Bullshit. There would be no complaints if some of them weren't incriminating abusive cops.
Notice how many of the cases against photographing are in potential (or blatant) police-abuse situations. The public and the government should be applauding citizens for helping to maintain control, not punishing.
- if you have nothing to hide, why do you care about being videotaped?
- we want you to be videotaped for your own protections...so that a scumbag citizen doesn't sue the department by making things up.
The cynic in me worries that it would work out this way instead tho: As video of the cops being douches becomes commonplace, people just come to accept it, and it becomes difficult to file a complaint because the official response would be "oh cops are just douches, you shouldn't have gone outside if you cared". Worse, the public attitude would be the same, therefore not voting for, or even voting against, rules holding cops accountable.
Honestly, I see this as a publicly-run oversight committee. It should be hard to be a cop - a lot of power and respect goes with the title (typically). And if there are fewer abusers, that's likely to increase.
it got that department a ton of positive publicity
right now the only times you hear about cops is when they do the bad stuff.