Originally published at: Arkansas sheriff's deputy bodycam was off when he killed teen | Boing Boing
…
5 Likes
The only surprise here is that the victim was white, everything else is as it always is.
26 Likes
IMO it should be that if you’re a cop and your body camera is off you’re off the clock (with a few very narrow exceptions – undercover work being the big one.) You don’t get paid for that time and you don’t get to take advantage of the immunity given to law enforcement during the course of their duties.
If you’re having lunch or taking a bathroom break, your camera should stay on. If that footage becomes relevant to a case, the original footage stays archived and a copy with the footage of the cop eating or pooping expunged (and a sworn statement from the employee that did the expunging of what was expunged and why) should be used in the investigation and any trial.
30 Likes
Body cams should just be on by default
18 Likes
Bodycam off should be presumption of guilt.
32 Likes
Body cam or not, a kid with a blue jug is not a threat. But thanks to our lax gun laws, every traffic stop is a life or death situation for a cop.
It just goes to show how ludicrous “an armed society is a polite society” really is. I don’t see an answer to this - you’d be a fool to become a cop these days.
14 Likes
so he was fired for not having his body cam on and NOT for the royal fuckup of killing an unarmed teenager? sure, that checks out.
14 Likes
Just goes to show for anyone who thinks police murder only happens to people “who aren’t like them”, police will murder you whatever colour you are.
9 Likes
Unfortunately, the only way things are going to change is when things that have always been happening to minorities start happening to whites.
Of course, that only works when the whites are intelligent enough to know that it’s not the minorities that are doing it to them.
6 Likes
It shouldn’t completely shock you. While they disproportionately kill POC, they still kill a lot of white people.
It is one of the things I point out when people seem to hand wave away cop shootings like all of them are justified. Many of them are not. There needs to be consequences.
What ever you allow them to do to “them”, means they can one day do it to “you”.
9 Likes
Unfortunately this will be used as a reason not to take the BLM protests seriously.
“See white people die too”
I have a coworker who spent an hour complaining to me about critical race theory, our company’s diversity initiatives and BLM. He kept saying there are more instances of police brutality against whites.
I wish I had the presence of mind during the engine call to ask if that made police brutality ok. Because if he really cared about justice, there were a hell of a lot of protests he could join.
Some people think police reform (and racial/gender justice in general) is a zero-sum game.
8 Likes
No, that’s copaganda. I’ll refer you to this thread which contains links to sources that counter the misinformation put out there by law enforcement and the complicit media. People forget other jobs involve a lot more risk of death:
When they don’t bother to determine if a person is armed, and make excuses that everything looks like a weapon or they feared for their life, accepting the lies just fuels the false narrative and makes it easier for the next killer cop to get away with it.
15 Likes
A) Turning off a bodycam should be an automatic felony charge for the cop.
B) Doesn’t the cop car have a dash cam?
8 Likes
This sounds like a completely toxic person who is doing your company a disservice, and now that you know about his shitty behavior, your personal brand (if it matters) is now “Person who allows asshole to continue being an asshole” unless you let someone know about it.
Yes, this is most definitely something HR should know about, if only for you to protect yourself when he pisses off another employee and your name gets dragged into “Well, THEY didn’t see a problem with it when I said the same thing to THEM.”
5 Likes
Remind me again - why police bodycams even have an “off” button?
6 Likes
I mean, I’d want to turn it off if I am taking a shit.
It should be on when doing police work.
1 Like
I also think that due to our lax gun laws, every encounter with the police is “pre-escalated” because it is so easy for anyone to be armed. Combine this with our history of not holding killer cops accountable, and you get predictable results.
3 Likes
11 Likes
Came to say the same (for the 4th or 5th time in these threads, recently - it gets tiring to keep seeing stories where this comment is needed). Some legislators need to get in on the act and promote this. Though it was pleasantly surprising to hear that this guy having his camera off was against departmental rules in the jurisdiction that employed him.
1 Like
Yes he has some toxic tendencies, and it typically manifests itself with him not listening and talking over people regarding work items. That is some of the informal feedback I have given him even though he doesn’t report to me (yet)
He is not irredeemable in my view, so I will continue to listen to him and push him out of his information bubble. His anger is real though wholly unjustified. Or maybe just misplaced.
Still, the call ended when after trying to make my point for 30 min I verbally ripped him a new one for constantly interrupting me and made it clear that we had vastly different viewpoints despite our demographic similarities.
I considered reporting the incident to HR but decided against it. Though I still brace myself when I see his number on my caller ID.
