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comment by user-inactivated
user-inactivated  ·  3638 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: This App Constantly Records Everything Your Phone Sees and Hears  ·  

    2. Increased accountability for the actions of law enforcement.

okay, so, people suggest this all the time.

but look at the case of Eric Garner: we literally have undisputable video of police killing a man by taking actions explicitly prohibited by the police department, ignoring his pleas for assistance, and then neglecting to attempt resuscitation after he passes out and stops moving. and it doesn't even go to court.

now how are body cameras, phone cameras, any cameras at all, gonna help a goddamn thing?





elizabeth  ·  3636 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Edit: somehow, the link starts at the begining of the video even if I changed the URL to skip the part irrelevant to the discussion... skip to 3:50

I agree with Dan Brown on this. Of course the officer should have been arrested but the problem does not lie with the camera but the whole system. And at the very least the fact that it was filmed shone a light on this (because now law enforcement can't just say that they got information that the public doesn't like they did in previous cases) and this will (hopefully) lead to more reforms to make the system better.

Just because the camera footage didn't help in this case, doesn't mean we should reject cameras as part of the solution.

user-inactivated  ·  3637 days ago  ·  link  ·  

    now how are body cameras, phone cameras, any cameras at all, gonna help a goddamn thing?

WaPo ran a piece on the preventive aspects of cops wearing body cameras, with lots of statistics. I can dig it up if you didn't see it already.

galen  ·  3638 days ago  ·  link  ·  

I... don't have a meaningful response to that. The system is fucked.

b_b  ·  3638 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Sure that case is perplexing, but there is plenty of evidence that body cams reduce police violence by a whopping amount. They seem to make everyone behave better. Trust the data and not the anecdotes.

OftenBen  ·  3635 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Tell that to the Garners.