Why filming police violence has done nothing to stop it, so far

The filming is still crucial, because most of society (in particular, wealthy whites) would not believe that the police could be so brutal unless it was undeniably captured on video.

I think that a similar technological innovation was key during the civil rights movement in the US in the 60s. Capturing the cruelty of racists against blacks in America and showing it on television was crucial for turning public opinion in favor of civil rights.

I think because we all made the presumption that obvious police abuses would be punished once we had video evidence.

We didn't take into consideration the justice system's complete lack of appetite at holding officers responsible for egregious violations of life, civil liberties, and property rights.

Part of it may be our grudging acceptance of bad apples in the police system, like bad apples in organized religion and education. And unfortunately, police brutality has been around for millennia. Our modern police system has been modeled after London's 1829 police force, which they called the Peelers, Because they were organized by Sir Robert Peel. He was so concerned with introducing armed forces into the city and the backlash it may incite that he (1) disarmed the police, and (2) outfitted them in "blue" neutral colors, to make sure it looks nothing like the British red coats.

What Camden, NJ did in 2012:

https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/09/us/disband-police-camden-new-...

The City's department was replaced with a County department ... rehiring -some- of the officers. Outcome?

"Now, seven years after the old department was booted (though around 100 officers were rehired), the city's crime has dropped by close to half. Officers host outdoor parties for residents and knock on doors to introduce themselves. It's a radically different Camden than it was even a decade ago."

Filming criminals hasn't stopped them either. Actually the ACLU is determined to now suppress a lot of body cam footage that they originally demanded. Maybe the public should see how terrible their peers are and take a lesson.

Instead the video is suppressesd A LOT. You've seen a handful of body cam footage, a handful of proofs of the thousands of calls in every city every day.

Think about that.

Science-fiction author Arthur C. Clarke published several books of essays. In one, published in the 1970s well before the capability was widespread, he asserted that the capacity to capture audiovideo and live stream or transmit it from any spot on earth would make authoritarianism and terror impossible, because the eyes of the world would be watching at all times. This coloured much of my own thinking of the early Internet and Web, and the democratisation of information and transmission technologies.

That's proved to be a pathetically overoptimistic vision.

The reasons are several, and other HN readers touch on most of these:

1. It is impunity and immunity rather than credible accusations which enable most oppressive behaviour. Those who know that they can act without consequence ... will. Whether this is cover of numbers (e.g., mob mentality), specific legal protection, or simply acting extrajurisdictionally, the upshot is the same: you don't need to be an evil supergenius if you cannot or will not be caught or held to account. Or, even, if you simply believe you won't or just don't care.

2. As Yonatan Zunger, chief architect of Google+ has observed, information is not power, information is a power multiplier. This was a specific response by him to David Brin's Transparent Society argument that persistent sousveillance would hold power to account. Without the power to act on information, very little is done.

(This isn't to say that, to use Neal Stephenson's terms, either the mobility and nobility are entirely immune. Each has both strengths and vulnerabilities. The nobility (establishment) has the power of institution, centralisation, and capacity to motivate resources, but relies strongly on its own acknowledged power. The nobility (populace), has strength in numbers and some resistance to decapitation, but is also tremendously disorganised and often weakly effective, at least until it isn't.)

3. Attention is limited. At any social scope --- locally, regionally, nationally, internationally --- there is only so much attention to go 'round, and the effective focus tends to be on a vanishingly small number of items, I'd argue for roughly 1 to 100, with 10 items being a very frequent limit. That is, no matter how much is going on, and how rapidly issues on the list itself rotate, focus is effectively on about 10 or fewer top stories in a day. Evidence for this is somewhat anecdotal, but pretty persistant: a top-of-the-hour five-minute news bulletin typically lists 4-6 items, giving less than a minute to each (introductions, sponsorship spots, etc., chew into time). A full-hour news programme similarly covers about the same number of items, though giving 3-4

For some examples:

The two-hour afternoon NPR flagship today lists 14 stories, 7 per hour, running largely 3-4 minutes, with an in-depth item "New Police Force From Scratch: N.J. City Proves It's Possible To Reform The Police" today, running 8 minutes:

https://www.npr.org/programs/all-things-considered/

The President's Daily Briefing, an intelligence summary of gobal developments of significance, runs 10 pages, typically lists ten items, and runs about an hour. There are archives of selected versions of this dating to the 1960s.

The Vanderbilt Television Archive comprises US national news broadcasts dating to August 5, 1968. Though the actual video isn't freely available, rundowns of news stories are listed at the site. Before switching to a 25 minute format, an hour-long news programme typically ran 6-10 items, plus another 4-6 in the top-of-the-hour summary. Shorter formats include fewer and shorter stories.

https://tvnews.vanderbilt.edu

Major newspapers typically run about 100--500 stories daily (more on weekends), with ~250 being a rough median. Only a fraction of this is actual hard news (news, politics, some of business coverage), with a substantial amount of copy being largely advertorial: sport, much of business, entertainment, style, real estate, automobiles, travel, etc.

The high-popularity lists ("most popular", "most read", "most emailed") of online sites typically list 5-10 items.

The news wires -- UPI, AP, Reuters, AFP -- typically see 1,000 - 5,000 items filed per day (various annual reports and other sources).

Hacker News tends toward a higher bound at 30 items on the front page. As those of us who submit regularly are aware, that is a precious resource and hard to land on. The Hivemind is fickle and operates curiously. (Mods do, lightly, put a finger on the scales, and yes, I've benefited from that on occasion.)

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That's not to say that recording has no merits. I've justified a fair amount of my own reading, writing, and sharing as simply bearing witness. Acknowledging (and attempting to understand) what it is that's going on, hoping to preserve some record for a future in which the limitations listed above have shifted their favour.

But don't for a second believe that information and record are panaceas of themselves, and work yourself to shift the balances noted above.