Civil disobedience time.
This nightmare must end.
Mandatory personnel board written into the union contract. Description Here. "Two members are appointed by the Mayor, two members are selected by employees by election and then appointed by the Mayor while the remaining member is selected by the other four members. So I’m pretty sure that in the 3-2 vote, at least two of the votes for the officer were by the union-elected members.
He has that “Dear” in the headlights look.
He seems nice. I mean, aside from the fatally excessive force thing.
(Side note: While a 19-year old is still technically a teenager, I think calling her a “girl” is pushing it.)
I am steadfastly against the increased police militarization and overreach that appears to exist throughout the United States at present. But it does a great disservice to this very important issue to omit salient details that were in the original story:
Meanwhile, Dear said his camera accidentally unplugged from the battery
pack before he began chasing the 19-year-old suspected car thief last
year after she allegedly pointed a gun at him during a foot chase. He
fired in response and killed her. A fellow officer corroborated that the
teen, Mary Hawkes, had pointed a gun. That on-scene officer, however,
turned on his body camera after the shooting, according to public
records obtained by the Albuquerque Journal.
A side note - the lapel camera is made by Taser. Surely, there is a way for that manufacturer to add a feature that will, ahem, alert the user if the bodycam becomes disconnected. Perhaps 50000 volts worth would do the trick.
God damn it.
Do you spend much time around 19 year olds? A lot (probably the majority) really are still kids at that age. I rarely encounter a 19 year old that I would reflexively refer to as a “woman” rather than a “girl.”
Technically, killing a teenager is the last required step in graduating the Albuquerque Police Academy. A recruit can only get around it by watching Serpico 9 times.
Yeah, I can’t help but note that the presence of two officers saying that she pointed a gun at them changes the nature of this significantly - now, did they actually find a gun?
The point you make is pretty salient though, bodycams should note when they are unplugged.
Apparently so.
The officer said he saw Hawkes point a gun at Dear right before she was shot. The lapel video shows a gun right next to her body seconds after she was shot. The officer ends up kicking the gun to the side.
The sad state of where things are now is that if a police officer states that they found a gun, I tend to think they planted it. i don’t think it’s very healthy that my gut response to a statement from the police is that they’re lying, but there it is.
At this point, I think a police officer who kills someone should be permanently removed from active duty and barred from owning or carrying firearms. No exceptions, not even for genuine Hollywood style “save the President and an entire children’s hospital from zombie ISIS cannibals” heroics.
Any police officer who turns off their camera like that? 30 days without pay. Minimum.
How about if they have a chip in the officers gun that would disable the gun if the camera is off. A 10 minute battery built in the camera would solve any accidental disconnects.
While I agree with the second part - turning off your camera should be a punishable offense - the first part I think would have unintended consequences when it comes to violent crime reprisals or enforcement. There certainly is a violent criminal element in the country, even if the militarization of police is totally out of whack in response. I think zero tolerance policies are always a bad idea. You could say I have zero tolerance for them.
I think being permanently barred from any employment where the former officer would have access to firearms should be sufficient. And you’d have a better chance of passing such a law and withstanding constitutional challenges if it doesn’t interfere with the 2nd amendment rights of private citizens (regardless of what you think of such rights in general).
[quote]Any police officer who turns off their camera like that? 30 days without pay. Minimum.
[/quote]
Testify, brother! Hallelujah!
Isn’t it clear by now ABQ wants brutal murderous unaccountable cops? How much clearer could they make it? It’s not a bug.
I can be fired for not filing certain reports within 24 hours of specific events. And my job doesn’t deal with the possibility of ending anyone’s life. So I think the police can stand to increase their standards. If you start fining them a week’s pay every time their camera “gets disconnected” or “fails to get plugged in”, you’ll stop seeing these “accidents” pretty quickly. Don’t let them make excuses. Just take away their money when they fuck up. They’re police. They need to be held to a higher standard than “good enough for government work”.
the plant gun and the plant baggie of drugs were common get out of jail free cards carried by cops up until body cams.
“ABQ” does not, at least not the mayor and the police chief. The ABQ police union, however, does. Since the union fought for a collective bargaining agreement that allows them to name 2 of the 5 members of the personnel board (and those two members to be able to veto the choice of the fifth member), this isn’t a surprise. You could demand that ABQ not give in to the union demands, but generally this sort of thing is the top demand for a police union, outweighing even concerns like pay and benefits.
For unions everywhere, their top concern is job security, closely followed in many jobs by safety. Understandable in many cases, but in the case of police officers, I just don’t think we can consider cop job security and safety to be number one when it means letting those who kill indiscriminately keep their jobs. I’m not even saying that every police officer needs to be prosecuted when doing this, just saying that they shouldn’t continue to be officers.
