Why isn't it standard for all body cam footage of an arrest to automatically be entered as evidence? It seems like even for a judge to accept a plea deal, they should be forced to see the footage. Someone should be catching things as clear as this.
In France, there have been many videos of policemen shooting citizens in the head, kicking people on the ground, and so on. So what? None of them will ever lose their job for this, or suffer any serious penalty.
Here are 2 stories about the French police. One where a complete footage was not enough for justice to act. And one where the police footage was conveniently lost.
Just a single French policeman has been sentenced for a flash ball misuse. It was after a high school boy was shot in the head and permanently disabled. The boy's family filed a complaint. Policemen claimed self-defense and accused the boy of attacking them. During the trial, a video proved that a police officer, in a group of policemen, aimed then shot at the boy that was slowly pushing a trash can. 7 years after the assault, the police officer was sentenced to 3 years... with no flash ball gun. Policemen can assault a boy and lie to a judge, then go on as cops. https://www.20minutes.fr/paris/2039131-20170328-lyceen-bless...
In another well-known case in France, a black man died in a police cell. According to the police report, he killed himself by banging his head on the walls. The CCTV in the cell was sabotaged. The post-mortem medical report was lost. The family filed a complaint. 8 years later, the French justice ruled that the police report was a complete lie, but refused to prosecute anyone, not even the policemen that wrote the false report. https://www.lemonde.fr/societe/article/2009/01/24/l-etonnant...
Because they don't have an incentive to do so and have every incentive to not do so.
I won't go into a great deal of detail, but in short: getting this as discovery without an attorney present and actively forcing the Courts to release it won't yield much, it is often entirely impossible to do so in time by the forced court dates forcing most people to accept plea deals if they cannot afford legal counsel, getting even the District Attorneys to review this footage before moving with a case in time of said case is equally unlikely (combination of apathetic and being overwhelmed), and Judges' will ALWAYS favour with an officers recount of events UNTIL FORCED for compelling reasons to over turn this. Which means an almost certain guilty verdict.
Discovery in general is so hard to get, and they can/do use a series of excuses; not limited to using proprietary software to release the body cam footage which is not compatible with any other system. Even between other attorneys and jurisdictions.
You need to realize that you're assumed to be guilty in the Legal system, and the burden and responsibility to prove otherwise is on the defendant: who is possibly injured (physically as well as mentally), all the while you're incurring costs left and right for everything (even wrongful arrest cases), in addition to apathetic-callused District Attorneys/Public Defendants just trying to bide their time and not 'rock the boat' until getting to the next level of their careers and are often forcing people to just accept untenable time frames for court dates or pleas deals to just churn the numbers and look good in front of the Judge who they will encounter again in their career(s).
In related news, "losing" the camera footage should cause everyone in charge of the system to be put on leave while outside people investigate why it was "lost."
Other countries are not so lucky if such things occur - they just wait for the next election and hope for the best...
>Other countries are not so lucky if such things occur - they just wait for the next election and hope for the best...
Are you implying that armed revolutions don't occur in other countries, or that such a revolution would actually be legal in the US because the guns are legally owned?
If so, you would be wrong on both counts. The only thing the Second Amendment buys Americans who want to "force change" is the convenience of not needing to procure arms through a black market, as other countries do. The "politics by other means" part, though, is illegal everywhere.
In that sense, American citizens aren't in that exceptional a position as anywhere else.
That includes whistleblowing.