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Comment by jobu | Hacker News Reader

It seems like the ubiquity of small recording devices that nearly anyone could own and use (like a cellphone) will have a larger impact on corruption than anything else we could do.

You may not have any direct power over the cop that just shook you down for a few hundred, but discretely recording that interaction and posting it on YouTube is likely to end his career in any society.

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It seems like many of the cops who are filmed brutalizing people end up on brief suspension, and then back at their jobs shortly after.

For filming police to be effective, we need more regularly enforced punishments (like actually being fired) for police brutality.

Those who are actually fired are sometimes discovered working as a cop in another nearby jurisdiction shortly thereafter.

If you really want to punish a rotten cop, you need to prevent him from being rehired.

I'm not generally in favour of occupational bans, but I think that's a great example for an occupation you should be able to get banned from if you are found to abuse your position of power (much like caretakers). You wouldn't want to see a rapist nurse be employed as a nurse or a molesting teacher work in a school, so why should police brutality be treated any different? You abuse a privileged position, you lose the privilege for a reasonable amount of time.

> If you really want to punish a rotten cop, you need to prevent him from being rehired.

Isn't preventing rehire part of the premise behind jailing criminals? It makes me ill that it is so difficult to jail common criminals if they have worn a badge. They earn the name 'pigs' every time they obstruct justice.

posting it on YouTube is likely to end his career in any society.

Given that the video gains enough visibility of course but I would still take that with a grain of salt.

That's why you pay attention to the people in the media that are good at distributing this kind of stuff and pass it to them.

For your amusement let me point out some implicit assumptions that are required for that to be true. The country in which I live has criminal defamation laws that would result in you going to jail for posting that video - the truth is not a defense against defamation here, unlike other countries. Also, the authorities would likely demand the video be taken down or they would require ISPs to block it within the country.

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