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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.
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.
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.
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.
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
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.