The DEA is now abandoning body cameras

One more reason for the cameras to be always on

I don’t make commentary publicly on ACAB usually but will share a story. I have had friends and family in law enforcement, but tend to take the view the institution is corrupt and the incentives and profession turns people in the best case scenario to unfeeling instruments of the machine, and in the worst case, turns shitty people into monsters. dunno if that makes me “ACAB” but if I were to take that position I’d say “all cops are bad, bad meaning incompetent, not necessarily evil.”

if you define ACAB in this way and competence defined as protecting the public from crime and maintaining the common good, then yea probably a lot if not ACAB.

I’ll share a story because this one moment in my life I was certain I was milliseconds from death and probably is the closest I ever came to it and it would have been at the hands of a cop “doing their job” with no bad intentions, just doing it poorly.

I worked in public transportation in a small, extremely wealthy community with a police force I’d describe as well funded and is considered highly trained. Part of my job required me to work very late hours into 2-4am. I took public transportation to work and bicycled home.

Unbeknownst to me, there had been some type of home invasion in the area as I was leaving work at 3am, and they shut the area down with roadblocks and set heavily armed officers up at every street intersection. I was riding my bike through the side alleys like I usually did to get home, unaware of the situation.

It’s pitch black except for some street lights nearby. Suddenly I get lit up by half a dozen bright lights in my face with armed officers pointing their weapons and screaming at me to get off my bike and on the ground. i did but had my backpack still on, they screamed to take it off as I did on my knees i saw an officer walk straight forward to me quickly with his hands on his gun aiming directly at my skull. I will never forget the look in his eyes, i felt i was toast. luckily i didnt panic and slowly put the backpack on the ground. then they realized i was a transportation worker and let me go and told me there had been a robbery. I was rattled but left.

The thing that really chapped my ass though and made the situation worse was at the next intersection, almost the exact same thing happened, because the bozos at the first one didnt radio their idiot friends and tell them not to shoot me. so twice in the space of like 5 mins i get guns drawn on me - they figured it out quicker the second time, but i stupidly popped off a little “are you gonna point your guns at me a third time or tell the next guys not to shoot me,” which didnt help the tension and got my bag searched for my trouble.

Experiencing something like that and knowing what a razors edge it could have been to dying for essentially no reason at the hands of a moron that makes more than i ever will with a pension irks me and always probably will.

I think you misread the thread. The posters above weren’t talking about the bathrooms of the DEA. The are talking about the bathrooms of the people the body cam wearing DEA officers encounter.

1. https://www.doge.gov/savings this seems like incredibly transparency for a brand new government initiative that's like 100 days old. and in the ways it doesn't provide enough info, it acknowledges that, and says they're working on it, which i believe.

2. i agree that there is a lot of highlighting of stuff that is cut that is aligned with leftist ideology, e.g. money spent on programs that are gender affirming or involving trans/LGBTQ issues. i am LGBTQ/trans myself and I am massively in support of all initiatives to make the world a more loving, kind, accepting place. but i can also empathize that government attempts to do so are probably rampant with fraud and abuse and theft and waste, and it's not clear to me to what extent our government should be funding things surrounding social issues like this at all.

3. again i think this is a sentiment based on hyperbolic media reporting and is hard to substantiate with concrete evidence other than "MSNBC had an anonymous source that said so". it's also hard to know how much the claims, if true, are misaligned with "business as usual" in the government. if doge has access to personal information to help reduce social security fraud, is that really unusual? it seems like it's necessary if you're going to audit fraud and catch things like a 9 year old getting veteran benefits or whatever.

i think doge is definitely framing cuts in ideological ways for political points. and i believe they are specifically looking for and cutting DEI related stuff, because they've plainly stated as much. but problematic framing and motivations aside, i do think it's a massive net benefit, and especially if their work helps weed out and cut off people who systemically commit fraud and waste for years and for millions/billions of dollars.