long and died. I hope the kid gets the chair."

Police lie.

Retired police officer say "Police are legally allowed to lie. Police do lie- frequently. Do not talk to the police without a lawyer."

As it is, just a couple months after the police shot a 7 year old black girl, they shot an 18 year old black boy and then they shot a 12 year old black boy. The video of the 12 year old black boy shows they pulled of way to close way to fast and basically shot him in under 10 seconds while another video of a drunk white guy with an AK 47 officers of a different department shows they stopped at range - negotiated for over 10 minutes and avoided shooting him.

Cameras protect police.
Cameras protect the public.

Cameras protect civilians (and the police are CIVILIANS. They are not MILITARY).

Re: Obviously

[Maxo-Texas]

Correct, Michael Brown's initial offense was that he walking on the street instead of the sidewalk.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11...

"But for some experts, the shooting and the events that preceded it raised broader policy questions, particularly about how officers engage with communities they patrol. In his initial encounter with Mr. Brown and his friend in the street, Officer Wilson never exited his vehicle, voicing commands through the window of his cruiser instead.

âoeThe notion of riding through neighborhoods yelling, âGet up on the curbâ(TM) or âGet out of the street,â(TM) is not where you want your officers to be,â Mr. Bealefeld said. âoeYou want them out of their cars, engaging the public and explaining to people what it is you are trying to do. Drive-by policing is not good for any community.â

Basically the officer drew his gun when Brown wouldn't get off the street.

Nancy Grace (pretty darn conservative and an ex prosecutor) found the officer's story rehearsed and not credible. Basically his testimony was a lie.

A CAMERA would have negated all the ambiguity and saved hundreds of thousands in property damage and perhaps even saved lives.

Cameras protect the public AND cameras protect the police.

Re:Obviously

[Maxo-Texas]

Absolutely unless the camera showed Wilson executing brown and then Wilson wasn't prosecuted.

If the camera showed that Brown aggressively grabbed for the gun and hit Wilson for only telling Brown to "get off the street" then there would have been no riots.

People would have been talking about how stupid Brown was to behave that way.

at worst some would be upset that wilson kept shooting after Brown was down but the camera would have shown that was a matter of a couple seconds.

Cameras protect the police.
Cameras protect the public.
Cameras protect businesses and cities.

all police should have a camera. all police vehicles should have multiple cameras with wifi-uploaded backup that's resistant to tampering the officers involved.

Re:Obviously

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe back then more people responded to the police better and didn't answer the knock with gun fire. Don't give me the BS about how more cops were killed back then. Medicine, bulletproof vests and training have advanced greatly in the last few decades.

Re:Obviously

[Anonymous Coward]

You are never going to satisfy people. The guy they just shot in Berkeley, mo with a gun is on video pointing the gun at the police and people are still making up stories. NYPD incident was mostly on video. That guy resisted arrest and died an hour later of a heart attack. The "chokehold" lasted no more than 20sec and appeared to be more of a move to take the guy down to the ground. Watch the video again. People still can't accept it.

Re: Obviously

[Anonymous Coward]

The off camera time caused the Brown mess and I suspect with body cameras it would have never happened like it did. It would have put that off camera moment they used to fuel the shitstorm to rest.

Re: Obviously

[philalethiac]

Then they'll be forced to retreat to dealing with larger issues like why America has so many environments that seem to lead young men to fight unprovoked physical attacks against police officers in the first place. And that'll be progress, at least in the national conversation if not in actual deeds. And if they start demanding removal of the cameras, fuck'em, I say, because by then, the moderates among us will see the good they do and people who want to obscure and hide behind anonymity and hearsay will be marginalized.

Re:Obviously

[Anonymous Coward]

Why do you think that cops were more accountable 30 or 40 years ago?

Before an answer, I will say that a large part of that trust came from being ignorant to the way the world actually works. I was young, delusional, and believed that authorities would never lie. Outside of Nixon and Kissinger of course. Hindsight is 20/20 as they say, and looking back I don't believe they were as accountable as I wanted to believe.. but there are several differences between today and then in attitude and training of law enforcement.

Back then, police were not held in a higher regard than the public. Respected, sure.. but a cop's actions were measured by their risk to the public. For example, the commando style raids we see today are a very new phenomenon. 30-40 years ago this would not have happened unless someone's life was in eminent danger. Today we have commandos chucking grenades into houses to serve warrants. We have commando style raids for non-violent crimes like drug dealing. Cops shooting family pets because they claim "I was afraid of the dog". Those things simply did not happen back then. Police were expected to respect the public as much as the public respected them.

There are many other differences in training and actions found to be acceptable then and now. A cop shooting someone today can simply use the excuse "I thought I was in danger", even when it's a kid playing army with his buddies. That would have had an officer suspended without pay 40 years ago, and back then there were many more kids out playing army/cops & robbers, etc.... Toy guns were much more common, hell we brought them to school to play at recess.

Lastly hiring practices are much different then and now. Then, there was more worry about public perception of officers. Cops were expected to outsmart the bad guys, not kick their asses. Today agencies want the ass kickers, bad asses, and bullies. "Gangs" are not something new, so that excuse does not work as the justification.

In our province of Quebec, cops are required to have a college certificate. That's a three year course which includes psychology, law, research, anger management, and more.

Re:Obviously

[Anonymous Coward]

if you're going to start with that, then "civilian" isn't a universal term either

Re:Obviously

[Anonymous Coward]

Today agencies want the ass kickers, bad asses, and bullies.

Mission Accomplished!

Re: Obviously

[Whorhay]

"Basically the officer drew his gun when Brown wouldn't get off the street."

I thought the story was that Brown assaulted Wilson while Wilson was seated in the cruiser with the weapon holstered. In the course of the struggle the weapon was drawn and discharged.

I agree that cameras for recording police activity should be the status quo.

Don't tell me police doesn't abuse their powers

[ArcadeMan]

The simple knowledge that both parties are being watched puts a damper on violence. "During the 12-month Rialto experiment, use-of-force by officers wearing cameras fell by 59% and reports against officers dropped by 87% against the previous year's figures."

Those lower percentages scare me because it's clear proof that a majority of police officers abuse their powers.

Re:Don't tell me police doesn't abuse their powers

[bws111]

Huh? How the hell do you get that?

Re:Don't tell me police doesn't abuse their powers

[wisnoskij]

You could argue that exact opposite with the same data set. Maybe it proves that putting the criminals in the spot light reduced their violence by 60%, and reduced false "police brutality" claims by 90%

Re:Don't tell me police doesn't abuse their powers

[ArcadeMan]

During their test, use of force by officers fell by 59% and reports against officers dropped by 87%. Anything above 50% is a majority. If they can still do their job properly by using less force and get 87% less complains, that means they were abusing their powers before the cameras. I don't know how to explain that to you in more clear terms.

Re:Don't tell me police doesn't abuse their powers

[oodaloop]

"Clear proof" it is not. Try again.

Re:Don't tell me police doesn't abuse their powers

[bws111]

You can't really be that stupid. 'Incidences of use of force' is NOT the same thing as 'number of officers'. You do know that, right?

Re:Don't tell me police doesn't abuse their powers

[ArcadeMan]

D'oh!

Re:Don't tell me police doesn't abuse their powers

[Anonymous Coward]

And further, the use of force was previously based solely on (mostly unreliable) witness testimony. Now a great deal of those accusations are thrown out immediately, which drops the numbers.

Re:Don't tell me police doesn't abuse their powers

[wile_e_wonka]

Maybe it proves that putting the criminals in the spot light reduced their violence by 60%, and reduced false "police brutality" claims by 90%

If this is true then it still makes perfect sense to use the body cameras. There are far fewer allegations of police brutality to deal with--whether the reduction comes from an actual decrease in police brutality or from a reduction in false claims of police brutality or an increase of cooperation of the people in-front of the officer--who cares? It's all good to me.

In my mind, the only true downside of the body cameras is the expense of dealing with collection and storage of thousands upon thousands of hours of mundane footage. I am not confident that the monetary benefit of the cameras (e.g., I witnessed a trial of police officers accused of police brutality, which allegations were utterly falsified in my opinion. The department spent a lot of money on that case) will outweigh the monetary cost (I think the cost of maintaining the system will be more than the cost of false allegations). But, there is a nonmonetary benefit that it sounds more and more to me like outweighs the cost.

An effective police force needs the trust of the public, and I think this is at a low point lately. It sounds like the body cameras will probably help.

Re:Don't tell me police doesn't abuse their powers

[wisnoskij]

But if they only reduced their violence output by 60%, why the 90% fall in reports? Does that not imply, using your overly simplistic logic, that these cameras simultaneously stopped 30% of the claims of brutality, implying these were madeup to begin with.

Re:Don't tell me police doesn't abuse their powers

[Eristone]

This is still a good thing - it eliminates the false reports and shows that the officers are doing their job correctly as well as making the criminals (or suspects) less likely to do something that is harmful to the officers because they know there is footage of the event.

Re:Don't tell me police doesn't abuse their powers

[wisnoskij]

Storage/video capture are both pretty cheap nowadays. The only real issue I would worry about is too many non-police watching and commenting on too much of the footage. The public should know everything that police do in the line of duty, that said they are not qualified to quibble over the details. I am sure, with years of experience on the job, and training that has been evolving for thousands of years, there are numerous things the police are trained to do that to some amateur who knows nothing about police work would look wrong, but is in fact necessary and the best thing to do is said hypothetical situation. I can just imagine how much "help" having everyone at the office, from the manager to the janitor, look over your shoulder and offer advice on how to do your job.

Re:Don't tell me police doesn't abuse their powers

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure some of the complaints you are dealing with are false. That does not surprise me in the least. That doesn't negate the fact that the officers for whatever reason used force much less than they did previously.

Re:Don't tell me police doesn't abuse their powers

[Anonymous Coward]

Because it really just one cop doing all the job. In the real world, the majority of incidence of force is more or less done by the majority of the police force.

Re:Don't tell me police doesn't abuse their powers

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't see how you can draw such a conclusion from this one study. Although I'm certain some police do abuse their power, I doubt it's even close to half.

1. The camera's could have altered the behavior of the citizen such that use of force wasn't required.
2. The citizens who would normally falsely complain of being abused could have decided the camera would have shown the truth

How many police officers do you think will be injured because they hesitated on their use of force? This isn't just because of cameras, the entire country seems to be telling the cops they're not allowed to defend themselves. That's a lot of pressure these officers carry into very dangerous situations.

Re:Don't tell me police doesn't abuse their powers

[Spamalope]

But if they only reduced their violence output by 60%, why the 90% fall in reports?

The police were more likely to act as we expect them too, and the criminals were less likely to make false claims they knew would be futile. I'd be suspicious if there was any other result.

Re:Don't tell me police doesn't abuse their powers

[wile_e_wonka]

I agree with this, but I'm not particularly concerned. I do not think that the general public would be viewing the videos like a live feed or much at all. I think we already have precedent for how this would work--dash cams in police cars. That system seems to work fine and I think it would be the same here.

Re:Don't tell me police doesn't abuse their powers

[sjames]

Not necessarily. Some of that 59% (no idea how much) would naturally be the result of citizens behaving better for the camera and not escalating the situation.

Re:Don't tell me police doesn't abuse their powers

[DamnOregonian]

Yes, those criminals who wanted to violently assault a police officer thought twice because they were being watched. By a camera. Cough.
I will buy that it reduced false reports, though.

Re:Don't tell me police doesn't abuse their powers

[DamnOregonian]

1. The camera's could have altered the behavior of the citizen such that use of force wasn't required.

The only case where I'll accept that it was necessary to be violent with a citizen of this country with free agency and civil rights, is where he presented a clear and present danger to someone else (and maybe, arguably, himself). If you're arguing that cameras lower the incidence of that occurring, you're a fucking moron.
If you're arguing that it lowers the incidence of people calling cops assholes and the resulting getting their teeth kicked in, I'll buy that. But that still leaves the original problem in place, the cop shouldn't be a cop.

2. The citizens who would normally falsely complain of being abused could have decided the camera would have shown the truth

This is legit.

Re:Don't tell me police doesn't abuse their powers

[BarbaraHudson]

Maybe we should all wear body cams? No more "he said, she said", the level of domestic violence and child abuse might drop, etc. Just saying.

Re:Don't tell me police doesn't abuse their powers

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm wondering how you define clear and present danger. In most instances where a cop uses deadly force, the decision is made a bit too quick to get a consensus on whether or not the danger is "clear and present". In these cases, we're talking about reflexes that have to be trained into the officers. That's why you get shot if you attempt to point a toy gun at an officer even though you didn't pose a "clear and present" danger.

Further, once an officer states his intention of arresting you, your only safe option is to cooperate. Once you resist, you escalate the situation, which includes an escalation of the officers justification for use of force.

That said, you're right about those officers who can't handle a bit of taunting, some people just shouldn't be cops. And yes, the camera will lower the occurrence of bad behavior of both the officers & the people they encounter.

Re:Don't tell me police doesn't abuse their powers

[Anonymous Coward]

But if they only reduced their violence output by 60%, why the 90% fall in reports?

It's not a 1 to 1 ratio. Don't be daft.

100 complains becomes 10 - 90% reduction
1000 incidence of violence reduced to 400 - 60% reduction.

So 90 complains reduction is 90% and 600 incidence reduction is 60%. Yes, these numbers are made up, but it is quite certain that number of complaints is less than total number of incidence!

But what this means is a very significant drop in unnecessary violence from law officers.

Re:Don't tell me police doesn't abuse their powers

[laird]

Number of times force was used dropped 59%, but that doesn't mean that represented 59% of police.

For example, imagine that 80% of police never used force, so the stats only related to the 20% that did. Which are typical numbers, based on other reports. So if the 20% of the officers who used force did so 59% less often with cameras, but still used force at least once a year, then the number of police using force wouldn't change, just the frequency with which they did so.

Make sense?

Re:Don't tell me police doesn't abuse their powers

[laird]

I'd think that privacy laws would apply to the footage. That is, unless the footage is released because it's relevant, they shouldn't be publishing all footage of everyone who walked in front of a policeman. Though it'd be an interesting experiment - eliminating all privacy for police and anyone near them. But I wouldn't want to live that way. But once the footage is relevant to a case, it should be public, just like any evidence used in a trial.

Then there's the question of who gets to decide what's relevant. That can't be the police, of course. Perhaps judges?

Re:Don't tell me police doesn't abuse their powers

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually this might indicate that police stopped policing and only responded to calls for fear of how a slick defense attorney might spin something on a video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pSQRMGmDzkM read the notes. The guy was actually reaching for a second gun behind him.

duh

[Robert Goatse]

So cops don't beat up perps because they're being watched, interesting. How about the cops learn to control themselves like normal human beings?

Re:duh

[Luckyo]

Or: perps don't go into physical confrontation with police when faced with the fact that there will be video evidence of the event.

It works both ways.

Re:duh

[Anonymous Coward]

Why should they? They face no consequences, so I doubt they see any reason to restrain themselves.

Re:duh

[Anonymous Coward]

Claims of police brutality going down is not the same as actual brutality going down. How much of that 87% was claims not made after the poor innocent victim claiming he/she was beat up saw the video?

Re:duh

[DamnOregonian]

This is not insightful, this is stupid.
A camera is not going to deter someone from violence against a police officer. I'll tell you what it deters them from- it deters them from calling the cop an asshole.
What you refuse to accept, (or perhaps condone) is that mouthing off to an officer is casus belli for a police officer to kick the teeth in- i mean detain the citizen, i mean perp.
That is wrong and fucked up.

Re:duh

[Anonymous Coward]

This implies however that the "perp" knows the camera is there. I'm guessing these cameras aren't gopros strapped to the top of the officers head, and are probably quite easy to miss amongst all the other crap strapped to them. And unless being told at the beginning of the confrontation that the camera is there, most will probably forget that this policy is in place.

Re:duh

[Luckyo]

Have you tried reading the OP? It presents concrete correlation with my claim and is in direct conflict with yours.

Re:duh

[Luckyo]

Correct. That is why places like taxis, shopping malls and so on have "this place is being video taped" notices. It's a very well researched and understood deterrent to most forms of anti-social behaviour.

I suspect that police officers' cameras are/will be made to be easily visible for that very reason.

Re:duh

[DamnOregonian]

I have read it. And as long as "escalation" can mean "abusive" behavior like mouthing off to a cop and "forcing" him to resort to physical violence, then ya. I concede. The study makes no attempt at deciding whether that particular path is a problem or not, and doesn't make any claims as to what the "escalation" is. People trying to claim it's stopping people from physically assaulting a cop out of nowhere are basing this claim on ludicrous apologist delusions, supported by exactly no evidence.

Re:duh

[Luckyo]

Let me see if I understood your argument correctly. You are genuinely, seriously making an argument that physical assault on a police officer is something that typically starts as a physical assault, with no preamble of any kind? Preamble like mouthing off, threatening, arguing and so on?

Because if you ever even glanced at criminology studies on the topic, you'd know that overwhelming majority of violence against police in modern Western countries, including US (which is a massive outlier in this group to start with, but is similar in this regard) starts with much lesser problem and escalates into a violence. OP clearly shows that camera present deters the beginning of escalation very effectively and provides correlation to match it in that both ends of the abuse are down in the test case.

Re:duh

[DamnOregonian]

The evidence also supports the hypothesis that the lesser problem escalated into violence because the cop was a shitbag.

Again, I assert, that anyone willing to cross the line into actually assaulting an officer (as opposed to Rodney King's violent assault on the officers that "detained" him) care little about a camera.

Re:duh

[Luckyo]

In other words, you grab on the edge case "cop is a shitbag" and ignore the rest.

Your assertion is based on unsubstantiated claim that is against observed trend in the study that attempts to salvage its case by grabbing onto statistical edge case to salvage the result. In other words, you already picked the end result to push a specific agenda and are attempting to warp the circumstances to somehow back your case in face of overwhelming evidence to contrary.

Good timing...

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/12/24/us-usa-police-shooting-idUSKBN0K20I920141224

Re:Good timing...

[Stargoat]

Antonio Martin was armed and likely robbing a gas station.

For that matter, can we stop equating Eric Garner, who was murdered, with Michael Brown, who was not?

And can we start talking about Victor White III, who was assassinated in the back of a police car?

Re:Good timing...

[meta-monkey]

I'm still furious about the flashbanged baby thing.

The entire circus around Michael Brown was media-generated. Perhaps I need my tinfoil hat adjusted, but I think deliberately so. It's like it was purposely pushed to make black people get up in arms, when clearly, most people looking rationally at the case can wish it didn't happen, but can hardly blame the cop. Brown wasn't innocent; he robbed a store. He wasn't just minding his own business until cops hassled him because he was black; he was walking in the middle of the street. I want cops to stop people walking in the middle of the street and ask them wtf they're doing. He was not an "unarmed teenager;" he was a 300lb man who punched the cop. What the hell? When you drive that story in the media, people like my father who don't think police brutality is a problem take notice of the story, say "this is what the liberals are complaining about? They're morons!" it confirms his biases and he goes right back to ignoring the problem.

Where's the outrage and the marches and protests and media helicopters over flashbanged babies? SWAT teams busting down doors at 3am to serve search warrants? "Overwhelming force?" Budgets that rely on "civil forfeiture" which is literally highway robbery? No, the media pushes the non-story of Michael Brown. Muddies the issue. Ignores the real problems.

It's a conspiracy. A C-O-N...spiracy.

Re:Good timing...

[Stargoat]

It's pretty hard to come up with a different explanation.

Re:Good timing...

[Anonymous Coward]

I want cops to stop people walking in the middle of the street and ask them wtf they're doing

I don't. Unless they're blocking traffic somehow. Even then, I expect it'll be a non-issue. At most, they should say "Hey, use the Sidewalk" but around here, don't have them on a lot of streets, so...what, you going to have the police hassle everybody who is walking down the street?

Maybe I just have a different idea of what the police should be doing with their time, and it doesn't include that kind of stuff.

As for whether or not the police officer in question knew about this robbery, or whether he was actually punched, that's the sort of thing we don't know, and your father may find it hard to believe, but which we don't know for sure because of all the stories having been told.

Re:Good timing...

[meta-monkey]

Yeah, he was walking down the middle of the street, blocking traffic. That is a weird and dangerous thing to do, and is obviously a matter of public safety, which is exactly the kind of things cops are supposed to look after.

Re:Good timing...

[NatasRevol]

Antonio Martin was armed and likely robbing a gas station.

According to the cop. Who was 'accidentally' not wearing his body camera.

Re:Good timing...

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean Michael Brown? In what way was he blocking traffic? How much traffic was blocked? I've not heard the media actually reporting the details of the police allegations on that.

In any case, the statement was:

I want cops to stop people walking in the middle of the street and ask them wtf they're doing

That doesn't specify blocking traffic in any way, and even then my solution was to say "Hey, use the Sidewalk" though where I am, as I said, there's a lot of streets without sidewalks to use. So people walk in the middle of the street a lot.

So I wonder, what are the police going to do?

Re:Good timing...

[BarbaraHudson]

You mean Michael Brown? In what way was he blocking traffic? How much traffic was blocked? I've not heard the media actually reporting the details of the police allegations on that.

In any case, the statement was:

I want cops to stop people walking in the middle of the street and ask them wtf they're doing

That doesn't specify blocking traffic in any way, and even then my solution was to say "Hey, use the Sidewalk" though where I am, as I said, there's a lot of streets without sidewalks to use. So people walk in the middle of the street a lot.

So I wonder, what are the police going to do?

Walking in the middle of the street? Walk closer to the curb. Walk on the shoulder. Walk on the grass. Someone walking in the middle of the street is what I would expect drunks, people high on drugs, with alzheimers, or dangerously low blood sugar would do.

Re:Good timing...

[Anonymous Coward]

Then your expectations are very different from mine, I see no necessary problem with somebody walking in the middle of the street, and your other suggestions are poor, especially in my neighborhood, where often there is no shoulder, no curb, and no grass. There's a ditch, walking in it would be unpleasant at the best of times, and occasionally unfathomable.

And do note, "middle of the street" is an ambiguous term, it does not have to literally mean walking straight down the centerline. As I said, here, in my neighborhood, with rare exception, if I'm walking, there is no curb, no shoulder, and no safe grass to walk on. And due to the aforementioned ditches, there's good reason to be closer to the middle. That isn't even counting parked cars, dogs, and other bothers that make the edge of the road more trouble than the middle.

So if the police were to ask people "wtf they're doing" for walking in the middle of the street, in my neighborhood, it'd be a foolish idea, even leaving aside the flippancy.

Re:Good timing...

[BarbaraHudson]

Your situation isn't the same as the shooting. There were sidewalks, and he wasn't using them, as required by law (jaywalking),

Re:Good timing...

[Anonymous Coward]

You may not have noticed, but the conversation was not limited to any particular circumstances, the initial declaration to which I responded was a rather generic comment.

I want cops to stop people walking in the middle of the street and ask them wtf they're doing

I pointed out that that was excessive, for reasons I have already given. The references to the shooting of Michael Brown are incidental to the broader discussion, where the desire was expressed for the cops to engage in the aforementioned behavior. If the OP wanted to limit their comments to Michael Brown in particular, well, I would have asked them to express themselves differently, and as I pointed out, we don't really know what Michael Brown was actually doing.

So I took it as a more generic comment, and expressed my differences with it, and my further reasoning as to why.

All I would want them to do is at most, say "Hey use the sidewalk" and even then, there are limits, but unfortunately, the circumstances of the Michael Brown situation are too muddled to address what actually occurred there, with both sides being accused of profanity and misconduct. Too many stories have been told. Several of them outright disproven, which is even sadder because those include ones told before the Grand Jury.

Which gets us back to the video camera question.

However, I think there's enough of that discussion around already, so can we stick to the walking in the middle of the street subject? Do you see how I differ with the idea of necessarily questioning everybody walking down the middle of the street, that it is not as simple as assuming there is a problem?

Won't work the way you think

[Catbeller]

If the police involved don't want to be recorded, they shut off the cameras or rip the antennas off the car. Not hypothetical - happens all the time. There are few consequences.

I'd predict the citizens will modify their behavior far more than the police will. Citizens can't shut off the camera - or turn the disabled camera back on. People will still be beaten or railroaded or extorted for cash if a cop decides it should be so.

Re:Won't work the way you think

[gestalt_n_pepper]

But citizens can have their own redundant cameras streaming to the cloud. They can get smart enough to fedex cash so the cops won't get it. All of this will happen. It's a race, as always.

Re:Won't work the way you think

[Sarten-X]

they shut off the cameras or rip the antennas off the car. Not hypothetical - happens all the time.

Do you have some evidence of this claim?

This study indicates otherwise. Rather than showing an increase in vehicle damage, there was an observed decrease in reports of inappropriate behavior.

Re:Won't work the way you think

[Catbeller]

And phones have a back door command, not yet activated, that will be provided to authorities: Camera Use Forbidden. Apple tried to patent the idea of crowd camera control (maybe succeeded); I'd assume it would be easy to implement. And since so many standalone cameras are radio-enabled now, part of the Internet of Things, those could be remotely shut off as well.

Or, they, being police, could have the authority to jam frequencies used by wifi/Bluetooth/cellular devices. Touch a button on their camera, and every broadcasting device but theirs is jammed.

Once more, I am not randomly positing things that don't exist; the tech is there. I'm predicting the present. The frog has to boil but a bit more, and authority camera control will be here. The past thirteen years have shown me that I'm far too optimistic.

Re:Won't work the way you think

[Catbeller]

links:
http://www.zdnet.com/article/a...

Re:Won't work the way you think

[Catbeller]

Better to have cameras than not; maybee...... juries can be played by selective use of cams, excluding other cam footage, and plain old laying a trap for the unwary citizen.

You asked: I read the news. Google for you:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/ka...
"But it goes both ways; video – or the lack of it – can also damn officers. Two on the Daytona Beach force lost their jobs after a video mysteriously blanked out in the middle of an encounter with a woman who allegedly hid a bag of cocaine in her mouth; she said the officers knocked her down, shoved a flashlight between her lips and kicked her in the head, but that part of the encounter wasn’t caught on film thanks to one officer failing to turn his camera on and a “malfunction” with the other officer’s camera midway through the arrest. A forensic analysis of the cam showed that the “malfunction” was caused by the officer shutting it down. Chief Chitwood has said the policy there is, “If you turn it off, you’re done.”"

That's Daytona. In Oakland. Mysteriously Shut Off Camera Syndrome doesn't hurt and officer much:
http://arstechnica.com/tech-po...
"OAKLAND, Calif.—Over the last two years, the Oakland Police Department (OPD) has disciplined police officers on 24 occasions for disabling or failing to activate body-worn cameras, newly released public records show. The City of Oakland did not provide any records prior to 2013, and the OPD did not immediately respond to Ars’ request for comment.

http://www.eastbayexpress.com/...
"Hargraves was found to have violated policy by taping over his nametag, and Wong was found to have acted improperly by failing to report the incident to internal affairs and also turning off Hargraves' lapel camera"

http://crooksandliars.com/susi...
"However, the above video, which shows several officers with their body-mounted cameras turned off – a departmental violation - is just the latest example of Oakland police officers not wanting any accountability.The video is also a clear demonstration of just how high tensions are between Oakland police and citizens."

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12...
"In other cases it was the absence of video that got the officer in trouble. An officer in Daytona Beach, Fla., was forced to resign after he was caught turning off his camera at critical moments. An Albuquerque officer who shot and killed a woman in April — and whose camera was off at the time — was fired on Monday after being investigated for not complying with department orders that required officers to record all interactions with civilians.

But even when video does exist, it is often not decisive. In the case of Mr. Garner, the Staten Island man who died in July after a police officer put him in a chokehold, a video of the encounter taken with a bystander’s cellphone and viewed millions of times was enough to stir visceral outrage — but not to secure an indictment."

The records show that on November 8, 2013 one officer was terminated after failing to activate his camera. Less than two weeks later, another resigned for improperly removing the camera from his or her uniform. However, most officers received minor discipline in comparison."

Antenna removal:
http://www.latimes.com/local/l...
"os Angele

Re:Won't work the way you think

[Anonymous Coward]

Some of the examples you cite show officers being punished for not having their camera running. This undermines your argument that cops can turn off their cameras with impunity.

Perhaps you are trying to argue that the amount of bad behavior by the police will not be zero if we mandate body cameras. The point is that there will be less bad behavior, not that there will be none.

The courts can give officers a strong incentive to use their cameras. If someone takes legal action based on what a cop did, and the cop is found to have disabled heir camera, the cop is presumed guilty.

Re:Won't work the way you think

[Catbeller]

Astounding. I document it extensively in reply to a challenge, and I'm STILL downvoted. You're downvoting reality, and substituting your own.

Re:Won't work the way you think

[Catbeller]

Apple got the patent. So, if implemented, a command could shut off all phone cams (airplane mode, at least, refuse to record at most) in response to legal authority in a geofenced area - movie theaters, areas around celebrities, or non-"1st Amendment" zones established by cops.

Re:Won't work the way you think

[Catbeller]

Relative impunity. Those were the cases where they were detected and punished. There will be thousands, tens of thousands of cases when they will not be caught, or if nailed, not punished much. Or simply plead technical issues - they have done so. You will of course hear about those fired; there certainly will be a small enough number so that they will be covered. The cops will adapt and adjust, and turn off the cams for the very nastiest acts. I've posted a number of links downthread where cops shut off their cams and killed someone, claiming tech issues.

And NO cop is ever presumed guilty. Infraction at most, fired at rare intervals. We won't count the number of times they get away with it, as apparently even Slashdotters aren't aware they are already disabling surveillance - what people don't know about, they don't notice. What will almost never happen, at the end of the diminishing curve of punishment, is a charge of murder.

Tens of thousands of men and women who have all the power and relative immunity and tight solidarity will wiggle this about until they have a new advantage.

Re:Won't work the way you think

[Catbeller]

Hm. what I am trying to say, I think, is never to accept tech as a panacea, or even a amelliorative to a problem that is human and structural. The buggers will squirm and put a new hold on the suspect, as it were. The beatings may go down - that would be good. The cameras will help, undoubtably, and already have. We techites tend to believe in our equipment and ingenuity. But, recall that Apple has a patent on a geofenced override command for multimedia recording (on a phone at least). At some point, police and the like may, probably will, get the capability to shut off our recorders at will. Then they could shut off theirs, and then the DA and a jury has to decide who's lying. Usually cops and the DA win that battle.

Problem is, as I noodle it, is that the cops have become non-civilians, in their minds. If the people are civilians, then they must be soldiers, and they are no longer employees but an occupying army beset by the enemy. They'd never even say that in their minds, but it is, you must admit at this point, obvious that they have dettached themselves from the civilians. Turning your back on your boss, for instance, smacks of the ol' Army has Turned Against El Presidente. I dunno. Time to tear it down and start over? Reduce the number of stupid crimes so that the police don't have to view EVERYone as the possible enemy (trim it down to assault, murder, theft, and dump the moral and chemical crimes).

Re:Won't work the way you think

[laird]

The way to moderate that is to treat disabling a camera as admission of guilt by whoever turned off the camera for whatever happened while the camera was off. That gives the police an incentive to make sure that the cameras are working, have a full charge, etc.

Given that you can make cameras that can record for days or weeks continuously, on a single charge, it should be possible to make them run reliably for the duration of a shift.

Message brought to you by Captain Obvious...

[gestalt_n_pepper]

Yes. Cops behave within the limits of the law when they're watched and many can't be trusted when they're NOT watched. I don't think we really needed a study for that.

How nice if this would turn in to legislation. Of course, for that we'd need a congress that had focus, a spine and would actually be bothered to consider the will of the people.

Re:Message brought to you by Captain Obvious...

[Anonymous Coward]

It won't need to be legislated, police departments across the country are beginning to adopt it. As with anything, it will take time, but it's here.

Funny how everyone wants this in order to watch the cops. I'm willing to bet, this will actually cause the people they deal with to de-escalate easier and will likely result in fewer issues caused by the public. Of course, everyone will just say "See, when you watch the cops they behave"

Re:Message brought to you by Captain Obvious...

[BarbaraHudson]

Yes. Cops behave within the limits of the law when they're watched and many can't be trusted when they're NOT watched.

People behave within the limits of the law when they're watched and many can't be trusted when they're NOT watched.

unless you're the designated loser

[Anonymous Coward]

There will be force used against you if you're the unpopular loser from the out-crowd. Because unacceptable use of force needs to be unacceptable to an in-crowd with influence on the user of force.

First they came for the jews, then they came for the gypsies, then they came for the niggers, and then they came for the nerds, and nobody gave a shit.

Accountability is the name of the game

[Anonymous Coward]

Accountability is paramount in keeping any powerful system in place.

The police would increase their political power by using their unions to make deals with prosecutors, secure reassignments, and avoid real repercussion for improper use of that power. This political obfuscation and inherent force is what allows systemic abuse to happen.

The solution is not to fight back with violence against the inherent force, but to shine a light on the political obfuscation. The protests are best where they ask for accountability and transparency. The less that is kept behind closed doors, the better.

What benefit do the police have to hiding their processes? It's the same as a spouse refusing to say what they do when you're not around, point-blank refusing to address it, especially after you've already caught them cheating once. You're going to assume the worst, right?

By forcibly shining the light in, and creating accountability, the "good cops" that are brought up in arguments against people who universally dislike the police actually get their chance to shine, and the cockroaches in the organizations start to scatter. If you want to be a brute, go to a field where it's encouraged, like paramilitary contractors.

Masking the Real Problem

[Anonymous Coward]

This is nothing more than a false panacea. http://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2014/12/04/body-cameras-wont-stop-police-brutality-eric-garner-is-only-one-of-several-reasons-why/

Re:Masking the Real Problem

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd say it's less a panacea, and more just a simple brick in building a better police force. Body cams don't stop judicial misconduct, strong-arming by police unions, or charge the racist or classist attitudes of some segments of America who would view criminals as universally "deserving" it (without even discussing criminality, milder attitudes tend to at least want more non-lethal responses, even if not objecting to overall incarceration rates) - but they're an important first stop and while other Eric Garners might happen, and more cops might be acquitted by a grand jury in a case where there was obviously enough to go to trail (again, meaning that they didn't even think the evidence was worthy of further review, showing real issues in the system), but they'll be caught on tape and the outrage will continue.

That outrage is the function of democracy, and it's how change happens. It's easy to be complacent when you're not faced with the images of what injustices are happening to people, but then you see a video of a man being choked to death for selling "loosies"? It's going to bring more people, and those people are going to bring the rest of the bricks.

Many people have thunk it.

[MisterSquid]

I cycle in a major metro area and started wearing a highly visible helmet camera for liability reasons.

I also noticed (anecdata!) that the camera tended to have a calming effect on motorists near me as I would (for example) turn to look over my shoulder and the camera profile was visible.

Not all motorists are calmed when they see my camera, but it seems many are (for example, they'll ease off tailgating me and shadowing my blind spots).

I will admit that I am pretty quick to shout heads up and escalate the verbal stakes (e.g. cursing) when motorists honk if I (for example) legally and quickly take the full lane, but I only do so in the interest of encouraging safer driving and cycling. I have zero interest in provoking a fight.

YMMV

Re:Many people have thunk it.

[donaggie03]

Not all motorists are calmed when they see my camera, but it seems many are (for example, they'll ease off tailgating me and shadowing my blind spots).

You are on a bicycle. You have no blind spots.

Re:Many people have thunk it.

[MisterSquid]

Not all motorists are calmed when they see my camera, but it seems many are (for example, they'll ease off tailgating me and shadowing my blind spots).

You are on a bicycle. You have no blind spots.

That's ridiculous.

Just as when driving your blind spots are at 7 o'clock and 5 o'clock. And just as when driving, one compensates by turning one's head or using a mirror.

Re:Many people have thunk it.

[MisterSquid]

Not to mention that when one cycles, a mirror doesn't provide the same kind of "rear view" as a rear view mirror does while driving.

Re:Many people have thunk it.

[Anonymous Coward]

"legally and quickly take the full lane"
as long as you are not impeding the flow of traffic, i have no problems.

Re:Many people have thunk it.

[Anonymous Coward]

There is no pillar in the way, as in a car. Use wide angle mirrors.

Re:Many people have thunk it.

[NatasRevol]

Never ridden a bike, have you?

Re:Many people have thunk it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Probably is impeding the flow of traffic. Cyclists who ride on the road seem to be pretty universally full of themselves.

Re:Many people have thunk it.

[BarbaraHudson]

Not all motorists are calmed when they see my camera, but it seems many are (for example, they'll ease off tailgating me and shadowing my blind spots).

You are on a bicycle. You have no blind spots.

That's ridiculous.

Just as when driving your blind spots are at 7 o'clock and 5 o'clock. And just as when driving, one compensates by turning one's head or using a mirror.

Not to mention that there's a lot of people riding bicycles because their vision is no longer good enough to drive a 1500kg at 50km/h, but is still serviceable for riding a 15kg bike at 15km/h. Not just visual acuity, but also degradation of peripheral vision, blind spots on the retina, maybe slower reaction times ...

Re:Many people have thunk it.

[Cinnamon Beige]

I'm very glad to hear of a bicyclist who actually bothers knowing the local laws--I grew up in a town where bikes actually are banned from sidewalks because of local cyclists having developed the lovely habit of running down pedestrians. (Well, at least trying to run down. I had to move very quickly on occasion as a small child because of adults confusing the sidewalk for a bike lane.)

Part of why it has the calming effect--probably on pedestrians as well as motorists--is that it lowers the odds of you intentionally pulling some of the hijinks cyclists will occasionally do on the road, intentionally causing problems with the flow of traffic. I have known too many who make very clear their refusal to grasp that some people really cannot get around by bikes--and some have made religious fundamentalists seem mild when it came to their sanctimonious attitudes towards those who don't use bikes to get around.

Also... I've also had to honk at a few cyclists--typically, I am willing to presume a cyclist didn't mean to suddenly come out of my blind spot, especially when I notice a camera, but still, sometimes they do and I'd like think that they'd want to know...and the same goes sometimes for ones whom I at least had seen coming up beside me but did not see signal before moving in front of me. Which actually raises a question--does a camera make it easier to adjust and improve your cycling habits to be safer? I suspect that some problems are more easily spotted by reviewing the footage later.

Re:Many people have thunk it.

[MisterSquid]

"legally and quickly take the full lane" as long as you are not impeding the flow of traffic, i have no problems.

Where I live, as in many municipalities, motorists must yield to cyclists who may be avoiding hazards that motorists cannot see such as roadside debris, potholes, opening doors, etc.

Additionally, in major metropolitan areas, it's safer to yield to bicyclists who will pass through traffic once they've done taking the full lane as they need.

With regard to cycling safety: when I drive, I think like a bicyclist and when I bike, I think like a motorist.

Re:Many people have thunk it.

[NoKaOi]

I will admit that I am pretty quick to shout heads up and escalate the verbal stakes (e.g. cursing) when motorists honk if I (for example) legally and quickly take the full lane, but I only do so in the interest of encouraging safer driving and cycling. I have zero interest in provoking a fight.

"Quickly?" In other words, you're riding along the right hand side of your lane, and as a car approaches intending to pass you, you quickly move into the middle or left of the lane to force them to quickly slow down to prevent passing. Doing anything "quickly" that obstructs others is a dick move and you know it. You're an asshole who makes the rest of us cyclists look bad. Only in very rare situations would that "quickly" move promote safety. It's unsafe to anger another driver, both to you and the next cyclist they come upon. You're not doing it to promote safety, you're doing it to express dominance, like a gorilla beating its chest.

Next time you try that, think about this - are you doing it to promote safety, or are you doing it to try to express dominance by proving that you can legally be a dick? Believe me, the other driver doesn't care how big your penis is, so be the better person and don't be a dick or a dumbass to cars when you're on your bike, you're making the rest of us look bad, and it hurts us when we actually want to promote safety or policy changes (who wants their tax dollars to pay for bike lanes for a bunch of assholes like you?)

Re: Many people have thunk it.

[Anonymous Coward]

legally and quickly take the full lane...

I'm cautious driving next to cyclists. Know a few by site along my daily commute.

If a cyclist legally and quickly's in front of me, I'd likely choose collision with another vehicle or building ... Been there with a kid in a parking lot, scared the crap out of me, thankfully reacted quickly enough not to strike the child. So, back to the legally and quickly, unless all happens perfect, you risk severe injury and death doing that on a cycle in traffic, why would you attempt suicide?

That move in with a car is also legal and quick, but stupid to do.

Re:Many people have thunk it.

[MisterSquid]

I will admit that I am pretty quick to shout heads up and escalate the verbal stakes (e.g. cursing) when motorists honk if I (for example) legally and quickly take the full lane, but I only do so in the interest of encouraging safer driving and cycling. I have zero interest in provoking a fight.

"Quickly?" In other words, you're riding along the right hand side of your lane, and as a car approaches intending to pass you, you quickly move into the middle or left of the lane to force them to quickly slow down to prevent passing. Doing anything "quickly" that obstructs others is a dick move and you know it. You're an asshole who makes the rest of us cyclists look bad. Only in very rare situations would that "quickly" move promote safety. It's unsafe to anger another driver, both to you and the next cyclist they come upon. You're not doing it to promote safety, you're doing it to express dominance, like a gorilla beating its chest.

Next time you try that, think about this - are you doing it to promote safety, or are you doing it to try to express dominance by proving that you can legally be a dick? Believe me, the other driver doesn't care how big your penis is, so be the better person and don't be a dick or a dumbass to cars when you're on your bike, you're making the rest of us look bad, and it hurts us when we actually want to promote safety or policy changes (who wants their tax dollars to pay for bike lanes for a bunch of assholes like you?)

What's with your attitude? As far as anyone can tell, you're the asshole for all your presumption.

In any case, I do signal before moving from the edge of a lane to the middle, and I do assess if it's OK to do so.

Also, where I live (California), drivers may only pass when there is three or more feet between a cyclist and a driver.

Why don't you take your sanctimoniousness someplace where it's warranted?

Re: Many people have thunk it.

[snowsnoot]

The blind spot is not related to b pillar etc but a region of the retina that is not sensitive to light and therefore blind.

https://faculty.washington.edu...

Re:Many people have thunk it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Go and read parent comment again. "Quick to shout", not "quick to take the full lane".

Re:Many people have thunk it.

[kevmeister]

You (probably under 125 Kg) + bicycle (probably under 20 Kg) vs even a compact car (probably over 1000 Kg... probably a LOT over). Guess who wins (e.i. lives).

As a frequent cyclist I am regularly amazed at the incredibly stupid things I see others do. Often because they don't know better (e.g. riding on the wrong side of the street) or because they are on power trip (e.g. it's legal to use the full lane even though it is wide enough to allow a car to safely pass).

The first rule of the road for every cyclist who wants to continue being one into his/her 70s is NEVER do anything unexpected by a car. You my end up dead and the car driver may have his/her life ruined because you 1) Don't know the rules of the road, 2) Don't care, 3) You ego and competitive instinct tell you to show them who's boss!

I wish drivers knew the rules, too. I have almost been hit twice because divers turned right in front of me without moving into the bike lane as required and I bet they don't know that they are supposed to do so. I lived to tell the tale because I assumed that the car (or, in one case, the bus) just might turn right without realizing I was there and was able to dodge them. Always, always assume the driver is on his/her phone or otherwise unaware you exist and has no idea of the rule of the road. You will be annoyed at times, but you will live longer (on average).

If only the cop had a camera in Ferguson...

[Bueller_007]

Yes, if only the cop had a camera during the Michael Brown stop, then I suppose his killing would have looked more like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Don't forget, the cops in that case knew they were being filmed. Here's another case where cops disgracefully killed someone when they knew they were on film. He had a weapon, but was at such a distance that he posed no threat at all ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?... ) And another one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Any time that cops are in a store, they know they're being filmed on security cameras. Here's another "heroic" action by the cops, committing what any sane human would consider to be murder while they know that they are being filmed: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

And of course don't expect some of the footage not to go "missing" ( http://www.washingtonpost.com/... ), and don't expect the footage to even be released ( http://www.citylab.com/crime/2... ). And even if it goes to a grand jury, don't expect the District Attorney not to knowingly put a liar on the stand and throw the case: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Obviously this is all anecdotal and not "scientific" compared with the study in the summary, but it should be clear that this problem of police violence is not going to be completely solved until the cultures of "shoot first and ask questions later" and "protect each other" within law enforcement are changed.

Re:If only the cop had a camera in Ferguson...

[Anonymous Coward]

Once it's on tape it is up to the justice system to prosecute. And not give the police any leeway. We can't stop bad cops. But If officers can get consistently and justly punished for the wrong they do AND the innocent get there fair shake when they are wronged by the authorities then we will at least be heading in the right direction.

Those cops in the links you posted are criminal and should be treated as such.

Re:If only the cop had a camera in Ferguson...

[Anonymous Coward]

No one says they were "bad and wrong and evil", you redundant moron. But they obviously need better training, and they need to be held accountable when they do something wrong.

P.S. Your idiotic comment on Eric Garner flies in the face of facts. The coroner's report calls it a homicide, with the cause of death being asphyxiation.
http://bigstory.ap.org/article...

Ignorant twat.

Re:If only the cop had a camera in Ferguson...

[Anonymous Coward]

In instance 1 you cite, if Garner did not resist he would be alive.
In instance 2 you cite, if the homeless man did not resist he would be alive.
In instance 4 you cite, if the man in the white tee did not resist and go for something at his waist he would be alive.
In instance 4 you cite, if Crawford did not resist and go for the (pellet) gun he would be alive.

Seeing a pattern here? Let me spell it our for you, Don't resist the cops, follow their instructions and live. You can fight trumped up charges or some perceived injustice in court.

Re:If only the cop had a camera in Ferguson...

[Anonymous Coward]

1. Resistance is not an excuse for execution by the police, when none of the officers' own lives are in danger.
2. The homeless man was mentally ill and was known to the police to be mentally ill. And again, resistance is not an excuse for murder. In addition, they could have tased, etc. Made ANY attempt to before shooting him. He was isolated and was not posing a threat to ANYONE.
3. "Going for something at your waist" is not a crime, and that's not even what happened. He had his hands in his pockets. The man was completely unarmed; the cop was jumpy and trigger happy.
4. The cops shot before even giving him the chance to drop the weapon. In addition, all he was doing was walking around with an item that he picked up off the shelves. This was the death penalty for "shopping while black".

In any of those cases, had a citizen "hero" been the one who had done the killing, they clearly would have been charged with 2nd or 3rd degree murder. You can't just shoot unarmed people who don't pose a threat to you because you're feeling jumpy. And the cops--who are better trained to deal with these situations than normal people and who get PAID to do a risky job--should be held to the same standards as the citizenry.

But feel free to make up your own facts. That's what conservatives do.

Re:If only the cop had a camera in Ferguson...

[Bueller_007]

And nowhere in my comment do I say that we shouldn't actually put cameras on cops. I merely say that it won't actually "solve" the problem. As the article itself points out.

It has nothing to do with "perfect being the enemy of the good".

Re:If only the cop had a camera in Ferguson...

[Anonymous Coward]

Obviously this is all anecdotal and not "scientific" compared with the study in the summary, but it should be clear that this problem of police violence is not going to be completely solved until the cultures of "shoot first and ask questions later" and "protect each other" within law enforcement are changed.

Population problems are rarely solved, they're mitigated. The cameras mitigate the problem.

And the problem with "protect each other" is that it is currently "lie for each other". Bet that goes down with cameras there as well.

Cuts Both Ways

[Irate Engineer]

Sure, cameras cut down on the use of force by the police.

It also cuts down on the incidence rate of perpetrators claiming they got roughed up by the police in an attempt to get out of their charges.

Re:Cuts Both Ways

[HiThere]

Sounds like a win-win, so why is anyone opposed?

(Well, OK, the Seattle police have some decent arguments, but they also appear to have a shady history which causes one to doubt that the arguments raised are their real reasons. Still, they *are* decent arguments. I'm not sure what the resolution should be, but I am sure it should involve continual taping to an archival store that cannot be edited...which is an impossible ideal, but get as close to it as possible.)

Re:Cuts Both Ways

[Maxwell'sSilverLART]

I'm not seeing the problem either way.

Truth is its own virtue.

Study: headlines which use subjective terms...

[wonkey_monkey]

Study: Police Body-Cams Reduce Unacceptable Use of Force

Where has the "unacceptable" word come from, which is peppered throughout the article? Isn't it enough to simply report, without resorting to subjective qualifications such as this, that:

Data from the Rialto experiment shows police officers are deterred [...] from using force in general

Re:Study: headlines which use subjective terms...

[BarbaraHudson]

Study: Police Body-Cams Reduce Unacceptable Use of Force

Where has the "unacceptable" word come from, which is peppered throughout the article? Isn't it enough to simply report, without resorting to subjective qualifications such as this, that:

Data from the Rialto experiment shows police officers are deterred [...] from using force in general

Maybe because there are times when the police are justified in using force, and that's acceptable? Why not focus on the unacceptable stuff?

There will be political opposition.

[SuricouRaven]

Fox News anchors have already gone on air claiming that body cameras are insulting to police.

Re:There will be political opposition.

[SuricouRaven]

Oh, should give the source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Stop scare-mongering

[Anonymous Coward]

Those lower percentages scare me because it's clear proof that a majority of police officers abuse their powers.

Bullshit. The dialog wants to paint cops as the bad guys, but the study leaves out an important datapoint--what was the percent change in aggressiveness or attacks against police officers. Simply put, if the police officers are attacked 80% less, they will have to use force less often, and the reports against such retaliatory "excessive" force are diminished.

Do cameras help? Looks like. The cause-and-effect are misconstrued IMO.

Re:Stop scare-mongering

[DamnOregonian]

Totally. Violent criminals usually think twice about attacking an officer because he's wearing a camera. That makes so much sense, I can't believe I didn't think about it.

that's why cops don't wear them

[Anonymous Coward]

Cop just shot a kid dead near Furguson. Kid allegedly pointed a gun at the cop. Cop was assigned a body camera but wasn't wearing it so now we'll never know and the cop is, of course, innocent until proven guilty. Open season. License to kill. Nothing new but amplified by social media.

but what if they're turned off

[jsepeta]

a surprising number of murders of citizens by police happen when the cameras are not turned on.

Re:but what if they're turned off

[oodaloop]

[citation needed]

Re:but what if they're turned off

[wonkey_monkey]

Now now, let's not go bringing facts into this.

Re:but what if they're turned off

[Catbeller]

Did you bother to look? Google: police kill camera shut off

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t...

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t...

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t...

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t...

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t...

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t...

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t...

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t...

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t...

Re:but what if they're turned off

[Catbeller]

And ... you never bothered to look. You demand facts that are already in evidence.

Re:but what if they're turned off

[wonkey_monkey]

And ... whoosh. Just trying to lighten the mood.

Re:but what if they're turned off

[x_t0ken_407]

Lol, don't worry, GP nor wonkey_money will bother commenting at their surprise that something so absurd could possibly be true.

Violence against police ...

[drnb]

I really don't care about violence against police, but if this bullet points helps convince PD's to adopt cameras then super!

What an ignorant statement you offer. Violence against police is why police react so forcefully. According to the FBI nearly 10% of police officers who get shot are shot with their own gun. That is why unarmed people who try to get into a wrestling match with cops get shot, because the cops are very afraid of losing control of their own gun.

People who are compliant tend not to get shot. People who react violently are far more likely to get shot. So if you actually care about people getting shot you should care about violence against police.

Re:Violence against police ...

[king neckbeard]

Perception of violence against police is why police react so forcefully. While actual violence against police can be a factor, it is far from the only factor, and it's not unreasonable for it to be an inverse relationship between actual danger and perceived danger. The armament of a department may also play a factor, as if a PD has an MRAP, they might think at some level that they are covering a dangerous area. Police selection against high intelligence may also tie in with aggression.

Re:Violence against police ...

[pla]

Violence against police is why police react so forcefully.

Uh-huh. Why, just look at the violence from this unconscious asshole! Why, that threatening way he got thrown from the car when it rolled over at highway speeds - Heck, even I felt intimidated by him, just watching the video!


People who are compliant tend not to get shot.

Right - They just get tased, pepper-sprayed, and/or choked out for shits n' giggles.


The only good cops know they have a camera trained on them (and can't just smash it and harass the photographer), period.

Re:Violence against police ...

[Anonymous Coward]

According to the FBI nearly 10% of police officers who get shot are shot with their own gun. [...] the cops are very afraid of losing control of their own gun.

Then perhaps cops should not be allowed to carry gun. This very same argument is used by anti-arms nut jobs.

I, for one, believe that the police is not a military occupation force but a civilian law enforcement body and therefore should only use equipment available to civilian. If you do no have the right to life, implying the right to defend your life, then you should DEMAND that the police get no such privilege as well.

And if you think the likelihood of being a victim of violent act is determinant about who get the privilege of being able to defend themselves, then taxi drivers should be the first to get that arm bearing privilege.

Re:Violence against police ...

[drnb]

Exceptions don't prove the rule. One can always find a video to represent whatever behavior your political agenda wants to promote.

The fact remains that when cops use deadly force it is almost always out of fear.

Re:Violence against police ...

[pla]

Exceptions don't prove the rule.

You see all those "good" cops standing around "just doing their jobs" in those videos?

The guy choking the drunk college kid out doesn't prove the rule. All those "good" cops doing nothing, however, do.

For every bad cop we hear about, know that an entire fucking department has facilitated his behavior, making them every bit as worthless as the "bad" ones.

Re:Violence against police ...

[drnb]

You are woefully ignorant of police. An MRAP does not make the average cop think he is in danger. It makes the average copy think he is safer because other cops are here and we have a whole lot of intimidation with us. MRAPs are not used for a lone cop on patrol, its used for groups of cops in special situations.

Selection against intelligence, a bogus claim. The two guys I went to high school with who became cops were taking all the college prep math and science classes and doing quite well, trig, pre-calc, chem, physics, etc.

Speaking of groups of cops. One of the most effective ways to reduce their fear is to not send them out alone. When a partner is present a cop is far more likely to use a less-than-lethal weapon like a taser or baton than his gun.

Re:Violence against police ...

[bondsbw]

For every bad cop we hear about, know that an entire fucking department has facilitated his behavior, making them every bit as worthless as the "bad" ones.

Even if this were true (which it is not), the number of police officers and police departments who do not condone this behavior FAR outweigh the number who do.

Re:Violence against police ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Exceptions don't prove the rule

Problem, this sort of stuff is not the exception- it's the norm.

Re:Violence against police ...

[drnb]

Again, exceptions don't prove the rule.

And bystander videos do not exactly tell the whole story. The cops on the scene may see or have seen many things that the bystander never did, or the bystander failed to record. That is why police body cams are so much more useful. We get to see a far more complete portrayal of events.

Re:Violence against police ...

[Strangely Familiar]

That is why unarmed people who try to get into a wrestling match with cops get shot, because the cops are very afraid of losing control of their own gun. People who are compliant tend not to get shot. People who react violently are far more likely to get shot. So if you actually care about people getting shot you should care about violence against police.

No, it goes both ways. Police who are overly aggressive and verbally abusive tend to provoke ordinary citizens with a sense of dignity and self respect. When citizens reply verbally in kind to unfair and abusive treatment from the police, the unfair, abusive police escalate and turn the situation violent where the situation should not be violent. This is one of the reasons police cameras work. The police tend to self-monitor and self-censor their overly agressive and abusive behaviors before a confrontation begins to escalate. So a cop is much less likely to start a traffic stop interaction with an angry comment like "What kind of fucking moron drives forty eight in a residential area?" if they know it is going to be on camera for their boss to see.

Not all cops, of course. I have been pulled over by many polite and respectful police officers. And of course, police typically have to deal with drunken belligerents more than church choir members. But someone who is drunk should still be treated with respect, not verbally abused, even while they are being arrested and jailed.

Re:Violence against police ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Then why don't these 'good' cops, who "do not condone this behavior", I dunno... ARREST the cops who do this stuff?! I mean, letting people get away with something is pretty much the very definition of "condone".

At the very least, all the 'good' cops should take the 'bad' cop out for a drink, and 'explain' the situation to him- "Hey Bob, we've noticed that you like to break the law sometimes, choking suspects, illegally searching them, etc. Well, we just wanna let you know we won't stand for this, and will be starting to gather evidence against you if you continue doing it."

Re:Violence against police ...

[Spamalope]

For every bad cop we hear about, know that an entire fucking department has facilitated his behavior,

And the police union, for getting the ones so bad they were fired reinstated with back pay.

Re:Violence against police ...

[pla]

Again, exceptions don't prove the rule.

You have an odd definition of "exceptions", when I specifically included both the bad cops and the rest of their departments. "But you left out that one really really good cop in a coma for the past 30 years!"


And bystander videos do not exactly tell the whole story.

True enough. Why, in that first video I linked, you don't get to see the context - That the guy had just run over a spike mat, lost control of the vehicle, and almost hit a cop. Clearly that missing details justifies half a dozen armed thugs beating the shit out of an unconscious guy lying bleeding on the side of the highway. Damned biased bystanders, always trying to make the police look bad!


We get to see a far more complete portrayal of events.

Except, of course, when the cameras "malfunction" at those very convenient moments when the accused suddenly has an attack of clumsiness and walks into a brick wall... Repeatedly.


That is why police body cams are so much more useful.

And that is why police hate hate hate mandatory camera policies to the point that they piss and moan and vandalized the cameras and threaten to go on illegal strikes over them.

Re:Violence against police ...

[Anonymous Coward]

It sure as FUCK is true.

Do you see police decrying other cops' behavior? No. Not a single one. They make up bullshit excuses about how it was justified. EVERY FUCKING TIME.

Police departments condone all these behaviors by remaining silent. As they repeatedly do.

Re:Violence against police ...

[Anonymous Coward]

> Violence against police is why police react so forcefully.

Tell that to Rodney King

Re:Violence against police ...

[drnb]

Police who are overly aggressive and verbally abusive tend to provoke ordinary citizens with a sense of dignity and self respect. When citizens reply verbally in kind to unfair and abusive treatment from the police ...

Actually by doing so the citizen is escalating the situation too. As the Mayor of NY told is son, just shut up and comply and things can get sorted out at the police station. Ie file a report against the officer. Escalating things at the scene is a dumb thing to do.

Re:Violence against police ...

[Free Censorship]

People who are compliant tend not to get shot.

"Comply or die." -The land of the free and the home of the brave

Re:Violence against police ...

[drnb]

Again, exceptions don't prove the rule. You have an odd definition of "exceptions", when I specifically included both the bad cops and the rest of their departments.

Not really. The exception I referred in both my posts was a video showing bad behavior by police. A video is what we call anecdotal, not statistical. The number of police is a single video is irrelevant.

Why, in that first video I linked, you don't get to see the context - That the guy had just run over a spike mat, lost control of the vehicle, and almost hit a cop. Clearly that missing details justifies half a dozen armed thugs beating the shit out of an unconscious guy lying bleeding on the side of the highway

You have an odd definition in "context". When a spiked mat is layed out they are generally dealing with a fleeing suspect who is endangering civilians in some manner, i.e. high speed chase. Getting dragged out of the car, forcibly put on the ground and handcuffed is a pretty reasonable response. Also the odds are fair in such incidents that the suspect was armed when things started. That said, there is no excuse for beating a suspect.

And that is why police hate hate hate mandatory camera policies ...

Actually in that department in California where the long term test has been going on the officers like the cameras.

Re:Violence against police ...

[sjames]

Look on the right hand side. There's an awful lot of those 'exceptions'. Way too many. And way too many are later found blameless and put right back out there to do it again.

That needs to stop. It's not all cops, but it's enough of them that it's eroding the public trust. That, in turn will cause more violence against cops as regular citizens begin to fear for their own safety when they encounter police. With all those 'exceptions', is it REALLY unbelievable if a citizen attacks a cop and says he did it because he was in fear of his life? If the cops really want to be safer out there, they need to make certain that the idea of a cop attacking a citizen unprovoked or way out of proportion to provocation is laughable.

Re:Violence against police ...

[drnb]

People who are compliant tend not to get shot.

"Comply or die." -The land of the free and the home of the brave

There is nothing brave about a criminal fighting a cop, its just an example of stupidity. They rarely get away with it, maybe they delay the arrest at the price of more charges and longer incarceration. Smart criminals comply, thereby avoiding injury and getting out of jail sooner.

Re:Violence against police ...

[Noah Haders]

the problem is all of the innocent people who get hassled and harrassed by the police. like random patdowns, or civil foreclosure, or general mafioso-style intimidation tactics. when you put thugs and criminals in a blue suit they are still thugs and criminals.

Re:Violence against police ...

[drnb]

The exception is a video, not the cop(s) in the video. The video is anecdotal, not statistical.

Re:Violence against police ...

[DamnOregonian]

Yes, anyone knows it's a bad idea to call a Stasi officer a cunt to their face.
That totally makes what they do A-OK.
You fucking rock, man.

Re:Violence against police ...

[DamnOregonian]

After an entire page of your posts, I've come to the conclusion that you're a totalitarian apologist, and a shitbag. I truly hope some day that you don't "comply" enough for an officer and get your dignity, self respect, and maybe even a little of your physical integrity adjusted by one of these ego-driven assholes.

Re:Violence against police ...

[Strangely Familiar]

"reply verbally in kind" is not escalation. The citizen is well within their rights to say, "Well you don't need to be a complete asshole about it. Just shut up and give me the ticket." After all, the police started with the unnecessary verbal abuse. To respond "in kind" is not escalation. But of course, everyone knows where that conversation is going. The abusive police, insisting on their god given right to be an abusive dickhead, will escalate to prove to the citizen that they must, as you suggest, "shut up and comply" like a good subservient citizen, not one with rights. You say it is a "dumb" thing to do, but some people have a lot of self respect, and won't be wrongly abused. They would rather get into a physical altercation to defend their honor than to be bowed by a policeman breaking the law (which is what most likely will happen in my scenario). I am not one of those people, but I personally know people like that. And I worry about them whenever there is a police situation, despite them doing nothing wrong.

Re:Violence against police ...

[Free Censorship]

There is nothing brave about a criminal fighting a cop, its just an example of stupidity.

There's nothing brave or free about a situation where government thugs will use excessive force against someone who merely resists them, which is what is happening. I expect cops to behave absolutely professionally and to respect people's liberties even in extreme circumstances.

Re:Violence against police ...

[Anonymous Coward]

A video is what we call anecdotal, not statistical. The number of police is a single video is irrelevant.

Rodney King beating. Just another anecdote...

Re:Violence against police ...

[umghhh]

It seems US citizens like shooting each other and this is not going to change soon. There seems to be generally more violence in US than in other Western countries. Possibly because US citizens have not enough guns???

Re:Violence against police ...

[drnb]

the problem is all of the innocent people who get hassled and harrassed by the police. like random patdowns, or civil foreclosure, or general mafioso-style intimidation tactics. when you put thugs and criminals in a blue suit they are still thugs and criminals.

If you want to talk about the militarization of the police, civil forfeitures, etc I'm with you. However the fact remains that the police do a dangerous job even when done right and that violence against police, again 10% of those shot are shot with their own gun, is the primary thing behind the police resorting to deadly force so quickly. Getting into a wrestling match or fist fight may be a minor thing to you and I but it is *not* so to a cop. While there are a few "thugs in blue", most of the shootings are "self defense by blue".

Re:Violence against police ...

[drnb]

There is nothing brave about a criminal fighting a cop, its just an example of stupidity.

There's nothing brave or free about a situation where government thugs will use excessive force against someone who merely resists them, which is what is happening. I expect cops to behave absolutely professionally and to respect people's liberties even in extreme circumstances.

The problem is some people have a strange definition of excessive force. There was just another shooting near Ferguson. An 18 year old pointed a 9mm pistol at a cop and was shot. Protesters are at the police station claiming he should have been tasered or maced.

When being arrested you are no longer at liberty, that is sort of the inherent definition of being under arrest.

Acting professionally, yes, that is required.

Re:Violence against police ...

[drnb]

Its not about what they are doing being OK. Its about what you are doing being stupid and counterproductive. A bully on the playground you punch. A bully in uniform on the street, you fight with the law not a punch.

Re:Violence against police ...

[drnb]

"reply verbally in kind" is not escalation. The citizen is well within their rights to say, "Well you don't need to be a complete asshole about it. Just shut up and give me the ticket."

That is not an escalation. Yelling at the cop and walking toward him to get in his face would be an escalation.

They would rather get into a physical altercation to defend their honor than to be bowed by a policeman breaking the law (which is what most likely will happen in my scenario).

A cop talking like an a-hole is not breaking the law. Perhaps it is breaking department policy. File a report. Yell and get in his face and you are a fool giving the rare bad cop the excuse he needs. You let him goad you into crossing the line. Getting played like that doesn't defend your honor, it just makes you look the fool, a sucker.

Re:Violence against police ...

[Anonymous Coward]

A video is what we call anecdotal, not statistical. The number of police is a single video is irrelevant.

Rodney King beating. Just another anecdote...

Exactly, that's why you had to go back 25 years.

Re:Violence against police ...

[Strangely Familiar]

That is exactly what the protests are all about. The "law" is an unwilling participant in the fight. Prosecutors, unwilling to alienate the police they rely on to do their jobs, refuse to indict officers who broke the law and police policy on video, resulting in a man's death. So the system is corrupt. You can't fight them on the street. You can't fight them with the law. Your congressperson only listens to donors (e.g. the police union). Really? Is it all so neat and tidy for you? Police cameras, which continuously stream video to a remote server operated and protected by citizen watchdog groups, should be mandatory. For a start. And who will fight to make that happen? You? Were you volunteering? Let me know...

Re:Violence against police ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Police who are overly aggressive and verbally abusive tend to provoke ordinary citizens with a sense of dignity and self respect. When citizens reply verbally in kind to unfair and abusive treatment from the police ...

Actually by doing so the citizen is escalating the situation too. As the Mayor of NY told is son, just shut up and comply and things can get sorted out at the police station. Ie file a report against the officer. Escalating things at the scene is a dumb thing to do.

The difference being a citizen mouthing off isnt authorized to use deadly force because hes having a bad day today. A citizen shooting his mouth off (which by the way is not illegal!) is only shooting his mouth off.

A cop having a bad day (or who gets treated verbally in a way he doesn't like) get to tell you to step out of the car, waste your time, subject you to a search, trump up charges, harm/injure you. Possibly even cause your death. None of these actions are necessarily illegal for him, and the times they are, are very hard to prosecute, because police are expected to do these things. You have to prove he shouldn't have done something in that circumstance, not that they did it.

Seeing how these situations are not exactly equivalent? Police are given the power to use of force on the citizens. (and are typically taken at their word in a court room, even when they are the accused.) Their standard of behavior should be higher than ours, not equal, and certainly not lower. They have the power and privileges, they must prove worthy of them.

It is not the responsibility of a drunken belligerent to insure that the police are doing good jobs and worthy of the responsibilities they have volunteered assume. It is not the responsibility of the average citizen to make sure you don't accidentally give a cop a dirty look and provoke him.

It is the responsibility of those who have chosen to up hold law and order in a society to be better than petty thugs. A high stress job is not an excuse for bad behavior. These people were not drafted. If they cannot behave themselves under the working conditions of their chosen profession they need to choose a different profession.

During the 12-month Rialto experiment, use-of-force by officers wearing cameras fell by 59% and reports against officers dropped by 87% against the previous year's figures.

Stats like this are not an accident, or a statistical error. These are huge, these are proof that Cops in this nation have a serious problem with violence. 87% less complains? EIGHTY FUCKING SEVEN. Complaints agaisnt cops dropped to almost a 10th of what they used to be. They didn't drop 10% (which still would have been significant.) nearly 9 out of 10 complaints less. What the hell were these cops doing before we put a camera on them? I'm sure some of that is people who don't bother filing bullshit complaints now that there's video, so it works both ways and the good cops will welcome body cameras as much as the citizens will for that reason, but I'd find it hard to believe that the volume of bullshit complaints was that high. Which we know it isn't since the next stat.

Almost sixty percent less use of force. Knowing that the official record was going to include more than just what they say happened made cops decide that violence was not the answer less than half (more like 2/3rd) as often as before the cameras.

We know our cops have a violence issue by comparing our output to Europe. Some nations entire police forces manage to shoot their weapons in the single digits in a whole year, never mind actual fatalities. America's cops kill better than one a day. Even adjusting for population that's still obscene. Cops also get killed about once every three days nation wide.

These criminal (and yes criminal is the right word, police kill more people than the prisons manage to execute, by a huge margin. Around three times as many. Forget the death penalty,

Re:Violence against police ...

[Noah Haders]

an MRAP makes the average citizen think he is in danger from an armed military invasion. if the police did not behave as if they are an occupying force, then maybe the citizenry would be more receptive to dealing with them.

Re:Violence against police ...

[Noah Haders]

yes but what about the "blue wall" where no cops speak out and say "what this other cop did was bad". it's just a bunch of shizz.

Re:Violence against police ...

[bugs2squash]

How many of the 10% shot with their own gun were shot by themselves or another police officer ?

Re:Violence against police ...

[Strangely Familiar]

I'm not talking about escalating, or crossing the line. I am talking about what happens when a citizen makes a comment they are well within their rights to make. On one occasion, in my personal experience, a friend told a cop to "protect and serve" when the cop was walking away after a particularly obnoxious encounter. The cop turned, walked up to my friend, grabbed his shirt, and violently shook him, yelling at him at length for being a smart ass. I positioned myself behind the cop, worried that the situation might get worse. Fortunately, for everyone involved, the illegal violent shaking was all that occured. So, you keep putting it like the citizen is going to be the one that crosses the line and escalates. I believe from this and other experiences, as well as stories recounted to me, that it is typically the overly agressive police officer who intially crosses the line from verbal abuse to physical agression.

Re:Violence against police ...

[HiThere]

You are correct about "the rule", the problem is that one instance of vile behavior can totally cancel out over a hundred instances of good behavior. Depending on how bad it is it can cancel out over a thousand. And while there is a definite limit as to how good a cop can be, the limit as to how bad he can be is extremely high. And they don't effectively "self police". Even the "good cop" tends to feel that he must protect the bad cop, no matter what he is guilty of. And tends to act to protect him.

OTOH, in many parts of the community, there is much more expectation of encountering a bad cop than a "good cop". And this is justified by what gets reported by believable sources. (That you believe other sources is almost irrelevant.) And there is, unfortunately, a certain amount of evidence to show that the perception of those who don't trust the police is correct. This ranges from their armed intrusion into the wrong house, and shooting the residents to the less violent, but much more frequent action which have created the "crime description" of "driving while brown or black". Please note that it doesn't seem to matter what the race of the officer is, so I tend to consider this abuse a "crime of power" rather than "racial intolerance", but I admit to being uncertain about the reasons.

Re:Violence against police ...

[Strangely Familiar]

Oh, and file a report? Please. You could get arrested for trying. https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Re:Violence against police ...

[HiThere]

How could you possibly get an answer to that question that you could trust? It's a reasonable question, and my guess would be quite a small percentage. But I can't think of a single way of getting the information that I would trust. I *would* wager a small sum that you could show it would be to the officer's benefit to blame someone else even if he knew he was at fault.

Re:Violence against police ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Again, exceptions are when it is less than 100% of the time.

When 100% of a group comits a crime, saying "well that is an exception of one person" is not just factually incorrect but an out right lie.

You keep claiming that only a small number of cops murder people - so quit that, that isn't at all what anyone here is talking about.

ALL cops allow and encourage these murders. ALL. 100%. Every last one.

Unless you just HAPPEN to have the worlds only video (or any) proof that one cop somewhere at sometime actually reported the murderer cops and removed themselves from the group where everyone allows others within their group to murder freely.

You keep speaking of exceptions and haven't even posted ONE pieve of evidence that ANYONE, just ONE, one out of all the rest, have actually NOT enabled and assisted in murder.
Just one.

But of course you won't.

Re:Violence against police ...

[NoKaOi]

People who are compliant tend not to get shot. People who react violently are far more likely to get shot.

The problems occur when the person is not compliant, but is not violent either. Informing an officer verbally of what you believe your rights are is not reacting violently - and yes, I know in most cases of that an officer will just roll their eyes, but it's times when the officer treats peaceful noncompliance as violence that problems occur, and is the reason for these cameras. (I don't disagree with you that we should care about violence against the police, just making a point)

Re:Violence against police ...

[king neckbeard]

You are woefully ignorant of police. An MRAP does not make the average cop think he is in danger. It makes the average copy think he is safer because other cops are here and we have a whole lot of intimidation with us. MRAPs are not used for a lone cop on patrol, its used for groups of cops in special situations.

The steady rise of no-knock warrants over often petty offenses would suggest otherwise.

Selection against intelligence, a bogus claim. The two guys I went to high school with who became cops were taking all the college prep math and science classes and doing quite well, trig, pre-calc, chem, physics, etc.

Courts have backed police departments for not hiring police officers that scored too well on a test. I'm not saying that it's a universal problem, but it certainly doesn't help.

Speaking of groups of cops. One of the most effective ways to reduce their fear is to not send them out alone. When a partner is present a cop is far more likely to use a less-than-lethal weapon like a taser or baton than his gun.

That is probably true. Equipping both with a body cam would probably also greatly reduce the plausibility of 'malfunctions' causing footage being lost.

Re: Violence against police ...

[bondsbw]

They do. I know cops who do. You, and the media in general, just aren't listening unless it supports your agenda.

Re:Violence against police ...

[Free Censorship]

When being arrested you are no longer at liberty

You still have plenty of liberties that the police must respect.

Re:Violence against police ...

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree, and since I've had officers attempt to escalate things with me, and the only reason they didn't escalate further was because of me stopping it, I tend to think that an officer escalating things should mean immediate termination of their job. They clearly lack the temperament for a job where tense situations aren't rare. There's no need for officers who have such poor judgment/temperament.

Re:Violence against police ...

[drnb]

When being arrested you are no longer at liberty

You still have plenty of liberties that the police must respect.

No, you have rights not liberties. Both good things but different sorts things.

Re:Violence against police ...

[Anonymous Coward]

People who are compliant tend not to get shot.

Tell that to the guy in South Carolina that got shot when he reached back into his truck to get his registration, as instructed, at gun point for speeding after he got out of his vehicle at a gas station. Itchy trigger finger cops exist and will shoot you even if you are "compliant".

Re:Violence against police ...

[drnb]

You are woefully ignorant of police. An MRAP does not make the average cop think he is in danger. It makes the average copy think he is safer because other cops are here and we have a whole lot of intimidation with us. MRAPs are not used for a lone cop on patrol, its used for groups of cops in special situations.

The steady rise of no-knock warrants over often petty offenses would suggest otherwise.

Not really. That has more to do with the SWAT teams using low risk warrant situations as ad-hoc training exercises for high risk warrant situations. You gotta practice with all that gear and those tactics.

The real problem is the militarization of police. Does every friggin department need a SWAT team? No. A large enough city or a county SWAT team, sure. SWAT teams get used because they exist, not necessarily because anyone is afraid.

Re:Violence against police ...

[drnb]

How many of the 10% shot with their own gun were shot by themselves or another police officer ?

The FBI stat was for officers shot in the line of duty, so suicide would not count. Regard another police officer, the other officer has his own gun so one cop accidentally shooting another would not count.

Re:Violence against police ...

[drnb]

Despite the name, a persecutor's job is not to prosecute. It is to seek justice, if a case is wrong or sufficiently weak his job is to not prosecute.

Violating department policy is not against the law. It gets you fired, not put on trial.

Complaints filed against an officer do matter, it actually affects their careers. Its a certainty that some complaints are bogus but if one cop is getting a lot of them the department becomes suspicious. Many do look for bad cops, why? Because bad cops eventually get caught on tape and cost the city/county tens of millions in lawsuits. Many departments will get rid of bad cops because it costs them money.

Cameras are great. They keep the bad guy on both sides of the camera honest.

And as for volunteering to do my part, been there done that, seen things from the inside.

Re:Violence against police ...

[Falconhell]

The only good gun toting American is a dead one, luckily, they kill each other at world record rates.

Re:Violence against police ...

[Anonymous Coward]

A cop having a bad day (or who gets treated verbally in a way he doesn't like) get to tell you to step out of the car, waste your time, subject you to a search, trump up charges, harm/injure you. Possibly even cause your death.

If you decide to attack a cop because he pissed you off YOU are the cause of your death.

87% less complains? ... I'm sure some of that is people who don't bother filing bullshit complaints now that there's video

Its a combination of many complaints being BS to begin with and the citizens behaving themselves because the CITIZEN is on camera.

The perps?

[Anonymous Coward]

Or: perps don't go into physical confrontation with police when faced with the fact that there will be video evidence of the event.

Having a camera there makes no difference to the perps - as you call them. The perps were always at a disadvantage because the cops can say anything and justify anything. In other words, the cops are in effect a "camera" because their word is considered fact in court.

The cop says that the suspect put up a fight, then the suspect put up a fight. Cops says the suspect resisted arrest, then it is fact that the suspect resisted arrest.

And even when there are witnesses to the contrary, the cop's word supersedes the witnesses.

Cops rule; public drools.

So, your logic makes no sense.

Re:The perps?

[Anonymous Coward]

Video. Evidence.

Re:The perps?

[NatasRevol]

And even when there are witnesses to the contrary, the cop's word supersedes the witnesses.

This. This is why there are such trust issues, especially in groups who are repressed by cops.

Re:The perps?

[Anonymous Coward]

Eric. Garner.

Re:The perps?

[laird]

The difference, of course, is that a camera will accurately report what it sees. Police can, if the like, say whatever they feel they need to say to make a case. So if the police will freely lie about your behavior, you might as well put up a fight, because you might win. If the camera will show you being cooperative, you can trust that as being reliable evidence. And I'd hope that in court, the evidence of a digital camera (with timestamps and digital signatures, etc.) will trump witnesses, even police.

Re:The perps?

[Luckyo]

I love how AC posts an opinion piece that directly contradicts factual evidence presented in the very story as "the truth" and then gets modded up as "insightful".

Oh slashdot, how far you have fallen.

The more interesting part

[smooth wombat]

and reports against officers dropped by 87%

While most people on here are focusing on the police portion, the civilian portion is more damning. It shows the amount of crap police have to put up with by people who think they'll file a brutality report so they can not be held responsible for their actions.

I don't have the link, but some on here will remember the video of the woman who was in the back of a police car yelling and screaming for the police to stop hitting her without realizing a camera was recording the whole thing. When she claimed police brutality, the video was shown and the charges were thrown out.

While there is certainly some police abuse going on, there are much more claims by people of police abuse where none exists. Just like dashboard cameras, it works both ways so when people claim they weren't doing anything when they were shot, the camera will show them reaching for their gun (see the most recent shooting in Missouri though we don't have video of the incident).

Re:The more interesting part

[bledri]

and reports against officers dropped by 87% While most people on here are focusing on the police portion, the civilian portion is more damning. It shows the amount of crap police have to put up with by people who think they'll file a brutality report so they can not be held responsible for their actions.

Because the police have the power of the state behind them and have sworn to "protect and serve," they are held to a higher standard.

I don't have the link, but some on here will remember the video of the woman who was in the back of a police car yelling and screaming for the police to stop hitting her without realizing a camera was recording the whole thing. When she claimed police brutality, the video was shown and the charges were thrown out.

Sounds like a win-win. So why are so many in law enforcement opposed to the cameras?

While there is certainly some police abuse going on, there are much more claims by people of police abuse where none exists. Just like dashboard cameras, it works both ways so when people claim they weren't doing anything when they were shot, the camera will show them reaching for their gun (see the most recent shooting in Missouri though we don't have video of the incident).

Some people lie to protect themselves from the consequences of their actions. Some of those people a are criminals, some of those people a police. Like I said, cameras sound like a win-win.

Re:The more interesting part

[Anonymous Coward]

It shows the amount of crap police have to put up with by people who think they'll file a brutality report so they can not be held responsible for their actions.

Glad you brought up the responsibility card.

Murder and killing other human beings is a perfectly moral and legal thing to do going by police policy and actions.
Once the police have shown NO ONE has any responsibility for refraining from murdering, you no longer get to claim the exact opposite is true.

So since murder is fine and something one is NOT to be held accountable for (so says the police), every murderer you insist is locked away is just one more immoral kidnapping on your head.

If murder is allowed, then murder is allowed. How you logically jump around claiming 1 + 2 = everything but 3 is beyond me.

Re:The more interesting part

[Anonymous Coward]

and reports against officers dropped by 87%

While most people on here are focusing on the police portion, the civilian portion is more damning. It shows the amount of crap police have to put up with by people who think they'll file a brutality report so they can not be held responsible for their actions.

Shenanigans. It shows no such thing. The numbers only show that reports dropped. They don't show why. You are fabricating a story with no actual evidence. It's just as possible that unwarranted use of force was reduced, spurring fewer complaints. Or maybe the police procedures were updated or new training was provided, changing processes to ones that were less likely to result in complaints. You have no clue and your type of jumping to conclusions does nobody any good.

Re:The more interesting part

[laird]

"and reports against officers dropped by 87% ...

While most people on here are focusing on the police portion, the civilian portion is more damning. It shows the amount of crap police have to put up with by people who think they'll file a brutality report so they can not be held responsible for their actions."

You're assuming that police behavior didn't change, and that people lied when reporting police violence 87% of the time. Of course, the previous sentence in the report (which you didn't quote) said that the police reported using force 60% less often, which means that the actual use of force reduced significantly, and must account for a significant portion of the decrease in public complaints about police behavior.

Going for cop's gun drastically escalates situatio

[drnb]

Brown was shot because he escalated the situation to a "high risk arrest" by going for the cop's gun. Period. That is the single factor that dominated all that followed. According to the FBI 10% of the cops who get shot are shot with their own gun after losing control of it. So go for an cop's gun and the rules of engagement radically change. You will not be allowed to get close enough for a wrestling match. Once you go for the gun your not just some guy who stole some cigarettes and shoved a store clerk. You are according to police training and the law a lethal threat if you try to get close rather than comply and get on the ground.

Ok ... but?

[briancox2]

That's great, but how much do they reduce mass surveillance?

Re:Ok ... but?

[briancox2]

Oh, that's right! They increase mass surveillance 100% don't they?

Cameras only a partial solution

[drnb]

Cameras are only a partial solution. While they tend to keep **both** sides honest and calm, they don't really change the fact that if the cop is in danger he will react with deadly force out of fear. Another part of the solution is to not send cops out alone, always have them go out in pairs.

If a cop is alone and fears a person may try to take his gun he will not let that person get close enough for a wrestling match. He will shoot.

If a cop is not alone he is far more likely to use a less-than-lethal weapon such as a taser or baton since his partner will have a lethal weapon at the ready should the person get ahold of the cop's gun.

Cops are paranoid about losing control of their gun, according to the FBI about 10% of those cops shot are shot with their own gun. Having a partner greatly helps reduce this fear.

Re:Cameras only a partial solution

[Anonymous Coward]

perhaps first responders shouldn't be armed for Armageddon, trained for Armageddon, respond to everything with a gun drawn.

Re:Cameras only a partial solution

[Anonymous Coward]

Or....... not carrying guns at all.

Re:Cameras only a partial solution

[Anonymous Coward]

First responders that don't have to worry about every person potentially having a gun will have that luxury. Welcome to the US gun culture.

Re:Cameras only a partial solution

[Free Censorship]

Absolute nonsense. Blame the people who choose to act inappropriately and abuse others. You're acting as if the ones who choose to use excessive force are blameless, but they're the actual problem.

Re:Cameras only a partial solution

[plcurechax]

Or....... not carrying guns at all.

This is highly effective in several countries around the world, but it does have one key criteria. The availability of firearms to the criminal and/or general public has to be low initially for this to be an effective policy.

And I believe nearly all countries where regular police / peace officers do not carry a firearm, they do have special units that can be activated in the rare event of (suspected) firearm / deadly weapon usage or widespread violence or mob/mass rioting.

In my youth I was told by a police officer during a tour of police facilities that they were trained to only draw their weapon to fire it or to clean it. To the best of my knowledge, based on my own very limited experience, the majority of officers I have seen still operate under that basic premise. A firearm is a means of lethal force to be used only as a last resort. It is not perfect, but I do believe it has lead to far more lives being saved on both sides than the alternative of officers drawing their weapons sooner as a method of deterrent or preparation.

I support the law enforcement officers goal of making it home alive always, but I also value their efforts in not escalating scenarios, and respecting the lives of others.

Re:Cameras only a partial solution

[bugs2squash]

The handgun part is what has to change. We need to stop promoting them as a must-have item to walk the streets by playing on machismo or exaggerating threats, and/or we need to make them harder to get, or we need to render them obsolete with some better technology. I think we worship them too much for there to be hope of anything but the latter, though it seems a long way off.

Re:Cameras only a partial solution

[sl149q]

Part of the problem with the recent shooting of the kid with a toy gun was the cop's arriving in a car at full speed and stopping literally a few feet away from the kid. They then had no opportunity to assess the situation and instead pulled out the guns and shot him because they now where afraid they might get shot.

Since the park was empty it would have been far more appropriate to stop and assess from a distance.

So a (possibly) correct reaction to the circumstance they arrived at. But they arrived at that circumstance because of some very bad decisions made as they arrived.

Re: Cameras only a partial solution

[Anonymous Coward]

Why ? The handgun isn't the problem here. Never has been. Unstable idiots ( both with and without badges ) are the problem.

I carry a firearm concealed daily. Have done so for quite a long time. At no point have I shot anyone or even threatened to. Same firearm the aforementioned idiots carry, far different results.

  The only folks who believe the gun is the problem are those who have never owned, used or needed one.

Re:Cameras only a partial solution

[Marful]

First responders that don't have to worry about every person potentially having a gun will have that luxury. Welcome to the US gun culture.

But that's just it, first responders don't have to worry about every person potentially having a gun.

Because, (CLUE-TRAIN!), every person doesn't have a gun.

Welcome to left-wing sensationalistic bullshit.

Re: Cameras only a partial solution

[Anonymous Coward]

You're right, guns are inanimate objects and can't be the problem. The real problem is people like yourself who desire guns and the culture the goes with them, and ultimately use them. In other words, the batshit crazy mentally unstable majority in your country are the problem; and these are exactly the type of people that shouldn't have guns. Luckily, you're doing a good job of taking yourselves out, so keep up the good work.

I've got pictures too!

[Anonymous Coward]

They are hot!

Unintended Consequences

[Anonymous Coward]

My initial reaction is to love police being required to wear body cameras. But let's step back and imagine the unintended consequences of this becoming the norm. Are police allowed to record and review the camera data without warrants? Are we simply placing mobile populace spy cams on the entire police force and giving them consent to record us everywhere in public andthen perform warantless searches on those recordings?

This sounds great when the camera recordings can be used to help prove that a police officer used excessive force. Should warrants be required before the police department is allowed to view any video footage?

Re:Going for cop's gun drastically escalates situa

[Mr. Slippery]

Brown was shot because he escalated the situation to a "high risk arrest" by going for the cop's gun. Period.

We have no evidence that Brown was trying to take Wilson's gun, only the word of a cop who's been caught lying before. Cops know that "he was going for my gun" are magic words to justify themselves when they commit murders.

And of course it's irrevelvant whether Brown tried to get control of Wilson's gun earlier in the confrontation. Brown was not trying to do so when he was murdered, he was (according to the majority of witness testimony) attempting to surender.

Just a ploy

[barbariccow]

This is obviously just a ploy for the tax payers to fund the upcoming season of "Extreme Cops: BODY CAM EDITION"

Re:Going for cop's gun drastically escalates situa

[drnb]

Brown was shot because he escalated the situation to a "high risk arrest" by going for the cop's gun. Period.

We have no evidence that Brown was trying to take Wilson's gun, only the word of a cop who's been caught lying before. Cops know that "he was going for my gun" are magic words to justify themselves when they commit murders.

Sorry, coroners reports say there was gun powder residue on Brown's hand. You are severely misinformed.

And of course it's irrevelvant whether Brown tried to get control of Wilson's gun earlier in the confrontation. Brown was not trying to do so when he was murdered, he was (according to the majority of witness testimony) attempting to surender.

You have progressed from severely misinformed to absolutely clueless. Minutes earlier he went for the cops gun, that is highly relevant and it absolutely controls everything that followed. It escalates the situation to "high risk". As "high risk" he is more likely to be pursued than to be left to flee. As "high risk" the officer is consider by training and law to be in danger and justified in not allowing the suspect to get close to him.

Regarding witnesses, many have proven to be lying. Seriously, we have one lady changing her story once the feds showed up and said she didn't really see it, she just repeated what her boyfriend told her had happened because she wanted her boyfriend's story to get out there. Witnesses had claimed he was shot in the back, proven false. Witnesses had said he had his hands up, proven false, a bullet grazed his arm indicating otherwise. Seriously, go read the released testimony regarding the evidence rather than rely on what some guy on the internet told you because your "facts" are way off from reality. There is a problem with cops and the communities they police and some cops are bad but in **this** one particular case these factors are not present. People foolishly tried to use this case to highlight these legit problems before the facts were in and now they are having a hard time coming to terms with the facts, that they picked the absolute wrong case to highlight the issues.

Eye witnesses

[tomhath]

How many of the "eye witnesses" in the Brown case weren't even at the scene until after it happened? No surprise that 87% of claims against police go away when there's a recording of what actually happened.

And who down-modded the parent post? It was at 2, now back to 1. People who do that should be banned from moderating

be careful what you wish for -

[sdinfoserv]

Here’s the problem with cops wearing cams. Any information gathered by a pubic servants during the course of their duty is subject to disclosure. Given that some information is exempt from public requests, (personal information about victims, pending cases, anything considered private..etc), personal information will, and needs to be redacted. If available, this will generate a never ending stream of public information requests to municipalities demanding this newly created video. The video will need to be edited for redaction prior to release. Some cities/states have maximum time requirement laws in which information must be released. This will necessitate the hiring of dozens of video editors to supply edited videos to fulfill RFI’s. (request for information). I work closely with several cities. It’s amazing how many pointless fishing expeditions currently squander millions of tax payer dollars requesting every single email, document, text message, voice mail – pretty much everything everyone does – when some old guy gets a bug up his butt that the city didn’t treat some right of way in front of his property correctly or some one wants to be a political candidate. Now release video of police walking around with video cameras and there will be a non stop stream of ambulance chasers reviewing every second of available video for potential legal mongering. This will place addition burdens on public legal resources. Prepare for costs, taxes, and laws to protect public workers to skyrocket. ,, nothing is free

Re:be careful what you wish for -

[Krishnoid]

If available, this will generate a never ending stream of public information requests to municipalities demanding this newly created video. The video will need to be edited for redaction prior to release. Some cities/states have maximum time requirement laws in which information must be released. This will necessitate the hiring of dozens of video editors to supply edited videos to fulfill RFI’s. (request for information).

So ... job creator?

In contrast to the national dialog surveillance

[Anonymous Coward]

The clamor for police body cameras is intriguing in light of the current national dialog on government surveillance. On the one hand some people are agitated over the idea of government telephone and email metadata collection, but as for collection of even more personally identifiable information (i.e., your picture) by camera, the attitude is not merely tolerant, but *demanding* more!

It seems grossly naive to think that the personally identifiable information collected by body cameras worn by police won't be maximally leveraged.

What I imagine is that this will work sort of like currently-in-use automated license plate readers: as an officer is walking around wearing a militarized Google Glass, the pictures of everyone they pass by will be fed back to the precinct headquarters and from there to an agency with a much bigger computer capable of processing mugshots efficiently against a facial recognition utility and cross referencing matches against motor vehicle, arrest, and court records.

Any gems about outstanding warrants, past drug use, violent behavior, etc, will come back on the heads-up display in real time.

We should be talking about whether we really want to go there.

Body Cameras reduce criminal lying when resisting

[Anonymous Coward]

The body Camera do reduce the bully copy; but, I do bet their would be no riots if the cop who shot Michael Brown had a body camera - Perhaps maybe they would riot anyway during "grab yourself a free tv week".

Duh?

[Anonymous Coward]

1. "Victim" is on camera and can't escalate/threaten the officer and then claim, "ABLOOBLOO BROOTALITY!"

2. Cop can't do the same.

3. ???

4. Everyone profits.

Re:Going for cop's gun drastically escalates situa

[Anonymous Coward]

Prove he went for the cops gun. You can't, there is no evidence, and only the cop himself says it.

Wrong reason

[Anonymous Coward]

The reports fell because people realized they couldn't provoke the officer in to using force without also creating evidence of their provocation

or conversely

[Anonymous Coward]

reduces the claims afterwards of force being "unnecessary" by those with vested interest, and is already shown to cause the public to change it's confrontational behavior a bit towards officers.

Also...

[Anonymous Coward]

...will offer proof when stupid kids pull guns on cops, get shot, killed, and then the public bitched. PD just releases the video and tells the public to STFU

Freedom isn't free.

[bussdriver]

You can't be free without a cost. If lawyers are going to continue to ruin society, we need to curb them... but given how democracy is failing those issues are really sideshow to the real problems. Cutting down on misinformation and ignorance are one of the few things left that can be done to support democracy.

Re:Going for cop's gun drastically escalates situa

[NatasRevol]

Sorry, coroners reports say there was gun powder residue on Brown's hand. You are severely misinformed.

All that means was that his hand was within a few feet of the gun when it went off. He could have been defending himself, hiding his body or grabbing for the gun. But there is no proof of one over the other.

Re:Going for cop's gun drastically escalates situa

[drnb]

Sorry, coroners reports say there was gun powder residue on Brown's hand. You are severely misinformed.

All that means was that his hand was within a few feet of the gun when it went off. He could have been defending himself, hiding his body or grabbing for the gun. But there is no proof of one over the other.

Except for the bullet hole in the police car telling us Brown's hand was deep inside the car and that the cop was sitting down.

Re:Going for cop's gun drastically escalates situa

[Anonymous Coward]

Can you Brown supporters please make up your minds?

I just read a comment here from Noah Haders, who clearly supports Brown. It says:

why did the officer shoot a man who was unarmed ane 150' away?

So although Brown and Wilson were allegedly 150 feet away from each other when the shooting happened, Brown somehow ended up with gun power residue on his hand?

Come on! Cut the crap, okay?

What about RULES for access to the recording?

[Anonymous Coward]

The whole, "put a camera on" and "don't put a camera on" misses the importance of rules for use.

Do we require the systems that have a 30 second FIFO buffer, so that we see a short time BEFORE the cop turns it on?
When is a cop allowed to turn it off?

Who gets to see the footage?
Imagine this scenario - a cop is called to a domestic disturbance, and the people are acting like twits (not that far fetched) he manages to quiet things down and no one wants to push charges on anyone. ... now, do you want the neighbors to see footage of your topless wife yelling at you? given the current laws, it is not unlikely that some footage might constitute child porn. Having the police required to distribute that is a bit problematic.

Should the NSA have access to all this surveillance footage? why or why not?

We need rules about the use of this data before we start collecting it.

Re:What about RULES for access to the recording?

[BarbaraHudson]

do you want the neighbors to see footage of your topless wife yelling at you? given the current laws, it is not unlikely that some footage might constitute child porn.

If your wife is an under-age child, you have bigger problems.

Besides, you can see that stuff on Cops and Cops Reloaded all the time. People behaving like idiots even when there's a camera getting it all. And if you think it's just cops and citizens acting stupid, you need to watch some of those stupid shows (not too many - they'll cause brain damage) where people take lie detector tests and dna tests to prove who was cheating on who first, who's the father of their kids, etc. People act stupid on camera all the time - just search Youtube.

Re:Going for cop's gun drastically escalates situa

[NatasRevol]

Um, he got shot more than once. More than twice. More than three times. I could go on, but I doubt you'd get the point...

Re:Going for cop's gun drastically escalates situa

[NatasRevol]

Um, he got shot more than once. More than twice. More than three times.

Perhaps ONE of the six times he was shot, his hands were near the gun.

Which says NOTHING about whether or not he was in the car.

You proved the grandparent's point perfectly!

[Anonymous Coward]

Your comment is excellent. It proves exactly what the grandparent comment was saying!

Brown's supporters are all for video being released. Except when it shows Brown for who he really was, of course. They can't handle the fact that Brown acted very maliciously just minutes prior to his death. If he acted that way toward a cashier, then it's likely he directed similar physical violence toward Wilson.

It's hilarious, it a sick way, how hypocritical and contradictory these people are. They yell and scream about how we need more video evidence released after these types of encounters. Then when such video evidence is released, but it doesn't support their false narratives, these people yell and scream (and sometimes riot) about how such video evidence should not be released!

Re:Going for cop's gun drastically escalates situa

[Noah Haders]

Brown was shot because he escalated the situation to a "high risk arrest" by going for the cop's gun.

it was never an arrest situation to begin with, it was just an a-hole cop bullying people on the street. sometimes people get tired of being bullied.

Re:Going for cop's gun drastically escalates situa

[Anonymous Coward]

Clarify it for us.

Based on what you're saying, Wilson shot Brown from 150 feet away. Then Wilson ran over to Brown, while Brown was lying face-down with his stomach to the road, and somehow Wilson shot him in the front several more times, without Brown's position changing at all. And then Wilson bent down and fired the gun from within a foot of Brown's hand, just to get some gun powder residue on that hand.

Like I said, cut the crap. What you're saying is obviously total crap.

On one hand we have people like you throwing out these cockamamie theories that are totally contradictory, and obviously bullshit. On the other hand, we have the facts that emerged from the in-depth investigation involving the grand jury, which come together to form a very clear and consistent flow of the events.

Sorry, we can't believe what you're saying, because it's clearly wrong.

Re:Going for cop's gun drastically escalates situa

[drnb]

Um, he got shot more than once. More than twice. More than three times. Perhaps ONE of the six times he was shot, his hands were near the gun. Which says NOTHING about whether or not he was in the car.

Except for the fact that the bullet fired in the car tore off some skin tissue and left it in the car.

Re:Going for cop's gun drastically escalates situa

[drnb]

Brown was shot because he escalated the situation to a "high risk arrest" by going for the cop's gun.

it was never an arrest situation to begin with, it was just an a-hole cop bullying people on the street. sometimes people get tired of being bullied.

"At 11:53 a.m., a dispatcher reported a "stealing in progress" at the Ferguson Market and a brief description of the suspect, who was believed to have taken a packet of cigars. Officers were told to look for a black male wearing a white T-shirt, running toward the QuikTrip convenience store. Additional information was soon added: the man was wearing a red Cardinals hat, khaki shorts and yellow socks; a second man was with him. At noon, Wilson asked the officers searching for the robbery suspects if they needed assistance. An officer responded that the men had disappeared. Two minutes later, at 12:02 p.m. Wilson radioed in, "Put me on Canfield with two. And send me another car," a request for additional officers. Sources have told the newspaper that prior to making that call, Wilson claimed he told Brown and his friend Dorian Johnson to stop walking in the street. Wilson said it was after that that he recognized that Brown matched the robbery suspect's description, called for backup and stopped his SUV next to the two men."
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/fe...

Re:Going for cop's gun drastically escalates situa

[NatasRevol]

I said no such thing. You put your own words in there. Nobody but a lying cop & a dead guy know the facts.

All I said was that one of the shots got residue on his hands. It could easily have been lots of different ways. At lots of different places. But you only see it one way.

On the other hand, we have the facts that emerged from the in-depth investigation involving the grand jury, which come together to form a very clear and consistent flow of the events.

Now we all know you're a fucking joke.

Ammo selection

[blue9steel]

Why are police officers armed with lethal rounds in the first place? Less lethal "rubber bullets", actually rubber coated steel spheres, should be more than sufficient for all non-SWAT scenarios. While they aren't death or injury free, the mortality rates are vastly lower than lethal munitions while still having considerable stopping power.

A Deeper Peep

[JimSadler]

This might offer proof of a shattering fact. It looks as if cops are prone to breaking laws and rules whenever they feel they can get away with it. That strongly implies that cops with perfectly clean social and legal status have about the same mentality as most inmates. Although there are a few inmates who have no concern at all for punishments that will quickly follow an illegal act. And that type of inmate in all fairness is insane. If a person who is so far gone as to have no concern over being killed or jailed forever simply can not be capable of intent. But society cheats just like many cops cheat. Society does not want to really understand mental illness so it passes laws that do imprison people who act out as a direct consequence of their illnesses and have no control over their behaviors.

Fat ass people don't die because they have a fat

[Anonymous Coward]

Fat ass people don't die because they have a fat ass. What killed them that day was a cop choking them.

You assume it never is the officer.

[Anonymous Coward]

Given one has greater responsibility, your stance is bad.

Re:You assume it never is the officer.

[cyberchondriac]

Quite the contrary. Why does the officer have greater responsibility? His life is every bit as important, if not more, than some thug's. Here's why society is breaking down. We ALL have responsibility to be civil to each other in a civilized society. Why do black thugs get a free pass? That's bullshit. A cops job is to protect society from bad people, not baby sit them.

Re: You assume it never is the officer.

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe because he has a license to kill...

Re: You assume it never is the officer.

[cyberchondriac]

That gives a thug less responsibility regarding human life? I don't buy that. We all have that responsibility. Cops are given weapons because they have to insert themselves into dangerous situations in which they may be killed or wounded, whereas the average citizen is expected to get away (or try) from a dangerous situation if at all possible.
Cops aren't supermen, they're humans just like everyone else. They feel pain, fear, have families, etc..
It is their job to stop crime; it is not their job to take a bullet for someone, or unnecessarily risk their life. An estimated 125 cops have died in 2014. The fact that there are a few asshole cops (as there are a-holes in every walk of life) out there shouldn't change the big picture about what they can do.

Not on the pavements

[Anonymous Coward]

Not on the roads.

Tell me, are hoverbikes the only option in your world?

Drivers have an overwhelming arrogance that they MUST be allowed to plough through anyone in their way. Hence the death statistics on the roads...

Re:Going for cop's gun drastically escalates situa

[drnb]

Prove he went for the cops gun. You can't, there is no evidence, and only the cop himself says it.

Skin tissue from his hand where the bullet grazed him is found in the car. His blood is on the gun, inside the car and on the cop's uniform in a manner consistent with the cop being seated in his car.

Dirty by nature

[MrBigInThePants]

Here here and amen brother. It is FAR worth than the authoritarian followers like the GP believe.

My brother (not from US - so this is not just a US problem) wanted to be a cop in his early 20's. He was training every day to make the physical etc. He would have made a great cop. He was a massive guy but quick and could punch like a mule when we trained together. Good temperament but I had never seen him back down from an asshole (or group thereof) in his life.

He met 3 cops who were on holiday and the obvious discussion took place. They eventually asked him the obvious: "why?"

Paraphrasing Heavily:

He said that he was a very honest person and believed in helping the community against the bad guys.
They told him that as a cop he would be asked to lie in court on a regular basis. If he refused he would be harassed etc by the brass and his peers until he either left the force or complied.

They said if he could not handle that then not to bother signing up.

He went in IT....

Now all you stubborn, blind, "cannot be wrong" authoritarians can call me a liar and blah blah blah but I promise you this story is true.

If only the cop had a camera in Ferguson...

[bledri]

...

Obviously this is all anecdotal and not "scientific" compared with the study in the summary, but it should be clear that this problem of police violence is not going to be completely solved until the cultures of "shoot first and ask questions later" and "protect each other" within law enforcement are changed.

The study does not claim that cameras eliminate the problem. To quote the summary:

use-of-force by officers wearing cameras fell by 59%.

That's a good thing, even if it's not perfect. And it provides information to help understand when excesive force is being used, and provides evidence in cases when it is used. Unbiased evidence to help get to the actual truth. All of this is a Good Thing (tm).

Or should we let the perfect be the enemy of the good?

Yet weirdly...

[Anonymous Coward]

...video footage in New York City of a cop clearly strangling a man to death did not prevent the violence or even get the cop indicted.

I'm glad to hear that this study shows a reduction of violence but I fear the government will continue to ignore the evidence of cop on citizen violence. It has nothing to do with race. Cops are killing blacks, whites, reds, greens and purples. It has to do with the cops over reacting.

good

[Anonymous Coward]

So people are less willing to be aggressive against the police when they know there is a camera on them. And prevents the .01% of the police that do go out to hurt people to not go overboard.

And because people know they have cameras, they know they can't file a report on excessive force and expect to win.

Re:Going for cop's gun drastically escalates situa

[Anonymous Coward]

This comment is idiotic. Even if he had been going for the cop's gun, the finishing shots were put into him from 30–40 feet away.

Re:Going for cop's gun drastically escalates situa

[laird]

All of the wild speculation posted as if it were facts, by people who weren't there and this don't actually know what happened, is pretty good evidence that it'd be beneficial for police to wear body cameras that can't be disabled. Then if the truth were documented objectively, rather than the via the recollections of a bunch of people with imperfect memories and biases, then the situation would be better.

Re:Going for cop's gun drastically escalates situa

[Anonymous Coward]

Okay. Now do what they asked, and "Prove he went for the cops gun".

Missing the Good Ole Days...

[Anonymous Coward]

All the cameras will do is prove the police are right. The evidence of the perp's actions on video will justify increasing levels of force required to subdue the perp. The recent shooting just outside Fergusson shows the perp draw his weapon at the officer and the officer returning fire. It also show the violence of the protesters. The two officers assaulted on a NYC bridge during a protest were ironically assigned a duty to protect the protesters but they were the ones seriously assaulted. A few of those perps have been identified on video and arrested.

Keep up the violence and there will be armed military in the streets (National Guard) as well as greatly increased surveillance. It won't be driving while black but being black after dark and breaking curfew. The quickest way to destroy a city is to have weak leadership and allow a riot to get out of hand. Remember the Detroit race riots? Take 50+ years of weak leadership such as that promoted by DiBlasio and a weak response to violence in the streets and there will be a mass exodus of those people who keep the city running and prosperous. If enough of the 1% leave NYC it will crumble and decay like Detroit has. Detroit has entire neighborhoods where there are only a few occupied homes left so the city shut off the power, water, trash pickup, etc. It's a real shithole in much of the city. The population has been utterly decimated. Criminals run the streets, not the police. I remember NYC in the 70's and 80's it was terrible and frightening. Say what you will but the "Broken Windows" theory works. Stop the small and petty crimes and you reduce serious crimes. Until recently, I felt very safe in Manhattan, there was a cop every couple of blocks. So unless you want it to look like it did post 9/11 with heavily armed (automatic assault rifles) police on every corner you'd better reign in the thugs causing trouble.

Stop Resisting Arrest

[Whatchamacallit]

Stop resisting arrest and you won't force the police to use violence. Be calm and surrender. That way you don't get wrestled to the ground, beaten with batons, tased or shot. Don't point a weapon at an officer and refuse their lawful order to put down the gun or you will get shot. Show the police the respect they deserve and don't mouth off and get angry. Police have to deal with the worst kind of people on a daily basis you certainly don't want to push their buttons.

It's not a race thing even a white lady had a bad experience, she's trying to sue United Airlines for 5 million because on the last leg of a journey to an Alaska ski trip she antagonized the stewardesses more than a couple times and the pilot forced her off the plane. The Seattle police boarded the craft and calmly asked this lady to come quietly or you'll be arrested. Nope, she had to have an attitude and that's when they cuffed her and dragged her off the plane, tearing her jeans in the process. Then they booked her and she was stuck in jail over the weekend. My guess is she hit the bar waiting for this flight and was drunk. She tried to lay down in more expensive seats as well as an exit row. She was obviously belligerent with the flight crew. Now she didn't get shot but she didn't pull out a gun nor did she seriously pose a threat to the officers.

Remember:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5-rnl2dU3_k

Re:Stop Resisting Arrest

[shutdown -p now]

If you get SWATed by mistake, you won't even get a chance to "be calm" - the first thing you'll know is your door being broken in and a flashbang flying in. Go ahead, stay calm.

Bias in titling

[argStyopa]

"During the 12-month Rialto experiment, use-of-force by officers wearing cameras fell by 59% and reports against officers dropped by 87% against the previous year's figures"

From that, you determine that the title of the article should be that it "reduces police use of force"?

Clearly, the MAIN result is that it reduces BS claims of "police brutality" more than anything.

I'd be curious to understand why the submitter and editor so-titled the article.

Re:Bias in titling

[Whorhay]

Yes and no.

This is making an assumption but it's probably not far off. Assume that all incidents of officers using were previously reported, that would account for a very large chunk of the 87%. We could guess that use of force declined 59% and that 28% of previous reports against officers were unjustified or false accusations. I would argue that the use of force is still the larger and more concerning number.

Police: Teen raised gun before officer killed him

[Anonymous Coward]

Read the whole story. There's also video.

http://www.cnn.com/2014/12/24/justice/missouri-officer-involved-shooting/

Reduce Unacceptable Use of Force

[manu0601]

I am all in favor of reducing unacceptable use of Force if this is about dark side of the Force.

That sucks

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess we'll just have to redefine "acceptable".

Re:Going for cop's gun drastically escalates situa

[Anonymous Coward]

"Sorry, coroners reports say there was gun powder residue on Brown's hand. You are severely misinformed."

That's hardly surprising. He was shot 6 times at close range. Gun powder residue goes everywhere, it'd have been a shock if he didn't have gun powder residue on his hands (and his face, and any other uncovered skin). You realise that people who have never been near a gun can come back with a positive gun powder residue test simply from sitting in the back of a police cruiser? This whole "gun powder residue on Brown's hand" doesn't imply he fired the gun, like several parties have tried to imply.

Study Paid for by TASER INC

[Anonymous Coward]

that's right, TASER - who makes body cams and stand to gain financially from this amazing study

read more here:
http://www.wecopwatch.org/police-cameras-quick-fix-for-police-misconduct-or-counter-surveillance-tool/

Police != Courts

[NewYork]

Police should not punish culprits.
That's the job of the Courts.

Signal to noise ratio

[NewYork]

Black police should deal with black culprits to reduce https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wik...

"Diverse society will fail" --Putnam.

[NewYork]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wik...

Cameras only a partial solution

[Anonymous Coward]

Please review the Fruitvale incident in San Francisco, multiple cops and an a cop shoots and kills an unarmed, and handcuffed detainee. So many of you actually don't see that the cops are playing with their own rules. Why would I want to wear a camera if all need to do is to shoot to kill and claim fear for my life? The general public doesn't challenge it as long you've shot a Black man, the prosecutors will defend you and protests occur in neighborhoods that you don't live in... If cameras are used the video will be released when it supports the police officer, otherwise we'll hear that the camera wasn't on or that it didn't record, it needed repair... YouTube is filled with examples of police misconduct yet the reality is that most of you will continue to believe that the police are here to "serve and protect" until these tragedies come your neighborhood.

Re:Going for cop's gun drastically escalates situa

[Whorhay]

It's not really necessary to prove that he went for the gun. Witness testimony and the physical evidence shows that he was involved in a violent struggle inside of the car. If he was not the agressor in that struggle how do you explain him being in the vehicle for more than the briefest of moments. Brown had the advantage of size, strength, leverage, and position. Are you saying that Wilson pulled Brown through the cruiser window into his lap, then pulled his firearm and shot him? I'll admit that isn't beyong the realm of possibility, but it doesn't make much sense. Brown assaulting Wilson sounds much more plausible, especially after he had just succesfully commited a strongarm robbery.

Even if Brown did not go for the gun Wilson is still justified in drawing and possibly using his firearm. He is authorized by law to use the minimum force required to stop/apprehend a criminal or suspect. In the previous struggle he would have already determined that he was not a physical match for Brown and so would have to use some other force multiplying tool or strategy. Drawing his firearm if it wasn't already out would then be appropriate given that he was not equiped with a taser.

Was Wilson justified in actually shooting Brown after the initial physical confrontation, I don't know, and I probably never will. If Brown was threatening another physical assault, then I would say "yes". If Brown was doing pretty much anything else, then "no".