North Texas citizens organize to monitor police with video cameras
nbcdfw.com
nbcdfw.com
Also, I know folks doing this locally, and have watched officers request that filmers stand at a safe distance. It's interesting to me how often "safe distance" corresponds with a) somewhere with a shitty view far away and b) a position where the filmer is significantly further away than a number of pedestrians or gawkers whose "safety" presumably isn't in dispute. I have good friends who were arrested for nothing more than filming, and they were often given confusing and contradictory orders by an officer who obviously felt he had the immediate situation well enough in hand to direct most of his attention ordering the filmer around. It happened almost 2 years ago, no charges were filed, and if this was a legitimate concern then I'd really like to see some obstruction charges brought in the several local cases I've seen of citizens arrested for filming.
I do agree that some of these groups' strategies are a bit busted. I'm familiar with the Peaceful Streets Project here in Austin, and sometimes the ragey/personal rhetoric got a bit overpowering. Then again, cops kill people, often under suspicious circumstances, and get away with it. Perhaps it is time for a bit of rage, and to make it personal.
0. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/05/01/brendan-conin-nypd-...
Suppose that atleast a few of the police are not the bloodthirsty crazies depicted on reddit, and actually have the best interests of their fellow citizens in mind. You might also suppose that even those people might get paranoid about some guy following them around in a car and pointing stuff at them, because merely having a gun and the ability to use it doesn't automatically make you 'safe'.
Putting two and two together, you'd conclude that this article has nothing to do with hacker news and flag it.
You folks can downvote all you want, but it doesn't change anything. I value a hacker news free of politics and current events far more than I value 'karma' points.
It's incredibly difficult to fix what you don't understand, and most of the world doesn't understand politics. Especially young people. Most especially young people who have dedicated all their time and energy to something that isn't politics.
There are also all sorts of rules that are learned on the job and aren't not in any manual. Ways for maintaining control and authority mostly. Many of these practices are unsanctioned and unofficial, but still essential for being able to do the job. Some things are both crucial and illegal.
Cops usually feel like when they get busted for being arrogant, bullying or outright violence that they are are victims of these situations. They do what everyone does, what has to be done for policing to be viable. Those pencil pushers with their removed perspective are making judgments about their irrelevant rules being broken.
They are under stress. Violence is a part of their days. Most of the people they deal with are lowlifes, lyres, cheaters. There is real stress. Real danger
That said, a lot of these practices aren't benign and they aren't inevitable. The police does genuinely attract many problematic people and it makes other. They get used to defending their authority and meet challenges to it with extreme responses. They develop a cops & robbers, us & them worldview that becomes their reality. More specifically cops, criminals and naive spectators, citizens & bureaucrats.
They develop a bullying mannerism.
Police manage to do their jobs without guns at all in many places. They deal with violent crime just like cops in the states. I'm not saying this should be adopted by US department, but is proof that there are other ways of doing things.
I think lights good for the paradigm. But, whatever that light reveals needs to be dealt with. Maybe police modus operandi needs to changed. But, maybe the rulebook needs to change too. It can be dangerous trying to enforce the official rulebook after long periods where it has only been enforced selectively. Maybe the official way of doing things doesn't work.
That said, this following cops around only plays to the problem paradigm. It's harassment, like what paparazzi do. It's belligerent. Maybe it's valuable as a protest, but it isn't as solution.
What I think should happen in law enforcement is that everything should be recorded. Every interrogation. Every arrest. Every time a cop pulls you over. This is all evidence and it should be part of every booking.
Hopefully that will make the need for this sort of thing go away.
We can expect that pretty soon with storage and chips becoming ever smaller. 10-15 years perhaps?
Taser makes several:
http://www.taser.com/products/on-officer-video/axon-flex-on-...
I guess whether those meet every possible definition of 'everything' is something that can be argued about.
Well that's where I draw the line though. If it comes down to a choice between accepting that law enforcement is allowed to break the law or making law enforcement less effective by increasing transparency, I choose to decrease law enforcement effectiveness. I'd rather citizens undermine the police by recording them then have citizens get shot without cause with little oversight.
>> What I think should happen in law enforcement is that everything should be recorded.
I agree. I would hope that in these "discussions" they're having with these groups to reach a compromise, that's the solution.
Not really, no. It's just not that dangerous. We imagine it must be dangerous, and so do cops themselves. But you're a lot more likely to be killed as a garbage collector or airline pilot, or a construction worker, or plenty of other jobs.
It's like with the "war on terror". The fear of danger is much more powerful than the danger itself. And like with terrorism, the fear is actively promoted for political reasons.
They do what everyone does, what has to be done for policing to be viable.
That seems like an argument against the department as a whole, not a justification for an individual's abuse.
Most of the people they deal with are lowlifes, lyres, cheaters.
Most of the people they deal with are ordinary innocent civilians whom they assume are "lowlifes" because they have been trained and conditioned to.
That said, this following cops around only plays to the problem paradigm. It's harassment, like what paparazzi do. It's belligerent. Maybe it's valuable as a protest, but it isn't as solution.
It is belligerent, and it is harassment, and it is protest. And that's the point. People with power do not voluntarily stop abusing it. They continue until met with resistance - until they are forced to stop.
Unfortunately it's effectively suicide to physically force the cops to stop, but we should do everything we can short of that to stand up against them. Standing up against the cops sets an example for others that we don't need to fear them, that they don't deserve respect and deference, and that we can do something directly to stop their abuse.
"Stand up against them"? See how lovely a world it is without them - what comes next is very much worse than what you're complaining about.
Cops deserve respect and deference, if only because they stand for public order and that deserves it.
The bad perceptions of the police have very real reasons behind them.
Respect is EARNED, not given. Cops CHOSE to be cops, they are being compensated to be cops, the onus is on them, to take then danger. Not on the citizen.
servi publici and all that comes with that...
Sounds more like an unpleasant job than a dangerous one. I'm not refuting your claim that it maybe dangerous but the parent has a valid point. It may not be any more dangerous than the other jobs mentioned.
Something may feel more dangerous than it is. That's the point the parent was making, I believe.
I'm a firefighter/paramedic, and am very familiar with many of the scenarios you described. Many of my drinking buddies are cops, and I'm very grateful that they have my back night after night.
That being said, I disagree completely with your statement that cops deserve respect simply because they 'stand for public order'. There have been more than enough examples in recent history where cops have very clearly _not_ been acting in the public's interest, and I think it's prudent for average citizens to be wary of cops. It's an unfortunate reality, but it's the culture that law enforcement has chosen to create.
Having had a handful of interactions with LEOs while 'off the clock', it really amazes me how different their attitude is from when I'm in uniform.
In uniform it's a lot of in-jokes, knowing glances, etc...
Out of uniform, it's very often condescension, or at least a very obvious distrust of anything I say.
Policing doesn't crack the top 10 BLS list of most dangerous jobs. http://www.forbes.com/sites/jacquelynsmith/2013/08/22/americ...
An op-ed I randomly came across today regarding the topic.
And it will never change so long as people like you absolve the shameful individuals that stand by and do nothing as innocents are harmed.
These cops are the true heroes. Unfortunately the reason we rarely hear about them is that there are incredibly few. Much more comfortable to stick with the herd, follow orders and take your check.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warren_v._District_of_Columbia
If they help and are decent and promote the peace, then we should honor them. By default, though, they collect a paycheck, same as anyone else.
Adding a bit of objective support to that statement is a report [1] from BLS that lists Mortality Rates by industry, where law enforcement is grouped with Government.
Working on an oil rig, or doing light construction, probably has a much higher incidence rate of injury.
BLS Government Death Rate: 2/(100k full-time equiv workers over 1 year)
NIH LEO Homicide Rate: 5.6/(100k census LEOS over 11 years)
Instead, we should include all causes of death for LEOs (because the NIH did so for government workers) and then divide by 11 so that both figures represent deaths over the same number of worker-years. This makes law enforcement look even safer. In fact, it makes it look safer than deskwork. This is either due to a methodological difference or due to the fact that LEOs tend to be young and healthy compared to deskworkers. In any case I think the conclusion "law enforcement is not a comparatively dangerous occupation" is correct.
BLS Government Death Rate: 2/(100k full-time-equiv workers over 1 year)
NIH LEO Death Rate: 11.8/11 = 1.07/(100k census workers over 1 year)
Your narrative is inaccurate at best.
I also think it'd be great if cops had cameras on them at all times, and if they voluntarily did that themselves.
Unfortunately, that reality is a bit, well, unrealistic as well. My understanding is that APD has dash cams, but the footage often isn't released, especially in cases of suspected brutality, and often not even to those with an interest in clearing their names. Also, my understanding is that the Peaceful Streets folks arrested here never got their own cameras back, even though no charges were ultimately filed (I think the stolen camera count was at 4.)
I don't know what the solution is, but I don't think it is "let the watchmen wear their own cameras and decide what footage to release."
"let the watchmen wear their own cameras" isn't all that outrageous. It's a momentum thing. If all cops were wearing cameras any incident without footage would be suspicious. I think it will happen eventually.
I agree about internal investigations. They shouldn't be internal. Investigating police and other law enforcers should be a separate unit.
So for things like speeding, jaywalking, etc - you could get pulled over and a talking to by a mediator. Then if there was a problem that couldn't be mediated/otherwise handled, only then would they call in an actual officer who could write tickets, use physical force, etc.
Then it's very clear if you're being an ahole, you get to quickly deal with cops just like today. But if you're being reasonable, often disputes could be mediated without the confrontational baggage most police encounters today seem to engender.
The key would also be that you prevent the "real" cops from dealing with these lower-level issues until AFTER they've been mediated, so the escalation process is very clear and unambiguous. Or at least require them to have a mediator show up to...mediate...first.
Of course this is different from the environment in high-crime urban areas, but just as an example of how this can play out in a realistic way: the Burning Man festival has Rangers (mediators) who are there to help people resolve their own issues and handle minor incidents. In theory, the cops there are for backup in case of major incidents, but in practice they wind up being a pain in the a by literally being the "Fun Police" and shaking people down for minor alcohol and drug infractions. Pretty much the entire event's security needs are handled entirely by the Rangers and simple mediation.
The police there could choose to be be a valuable community resource, but instead generally wind up being resented by most of the community due to (at least a perception of) having generally antagonistic and abusive attitudes. This dynamic is the real problem more than anything else IMO - both on and off-Playa. When large numbers of law-abiding citizens have a negative impression of your entire profession, something is definitely wrong.
Now if only we could get people to follow around our Senators and Congress men and catalog everything they are doing that would be great.
In the U.S. the FCC was overruled over bans on commercial use of these so that's another barrier lifted. As an added bonus, it also prevents immediate discovery of the pilot and thereby avert suppression to some degree.
"How does it make you feel when you see a cop behind you?" said Tye. "If they're going to do it, maybe they should get a taste of their own medicine."
Maybe having cops around endangers peoples safety--when driving, for example, slowing down and causing accidents.
Cops carry guns and shoot racial minorities-- do we condone this for everyone? Would allowing minorities to shoot cops for arbitrary reasons solve the problem?
If you're going to protest something, abandoning the moral high ground is a bad idea. I'm not saying don't be humble, I'm saying don't lose sight of what you want to accomplish.
While both of these types of events occur sometimes, the second type is probably fairly rare and the first type probably much more common.
Maybe the idea is that if police think they are being watched they will act in a more accountable fashion. I don't see this being a bad thing at all.
They just learn where the wires are that keeps it running and they pull them out, then reconnect them when they're doing normal stuff. The same thing keeps coming up with dashcams, too. The dashcam footage gets "lost", etc. Maybe one day we'll have technologies and policies that don't allow officers to mess with them, but for the foreseeable future we're the ones who have to be vigilant.
Biggest, lie, ever told.
The increasing prevalence of cameras in mobile phones, wearable action cameras such as GoPro brand devices, and over-the-air footage-uploading services such as Bambuser have really jolted this new niche of police brutality porn. Further court rulings, such as Glik v. Cunniffe, that reinforced a person's right to record police in public while performing their official duties, have only emboldened crusaders against the corruption behind the thin blue line.
tl;dr, police should work at regaining trust and respect themselves. Them not beating up people following them with a camera is a good first step.
Controlling the circumstances under which recordings are viewed or released is important to consider as well. The way I see it there are two circumstances for viewing these recordings:
- Internal to law enforcement as part of performance review or incident investigation.
- Requested by the public in regard to a specific incident.
Since the police are wearing a uniform, an integrated camera might be better.
There is something to be said for power of the first-person view however. Maybe a more "police-ish" looking Glass?
If a police officer is doing something that would be sensible to record and for some reason chooses to leave the camera off, you eventually learn something. I say eventually because the flexibility could be used for abuse, saying "I forgot" and "technical problems", but not over and over and over again.
I don't think a police officer needs a great deal of privacy while on duty, but I also don't mind giving them the ability to turn off recording devices when they use the toilet. I mean turn it off independently, without asking some overseer for permission.
Arlington, a city of 370k smack between Dallas and Fort Worth is rural?
So the cops will get jumpy and start shooting once a hispanic kid shows up (which, one of them was) because they're good old boys from rural Texas (which Arlington isn't) should we keep digging or would you like to admit that your suppositions don't really have a foundation here?
I'm not saying people shouldn't videotape the cops, but that they should continue to do so at their own risk.
The film group obviously has an anti-police bias (somewhat understandable given behavior I have seen from cops) and the police obviously would prefer to remain completely unaccountable to the public.
But you can't air these feelings in public and expect to be taken seriously so everyone is "reasonable" while secretly pushing their real agenda. Just like everywhere else I guess.
If the same number of people in the US had dashcams as people do in Russia due to insurance scams I think there would be enough people recording to catch these kinds of things at random encounters.
Just what we need, vigilante justice.
Reminds me of when, in the wake of 9/11, the Justice Department released a list of domestic terror organizations that included environmental activists who had never hurt anyone.