> ^The real problem here is that there is no consequence for incorrect takedowns. [..]
While your points are valid I think the real problem is that the Police is trying not to be accountable and to escape its responsibilities.
While your points are valid I think the real problem is that the Police is trying not to be accountable and to escape its responsibilities.
The problem with the adversely approach is that it gets behaviour like this. You back someone into the corner and how do you think they'll react, defensive and insular or open to mutual understanding and growth.
I'm not a US citizen but I do feel there is something generally wrong with the policing there and a need for universal improvement that aligns the police closer to the citizens.
So being live streamed without consent is first and foremost a citizen tool to overwatch the police's action and honestly you don't have anything else allowing to do that in real-time. Policemen are not backed in a corner when filmed, they are acting in broad light. It may seems adversely but police proved since decades that they always took the violent path when interacting with people one way or the other and giving policeman the power to take it down on people profiled or randomly is a repeated proof. If great powers comes with great responsibilities, an uniform does not seem to come with a way to enforce the later.
you simply can't do it any other way.
Cry me a river. Police, when using the powers that the people gave them, should not have any problem being held accountable for what they are doing.
There's a difference between an individual (and that may also be an officer off-duty) being live streamed without consent or an actor acting on behalf of the government like a cop or a politician being live streamed.
Example: https://www.portlandoregon.gov/police/news/read.cfm?id=28147...
The mother of the affected was telling people to go away, but they were so desperate to push their own agenda they ignored it. The BWC videos are on YouTube.
For mostly-good reasons, in any court case judges and juries will tend to believe what a police officer tells them happened. So in any situation where a police officer and an ordinary citizen are one-on-one, if the ordinary citizen thinks the police officer is, or might be, acting wrongly then recording the events may be their only hope of getting justice if that happens.
If there are multiple police officers and one civilian, you might hope that one police officer would report on another's misdeeds. Unfortunately, there's an awful lot of reason to think that that doesn't generally happen, and that what actually happens is that one police officer backs up another against civilians, even if they have to lie to do it.
A police officer interacting with a private citizen is (supposed to be) acting on behalf of The People, to uphold The Law. What possible reason could there be not to record what they do in that capacity?
In fact, their signatures/actions should be invalid unless properly announced and distributed all their voters.
Otherwise people feel so extreme and polarised. You've got Hawaii and Bay Area liberals vs rednecks. Both are very strong with their opinions.
It was a violent encounter with police officers that led to the proposal that they wear body cameras (https://www.wired.com/story/body-cameras-stopped-police-brut...)
Even with the use of them, the release of them is often blocked or their existence is denied.
From the above article: " In Baltimore three years ago, one of the devices caught a police officer as he planted drugs at a crime scene; he was later convicted for fabricating evidence. After Rayshard Brooks was fatally shot by a cop in Atlanta on Friday, body cam footage of the incident was quickly released, and the officer was fired. "
I am not sure this is entirely correct. Generally speaking, law-abiding citizens are not the ones that police have to worry about anyway (regardless of if they are carrying guns). Citizens that are not law-abiding (criminals), on the other hand, are the people that police generally need to be concerned about. It does not seem like a great idea to assume these people are not armed simply because they "are not allowed to carry guns."
Admittedly, the absolute saturation of American culture with guns is not making the cop's jobs any easier, but the answer to these problems is way more complicated than disarming law-abiding citizens.
But I would not know how to get rid of guns in the US now, because there are just too many guns around, and "non-law-abiding" citizens will still carry them.
A citizen should not carry a gun. Doesn't matter if they are "law-abiding" or not.
There is no difference between the two and to pretend like there is a difference is how we get the same people chanting both "we need to punish criminals more severely!" and "It's shameful the US has so much of it's population in prison"
edit: But also, how do you expect a COP to be able to differentiate between the 2 in the field? They are essentially the ones that gets to decide who is a criminal or not which brings us back to how the police are given the ability to abuse their power.
Certainly there is no difference between them in terms of their human dignity and (unless otherwise specified by law) their rights as citizens. But it seems illogical to assert that there is no difference at all between a person who has broken a law and a person who has not...
Are you sure the problem is guns? What makes you so sure? I am genuinely interested, because Serbia is known for having lots of guns, too, but firearm-related death rate is low, vs. Honduras, which has much less guns per 100 inhabitants and extremely high firearm-related death rate that is homicide.
In any case, here is the table:
| Country | Homicide | Guns per 100 inhabitants |
| US | 4.46 | 120.5 |
| Serbia | 0.72 | 37.82 |
| Honduras | 28.65 | 9.9-11.24 |
What do you think explains this? Curious to explore.
| Country | Homicide | Guns per 100 inhabitants |
| US | 4.46 | 120.5 |
| Serbia | 0.72 | 37.82 |
| Honduras | 28.65 | 9.9-11.24 |
| | | |
| Cyprus | 0.50 | 36.4 |
| Canada | 0.72 | 34.70 |
| Finland | 0.20 | 32.4 |
| ... | | |
| | | |
| Jamaica | 38.20 | 5.8 |
| Eswatini | 37.16 | 8.1 |
| Brazil | 23.93 | 8.6 |
| ... | | |
"Where there are more guns there is more homicide."
"Across high-income nations more guns = more homicide."
"Across states, more guns = more homicide."
"More guns = more homicides of police."
https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/hicrc/firearms-research/guns-an...
Could it be that states with high homicide rates lead to people in those states buying more guns to feel more protected at home (and not the other way around)?
For a real life example, I live in Seattle, and we had a giant spike in the first-time firearm ownership numbers last year. It was driven by a lot of people who previously had zero interest in owning guns who suddenly became more concerned about their safety due to all the violence happening adjacent to protests, as well as due to the local District Attorney refusing to prosecute a lot of violent criminals with many repeated offenses and letting them out (to clarify: when I say "violent", I am not talking about protests, I am talking about people with multiple battery and assault charges, robbery, gang violence, rape, etc.). So in the Seattle scenario, it was indeed an increased rate of crime and homicides that caused a spike in firearm ownership, not the other way around.
And what about Switzerland, with their extremely high rate of gun ownership but low rate of homicides?
I don't have an answer to these questions, but it makes me feel like it is a bit less simplistic than just "higher rates of gun ownership in high-income nations create higher homicide rates".
Politics is broken if the DA is not effectively enforcing laws. Guns can't fix it. (Just as every surveillance thread on HN has comments about "technology can't really fix this, it's a politics problem", guns are very much just technology when it comes to socioeconomics/politics of crime.)
Switzerland has very high regulation. Not just for guns, for everything. And a very effective (almost direct) democracy. And an almost universal very-very-very high standard of living. (Yet their suicide rate is pretty high! Used to be higher than the US' - https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/suicide-death-rates?tab=c... ) Gun ownership there is more of a cultural heritage, and very much not a safety device.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/more-guns-do-not-...
There are many, many words written on how great guns are or how grave problem they are. I completely accept that if the plurality want this so be it, it's not as deadly as many other problems.
It is obviously not something that can be blamed on any specific individual, and it's only based on what things looks like from the outside, but the impression is there regardless.
The ridiculous amount of wars the US wages upon other countries also contribute to that image, but I suspect that's more related to the US fighting seemingly neo-colonial wars with European support than anything else. If European contribution had been on the same level, that factor would probably not be included.
Every time they walk up to anyone, or a car, they could be shot and die. This is insane and I don't think many people appreciate this. It completely changes the dynamic of the relationship between citizens and police.
Not to mention, US police aren't trained to deal with this stress. Which is an extra problem.
I loved the interview Jocko Willink did with Joe Rogan shortly after the George Floyd killing. The answer isn't defunding the police. Its more funding. So they can spend 20% of their time training, like the military. So they can get accustomed to high stress situations and DEescalation. These skills need to be learned. And they're not.
Maybe instead of sending 100 SWAT troops to deal with people marching in a street, then can send 20 cops to keep an eye on things and put the other 80 in a training class.
...right?
A public servant or officer of the public, paid for by public funds, must not have any expectation of privacy while performing her or his job.
Ideally no one, including your boss, can review body cam footage without a good reason (checking to see if the officer is slacking is NOT a good reason). I can't imagine that being practical though (it would be ignored).
Body cams don't seem like the right solution. Society can come up with better ideas. Improving training, increase penalties when wrong-doing is proven, etc.