I heard a bit on NPR over the weekend talking about copaganda. Turns out body cams are beneficial to cops, because they can take that footage and selectively edit and release it to push a certain narrative.
If you’ve ever seen a clip on social media, it often starts a few seconds before the cop hits someone, rarely showing the full sequence of events that led up to that point.
And if they can’t edit the footage to make them look good? “Oops, we didn’t retrieve that footage in time so it was overwritten.”
pyre@lemmy.world 21 hours ago
easily solvable problem: losing the footage is indication of guilt. you shoot someone, you better have it ready. it malfunctioned, better have a partner who has theirs ready. if no one has footageit’s used as evidence of guilt.
of course pussy ass lawmakers will never do that.
knatschus@discuss.tchncs.de 20 hours ago
I believe having lack of evidence being the evidence for a crime is problematic, but it sure is evidence enough that they aren’t fit for their job and they should immediately lose it. Everyone Including the supervisor who failed to run the team properly.
kreskin@lemmy.world 4 hours ago
Hard agree. Its a non negotiable part of the job. I dont know that it would work to say absense of footage is evidence of wrongdoing, but its definitely enough to fire someone. Accountability would keep cops in line. Currently there is VERY little real systematic accountability for cops, in any situation.
pyre@lemmy.world 14 hours ago
first of all it’s not lack of evidence, it is evidence itself. if the camera is not working that’s tampering with evidence and is a good indication of guilt.
second of all if you can have laws like felony murder you can sure as shit have this. if you commit a felony (like a robbery), don’t hurt anyone, and a cop murders a random person in response because they’re trigger happy pigs, you can be held responsible for the murder as if you committed it yourself.
my suggestion is far more reasonable compared to that: if you kill someone you better have evidence that it wasn’t foul play because guess what that’s what everyone needs to do. we don’t just allow people to kill and go free, cops shouldn’t be exempt.
MisterFrog@lemmy.world 15 hours ago
Should be at least streamed to a server not controlled by the police, including things like charge levels so they can’t claim “oh whoops, it ran out of charge!”. A specific organisation within the judiciary, perhaps?
This way they’re gonna need to get far more creative in concealing video.
And if you’re found to do something that is concealing evidence, well that’s a crime by itself
Tiger666@lemmy.ca 10 hours ago
You misunderstand how the system works. They are all complicit.