It's a nice idea, but I think it has some pretty significant potential for downsides.
If that isn't so, and isn't sacred, then we're saying that secrecy in policing is normal, and that goes against hundreds of years of progress in the common-law tradition.
In order for people to enjoy the kind of privacy you discuss, we need to have non-state support services that are completely disconnected from the matter of enforcement of th e law.
if the cops bust into your house because they misread the address of the warrant (something which happens regularly), and they capture some video of you walking around eating cereal naked, do you think that should immediately and irrevocably go up on youtube?
And yes, I'm fine with the horrific, abhorrent affronts of the state being public if I'm the victim.
How about we stop allowing police to search homes in the first place in 99.9% of cases?
Ok. I'm not.
(Substitute any of a number of incidents and the argument remains mostly the same.)
Is it public record that it happened? Yes. Should it be shielded from anyone knowing? I don't think so. Should it be publicly broadcast? Almost certainly not.
That's the problem. The fact that we're talking seriously about affording public policing a sphere of secrecy is just a symptom of that problem.
They are both emergency responses and require tremendous amount of material and human resources to get there very fast.
Police have the fastest cars with the brightest lights that let them go wherever they want the fastest (Bonus if they have a motorcycle, but those they keep to give speeding tickets for some reason). It also means they are the first ones there and might need to do CPR from time to time or help that guy about to jump down the bridge.
>Why has our society conflated those?
We are imperfect humans in an imperfect world. We can't assign every single task to a different human being. We, as a society, accept that.
>The fact that we're talking seriously about affording public policing a sphere of secrecy is just a symptom of that problem.
There is a big difference between secrecy of the police and privacy of the policed.
Go watch Live PD and come tell me seriously they should stop censoring the names, date of birth, addresses, plate numbers, SSN, wardrobe malfunctions of the victims, witnesses and children that appear in the show.
They take the time to protect the privacy of the bystanders, but it costs money and an incredible amount of resource to do so just for a couple of teams for a couple of hours a week and they don't even do a perfect job.
I get it. Most of us are programmers, so we think we can setup a pretty solid set of rules for when something applies. Maybe some of us can. And when that perfect ruleset is found, it will be awesome. However, it is a lot more fluid and discretion is not necessarily a bad thing.
It's not that black and white but it's not that complex of an issue either.
Act - https://www.aclu.org/other/model-act-regulating-use-wearable..., White Paper - https://www.aclu.org/other/police-body-mounted-cameras-right...
Honestly, privacy is nearly dead anyway. I'm not happy about it but there are databases with enough information on us to steal anyone's identity. With that level of information already existing... it seems kind of silly that what we're most worried about with police cameras basically comes down to embarrassment.
It's also weird how hacker news has forgotten that Google Street View has tons of pictures of naked people with automatically blurred faces. Same for Google Maps/Earth.
As another poster said, this is solvable. Just will require more than a few rules.
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/crime/washington-s...
Someone's husband falsely but convincingly accuses them of domestic abuse, later they are cleared of all charges. Does this accusation go on youtube?
Someone attempted suicide, and then called the cops because he didn't want to go through with it.
Someone was inadvertently caught on camera in a gay bar when it was raided for drugs.
Video of the arrest goes viral. Hundreds of millions of people across the world see it.
You are later acquited of the charges. But a fat lot of good that does....
I'm sure she'd love that on YouTube for all to see.
What is the connection between enforcement of statutory code and medical aid / emergency response? Why do these social services need to be delivered by LEOs?
At my college, one of the best things my student government did was first response in cases of rape and sexual assault. We had a phone number that people were able to call and get a response from a peer who had been trained in the next steps of response, allowing the victim to gain composure and support before dealing with the law enforcement apparatus.
We had a similar service for cases of mental health / psychedelic emergency.
There is no reason that law enforcement need to be first responders in cases of medical emergency.
Unless we're talking about walking back the Peelian principles (and arguably all that is good about western notions of liberty), it is a continuing imperative to ensure that police officers can strictly enforce the law and do so in full public view.
Super innocent example: A 14 year old kid breaks their leg and the cops show up to them in agony and crying. Would be very easy for a few people that dislike them to plaster them crying all over social media. Yes, the event was public to begin with, but the chances of one of the bullies walking by and snapping their own photos is almost nil.
A lot of people that are interacting with the police are in a very vulnerable state, it would be asinine to expose that to the world. The thought that it will create "good will" with the public is entirely backwards in my opinion, if I'm in trouble and I know if I get the cops that I may end up all over the internet it may keep me from calling them at all.
This seems like the same argument. What does enforcement of the laws have to do with medical aid? Why has our society conflated these two things?
I assert that the state has an interest in injecting law enforcement concepts in all sorts of situation precisely because it opens up uncertainty over its public nature.
Instead, we need law enforcement to be its own discrete activity, and among its norms for it to be entirely public and based on public consent.
Why are we rehashing this almost 200 years after Robert Peel's work?
It is generally the idea that all police do or should do is enforce the law that leads to divisiveness and brutality.
Edit: nice, you edit the parent and don’t note it.
There are worlds of difference between jurisdictions in this regard. And also substantial differences in the specifics of a case.
In the (rare) case of a rapist jumping out of the bushes and tackling someone, and then running away in hot pursuit, then sure, a law-enforcement-first response makes sense.
In the far more frequent date rape / party rape situation, where the victim is left to piece together the episode the next morning, then no, I think that there are far, far better responses than LEO-first.
Maybe the victim should call whoever they want. Like they can now.
Not everyone has the same privilege as a college student here and now.
Happen to be at a party that was broken up due to noise complaints? Drugs were found there? Why were you caught on camera leaving the house when officers arrived? Sounds like you are a liability!
If this actually happened I would give it 6mo before you get a credit agency or something of their ilk providing this data to such agencies for background checks/employment checks/etc. It will take the social media data mining and now include all law enforcement interactions ever.
I, for one, do not want to live in the world where I get to explain every traffic stop to a future employer or my insurance company. I'm sure both would absolutely love that information to use against me.
I think the writing is on the wall on this one though. In my lifetime I fully expect what I describe above to be happening behind the scenes in "public private partnerships". In some cases it already is.
Just yet another way to create permanent second-class citizens like we have with felons, and are trying as hard as we can to extend that into other areas of society.
Having people re-victimized by turning their pleas for help into entertainment is bullshit.