What we increasingly have is one person getting stopped by cops and one or more civilians shooting video of the event with cell phones. The real lesson of this video and others like it is that video can be an effective defense against the police in many contexts. From a legal standpoint, it undermines the officers (often false) testimony and helps the innocent gain acquittal. Moreover, when police reports are demonstrably falsified, the officers in question can face more serious legal consequences than from almost anything else. Cameras are the best defense against bad cops. Since they’re no real threat to good cops, good cops have no valid reason (other than tribal “Thin Blue Line” bullshit) to object to video; the same cannot be said of guns, which really only escalate the situation. Granted, video is of limited use against actual brutality; a camera, especially one that’s not obvious, will not stop an officer from shooting me, and officers have been caught on video engaged in serious brutality and still been acquitted, but I suspect that video gives bad cops more nightmares than guns.
