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Comment by ghufran_syed | Hacker News Reader

Part of what stops police from routinely infringing civil rights in the pursuit of justice is the legal doctrine that evidence obtained illegally is inadmissible, as is all evidence gained from further (lawful) investigation based on that evidence [1]. what is needed is a law that operates in a similar way, that states that in any lawsuit or complaint against the police, there is a presumption of guilt on the part of the police officer in the event of 'malfunction' of monitoring devices. The only way to make the police comply is to make it in their self-interest (or at least in the interests of the city that would regularly have to pay out presumptive damages) to make sure they are working.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fruit_of_the_poisonous_tree

Edit: typo

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> ...or at least in the interests of the city that would regularly have to pay out presumptive damages...

Key challenge with this strategy is the big latency between paying out damages and consequences for the police officer or even department. The bigger the metro, the bigger the latency. Large metro budgets can temporarily cover for the few million dollar payouts that happen to make the daunting gauntlet all the way through to a final, no-appeal judicial judgement, even a few every 3-5 years over a long, long period of time. There is a natural impedance in metro political circles to "protect" the police unless an incident is sufficiently egregious.

I'm believe this adverse behavior pattern won't stop until a legal concept similar to the corporate veil is established for police officers (all the way up to and including police chiefs). Some kind of legal doctrine that spells out when certain conditions are met, individual officers must be deprived of city and departmental support; their "blue veil" so to speak is "pierced". They can still obtain support from private sources like the union, but they are on as much the same footing as a civilian as can be legally established. As a society we can hash out what those conditions are. Some might argue just destroyed dashcam data is sufficient. Others might argue for a much, much higher bar.

> Although the Constitution of the United States does not cite it explicitly, presumption of innocence is widely held to follow from the 5th, 6th, and 14th amendments. See also Coffin v. United States and In re Winship. [0]

One does not sign away Constitutional rights because they become a police officer.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presumption_of_innocence#The_f...

What if consequences based on the presumption of guilt where limited to immediate termination and being placed on a list barring the accused from working as a police officer in the future? Is presumption of guilt allowed if there are no criminal penalties?

Then just make it an 'administrative ruling' so that the Constitution no longer applies. That is all the fad with prosecutors these days (same reason being put on the SO registry can be retroactively applied/extended without it violating ex post facto laws).

"Presumption of guilt" - that's not going to fly is it?

I think the selective absence of evidence where it would normally exist is something that a jury (or investigating organization) should consider within the totality of the evidence presented. That way we can go start from a point of innocence and work our way through.

Why are there options to turn the audio off anyway? In the grand scheme of things what you are trying to protect by turning off audio is likely much less important than the criminal behavior that is coming under scrutiny.

If you don't want additional scrutiny, are you going to sign a contract with a supplier of recording equipment that can't be turned off?

"turning off" might be accomplished by something like breaking or unplugging the mic, or hiding it in the glove box (as was listed in the article). You are giving the officers unrestricted access to these vehicles for large segments of time; there's basically no way to physically prevent them from messing with the equipment, especially if there are no consequences for doing so.

> The only way to make the police comply is to make it in their self-interest (or at least in the interests of the city that would regularly have to pay out presumptive damages) to make sure they are working.

Part of the problem is that it becomes the cost of doing business for a city. What should happen is that the individual should have to pay those multi million dollar fines out of pocket. Of course, the people who are suing for money know that they'll get more money if they sue the city.

The city should budget an amount for each year in payouts. Start with the average amounts over the past 5-10 years plus 10%. When all of the complaints for that year have been settled, anything left goes out to the department as bonuses.

We've got sticks that don't seem to be working. Let's throw some carrots in as well.

Good performance -> good bonuses.

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