At least 1,201 people were killed in 2022 by law enforcement officers, about 100 deaths a month, according to Mapping Police Violence, a nonprofit research group that tracks police killings. ProPublica examined the 101 deaths that occurred in June 2022, a time frame chosen because enough time had elapsed that investigations could reasonably be expected to have concluded. The cases involved 131 law enforcement agencies in 34 states.
In 79 of those deaths, ProPublica confirmed that body-worn camera video exists. But more than a year later, authorities or victims’ families had released the footage of only 33 incidents.
Philadelphia signed a $12.5 million contract in 2017 to equip its entire police force with cameras. Since then, at least 27 people have been killed by Philadelphia police, according to Mapping Police Violence, but in only two cases has body-camera video been released to the public.
ProPublica’s review shows that withholding body-worn camera footage from the public has become so entrenched in some cities that even pleas from victims’ families don’t serve to shake the video loose.
Abolish police.
There’s no “reforming” a system that was BUILT this way.
I don’t want to hear it. Find another place to lick boots.
The watering down of “Defund the Police” for more palatable public consumption was a travesty.
“Oh no, we’re reasonable! We just want the police to have access to more training and better tools to engage with the public!”
No, we wanted them gone, from the ground up.
Here the police are viewed as the proverbial ambulance at the bottom of the cliff. Every dollar spent on them is evidence of a failure somewhere else in the system.
We still don’t want to remove them though, they still provide that important safety net; any complex system is likely to have errors at some point.
The system in the USA is built this way. There are countries in the world where police officers act professionally and can be trusted.
We don’t want a lawless, free for all place without any law enforcement, we deserve a proper force, trained to behave in a professional manner, and monitored to do so.
You could describe the deep reform needed as “abolish and then build from the ground”, but that’s a matter of how to reach the goal, rather than a change in the goal itself’.
We could start by making the people who are issued government firearms and the ability to stop whoever they want conform to higher standards than random schmucks in the population. We don’t need lower standards when lives and livelihoods are on the line.
Gee I wonder who is out there that will recklessly give excess power to sketchy characters as long as they believe that person will only hurt the “other” people.
Hear me out on this, but I don’t think the public should be seeing most body cam footage. I don’t think anyone should be seeing most bodycam footage, including the officer that shot the video and their department.
When I inform a cop of a crime, I don’t particularly want that conversation released to the general public. While I don’t technically have “privacy” while providing such a tip, I don’t think it unreasonable that my identity and information should be held in fairly strict confidence.
Body cam footage isn’t supposed to be released under public records requests. Metadata indicating that footage was shot at a particular time and place should be released, but the footage itself should only be accessible with a subpoena. Not even the cop who shot it should have access to that footage without a subpoena. That footage should go into a black hole, and only be pulled out with judicial oversight. Only the metadata should be widely available, to inform potential complainants of what video they can subpoena.
The video should be easily accessible to complainants, plaintiffs, or defendants through subpoena, but that’s about it.
At the same time, I think a body camera should serve as an officer’s time clock. They should only be paid while their camera is turned on, and they should not be entitled to any privileges, powers, or protections afforded to law enforcement officers (especially including qualified immunity) while scheduled to work, but not on camera.
I agree though I’ll add another group: Internal Affairs officers. If a cop has been accused of habitual wrongdoing I want IA to have easy access to it.
That said the current problem is that even on camera they have a habit of intentionally blocking its view.
Finally someone with a reasonable response. The other day I saw a very mentally ill woman attempt to stab a police officer and had to be shot.
I would never want myself, family member or loved one to be seen like that.
Same with drug overdoses or a number of other emergencies.
Your feelings matter dramatically less than society’s ability to keep police in line. If you wanna close your eyes, go ahead. Don’t close mine.
This is a point I’m making because many feel this way about close loved ones, and not wanting tons of strangers and weirdos watching. Basic dignity for the deceased. That being said this information shouldn’t be completely restricted and be accessible via the American freedom of information act.
All of this extremely personal footage shouldn’t be dumped to the public for everyone to see, only accessible when suspected of suspicious activity or other officer/authority misconduct, with the freedom of information act mentioned precisely.
Absolutely not. That defeats the entire purpose. Foia requests should 100% be answered.
An officer wears a body camera. A confidential informant against the mafia runs up to him in the street and starts talking to him.
A mafia lawyer files a FOIA request for the body camera video of every officer in the department.
Should the department comply with this FOIA request, give up the video and expose the informant to the mafia?
Should the officer be allowed to leave his camera off throughout the day, so as to avoid creating a record that he would be forced to turn over?
Suppose I were to SWAT you. I spoof your number, call the police, tell them I’m you, get them to raid “my” house. They get all geared up, turn in their cameras, raid your house, discover it was a prank. Should I, or anyone I tell, now be allowed to file a FOIA request for their video footage, and publish it “for the lulz”?
The idealistic, absolute position you took here would be ripe for abuse.
I want those cameras running all day long. They should be incorporated into the officer’s badge, and have no “off” setting. It should be recording from the time they take it off the charger at the start of their shift, and should keep running until they put it back on the charger after their shift.
The only way that level of intrusiveness is feasible is if nobody - and I mean nobody - can view that video without a warrant or a subpoena.
Obviously that’s not an artist situation. Easy appendage to the law. Arrests can’t be done with cameras off and turning a camera off should automatically be logged. Therefore a cup who presses the button to turn one off before an arrest should be subject to firing and prosecution. Pressing the button before a your convo with an informant should be no big deal.
Welcome to nuance. It’s where we don’t blanket accept manipulation and bullying just to avoid a particular specific scenario included in the blanket.
Also yeah, why shouldn’t a SWAT be recorded and subject to request?
We also can’t rule out technical failure. That’s why they should be tamper resistant and have a log for button presses, GPS data, and automatically report. I don’t wanna see a cop be prosecuted because some tech fucked up on them.
The problem with that is you’re relying on these people to be honest, which we know is a huge problem.
That’s the exact problem I am trying to address.
The main issue I see is that the officer does deserve some degree of privacy while on the job. Not much, but some sensible degree.
Think about the worst micromanaging supervisor you ever had. Now, give him access to watch a feed from your body camera, observing every move you make throughout the entire day.
I wouldn’t work under those conditions. The only person I can think of who would willingly work under such working conditions would be a completely anal retentive stickler for every rule. That’s not the kind of cop I want working in my community.
So, if I want a good cop to keep his camera on and collecting evidence against him, yet not be subjected to an unreasonable, intrusive degree of micromanaging supervision, I have to take away his supervisor’s authority to arbitrarily view his camera footage.
So, he only gets paid if he turns on his camera. He only gets qualified immunity for his actions if his camera is on. He only gets to exercise law enforcement authority if he has his camera on. But, he is protected because his video can’t be used for administrative purposes.
His honesty - or lack thereof - is no longer relevant to his camera usage.
Why do they deserve job privacy? They’re public officials that we pay for.
Your comparison of a Micromanaging supervisor isn’t accurate IMO because I doubt that the supervisor doesn’t care about 90% of the cop’s activities. I think they’re also only triggered to record in certain circumstances. The public shouldn’t have free access to all recordings at the drop of a hat, but if a relative of someone involved has a request to see evidence they shouldn’t be able to be blocked by cops.
A police victim’s family definitely has the right to see the footage, imo. Otherwise they can just mark everything as “accidental” or “unavoidable” like it already happens.
A police victim’s family does, indeed, have the right to the video. As complainants. The video will be subpoenaed as part of the investigation that they demand.
The process by which the family gets access to the video is the exact one I described.
I think that already requires some legal knowledge poor families might not have. I’m not American so I don’t know the procedure, correct me if I’m wrong, but issuing a subpoena doesn’t feel like an easy thing from what I read.
The problem there is that neither political party can reconcile this untrustworthiness of police with in their party line.
I think to some degree this is tripped up by the parties positions on guns: Republican party messaging is pro-cop, but cannot trust police so much that it undermines the pro-gun position that you cannot actually trust police to be the only ones capable of protecting you. Conversely Democrat party’s messaging sort of distrusts police, but cannot openly distrust them to a degree that reconciles with actually NOT trusting them to be your only line of defense as it undermines this core political position that it is wrong for citizens to have the means for armed self-defense.
I disagree. Both parties want the objective viewpoint that cameras provide. Democrats primarily out of distrust of cops; Republicans out of distrust of the general public.
Cops generally want cameras, but don’t want to be subjected to micromanaging and administrative abuse.
In ‘news that was incredibly obvious from the start’…no shit sherlock.
There is no such thing as reforming the Police. They are an evil collective of people.
I disagree. Just saw a video on krudplug of a cop shooting a guy right before he can cut up a lady with a butcher knife.
There are crazy, dangerous people in the world. If you can’t fight and you don’t own a gun, you are at the mercy of others to protect you.
I think it’s sad how the vast majority of people who are anti-cop cannot fight and do not own guns. Did they see what happened in CHAZ?
Just saw a video on
Is this the video you saw?
There are crazy, dangerous people in the world.
Yes. And they become a whole lot more dangerous once they get a badge.
No, Clyde… there is no such thing as a “good” cop.
Okay. Call up your friend who can’t fight and doesn’t own a gun to protect you when someone wants something you have.
What if I’m physically disabled? Which literally everyone is, in relation to a stronger individual or group (and there’s literally always someone/something bigger than you)… Does that mean I don’t have the “right” to be anti-murder, even if the murderer is someone with a badge?
Or maybe there’s a sliding scale, with how much of a position of principle that I’m allowed hold correlating proportionally to how much I can bench or how quickly I can subdue an opponent?
That sounds pretty fascist.
Does that mean I don’t have the “right” to be anti-murder
I’m not going to take your bad-faith arguments seriously. Goodbye.
The reasoning you just used was in the form of an anecdote, which undermines your whole point. Anecdotal thinking is one of the most common ways that humans arrive at irrational conclusions.
Why should you care? Well, if you believe what you stated, then you should want other people to believe it too. In order to do this the first step is to learn how to present it without any of the common logical flaws humans are born with.
Your argument pattern is, “Event X happened and I saw it, therefore Y”. No. You need a much larger sample size to make a point. I can’t teach you rational argument in one post, but hopefully you’ll become curious enough to learn. Have a nice day.
Yet most of the negative sentiment on cops comes from anecdotes. And of course now we have the Internet so now there’s availability bias of all of the extreme cases that go viral. When a study asked how many unarmed blacks were killed by police each year most left leaning were wrong by an order of magnitude.
There are crazy, dangerous people in the world. If you can’t fight and you don’t own a gun, you are at the mercy of others to protect you.
Nothing about this is anecdotal.
we get it. cops are cowards. why else would this be one of the only countries where officers are lethally armed around the clock. cowards.
why else would this be one of the only countries where officers are lethally armed around the clock
Because it’s also the only country where many citizens are lethally armed around the clock I’d guess
If you stop a random person in traffic in Europe for routine control then it’s extremely unlikely that they have a gun in their car and even less likely that they will pull it on you.
If you are permanently having to think about scenarios where random people pull a gun on you because it’s not a very unlikely situation to happen then it’s not unreasonable to expect certain paranoia to start to form…
While the stats for “people killed by police” are always shown around I’d guess that the “police killed by citizens” also is much higher in the US.
Gun control is the only solution that even has a chance to remove this spiralling violence of trigger happy cops imho
I’d guess a police officer is seeing more than 50 random people a day though which makes it a daily occurrence to be in contact with people carrying which actually strengthens my point
This is a bullshit comment.
Dont get me wrong, im not saying they arent cowards or whatever, but only country where cops are lethally armed? Honey, thats not the reason your cops are snowflakes lol.
Here in my country cops wear guns as well (though in a holder that has to be at all times closed unless needed) yet here we are… With as good as 0 “accidental” deaths by cops.
Therefor, your comment makes no sense.
Fair, that you didnt, I misread that part by the looks of it!
That said, i think my point stands that being armed has nothing to do with the issue. And before anyone calls me a gun loving guy, i dont like guns at all tbh
You said “one of the only”.
The UK is the only Western country I know of where cops don’t normally carry a firearm. It’s a very distinctive feature of the UK police, not the default or something that makes the US stand out. Even in Scandinavia the cops armed.
The differences between the US and the rest of the developed world lie elsewhere, in a multitude of unaddressed systemic issues.
cops should be tested for steroid use randomly and monthly.
My guess as long as 320 million people have 434 million legal firearms the cops are not going to give theirs up either.
There’s a lot of things we need to do if we want police officers to remain armed.
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Require officers to always patrol in doubles or more. (Many of the police involved shootings are panic shootings. A buddy who can help would reduce this.)
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Require less than lethal force at least be attempted unless you’re already getting shot at. (Currently police can shoot you if you twitch wrong or just have an object in plain sight like a gun, knife, or cellphone. We know this because they’ve done it and had no reprecussions. So now they lose the shoot first privilege.)
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Ban them from conducting traffic stops. Stand up an unarmed traffic specific force that doesn’t have the authority to arrest anyone or run warrants. They are specifically for civil traffic enforcement. (Many police involved shootings stem from stupid things like something hanging from the mirror or even just going 10 over the limit.) To be clear, you’d still need police officers for things like DUI. Felony speeding and such can be handled with cameras and actually taking cars away. Yes that’s harsh in the US, but see how fast people decide it’s not worth their car to go faster. (And yes speed is directly related to more accidents and fatalities in those accidents.)
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Required marksmanship and tactical training. You don’t get to carry a gun you haven’t certified in and certification is a bit more intense than beer and bullets with your buddies at the range. If you want to tell us you’re constantly at war then bring in some combat infantry veterans to design your certification program. Something like 90% hit rate on random targets while your heart is in the cardio zone and someone is randomly setting off artillery simulators. Yes that’s well above what the Army or Marines officially requires but you keep telling us how highly trained you are and how dangerous your job is. Prove it with the drills we did before combat deployments.
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Always on cameras with gunshot detectors. When the detector goes off it automatically starts uploading a feed to the ACLU. If your camera is conveniently blocked then not only do you not get qualified immunity but it’s also a sentence enhancement if you’re convicted and charges for destroying evidence.
We act like there’s a binary solution to the problem of police accountability. But it doesn’t have to be binary. The only unacceptable thing at this point is to continue allowing police to have all the power and none of the accountability.
