close enough
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I don’t think they are. I never said so. Again, please don’t put words in my mouth. This isn’t about the psychology of individual LEOs. It’s about their role in our society. They are and should be held to a high standard of conduct, because they literally have life and death in their hands. They are empowered to shoot us and that deserves greater scrutiny. As such, they are answerable to us. And we’re really not talking about being recorded at all times. But recording while interacting with the public is probably a good idea at this point. I’m arguing that the nature of the job means a higher scrutiny, not that cops are psychologically different than the rest of us. Of course they aren’t. I just feel it’s besides the point.
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You don’t want to the handsome hollywood actor with the strong chin? You’d rather be the white dude? 
And I think @renke found your next cosplay to share with us!!!
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So to sum up, your position isn’t actually on the topic of the OP or any of my points above. You’re talking about whether cops should or should not be subject to a greater level of scrutiny. I’m talking about whether, as I pointed out explicitly in at least one comment to you, Boston cops should have volunteered to be subjected to a greater level of scrutiny.
I’m not interested in debating the question of mandatory scrutiny. I’m interested in discussing how greater buy-in from the police officers themselves can be accomplished if they and when are required to be subjected to this increased scrutiny. Your position on this seems to be that they’re answerable to us and thus must accept this, no matter what their feelings on the subject. Am I misstating your position?
No. But I think that’s the heart of the question. If you don’t then we really are talking past each other at this point. I see no reason why people imbued with the power of life and death should be exempt from, honestly something we all experience some level of a daily basis. As others have pointed out, many of us are subject to scrutiny at work and of course, many of us carry about tracking devices willingly. We are turning into a surveillance society that Orwell warned about, but the people who more often than not carry that structure out are being left out and not being subject to the same scrutiny you and I might be.
Turn the question around for a second - why should the people who can carry out executions with generally little to no accountability be allowed to be free from scrutiny? Especially given that they work for us (in theory - protect and serve, right)?
It’s not that I think the question is unimportant; it’s that I think there’s less value in discussing it. Both because it’s not the focus of the original discussion and because we don’t disagree. Now, we might disagree on what exactly is the appropriate level of scrutiny, but not on the foundational position that more scrutiny is necessary.
The reason I’m focused so much on the “how” rather than the “whether” is because the devil is in the details of implementation. Suppose you had the power to mandate that as of tomorrow, all cops everywhere in the US would be required to wear a bodycam whenever they might be interacting with the public in an official capacity. Seems reasonable, right?
Most cops would probably accept this. I can’t guess as to what proportion would simply roll with the new requirement and what proportion would grumble in the locker rooms and on lunch breaks, but these would be the passive majority, same as in any other group.
And then you’ll have the ones who are actively breaking the rules and are at actual risk from the increased scrutiny. No, they aren’t overly likely to be fired or prosecuted, but there are still negative consequences, even if only in the form of negative media coverage and public outcry. So my question is, what is that group likely to do about the new bodycam requirement?
I’m not an expert on bodycams, but we’ve already seen a number of things that have happened. Cameras that got broken or simply “forgotten” back at the precinct. Footage that somehow got corrupted or damaged in storage or was simply not preserved. Sure, these will look suspicious, but suspicion isn’t actionable the way video evidence is. The mere introduction of bodycams isn’t going to solve the underlying Blue Wall of Silence issue that’s been preventing prosecution of bad cops for decades now. If a bad cop beats the shit out of someone during an arrest, what’s their partner more likely to do? Report them, do nothing at all, or do their co-worker – and we’re talking about very close working relationships, far more so than simply sharing an office – and “lose” their own bodycam footage? My bet is on option 3.
And what about the pure financial aspect of constantly-breaking bodycams? They aren’t the budget line item that’ll keep a police chief from getting re-elected; no elected official interested in staying elected will say “we should decrease patrol frequency but make sure they’re all wearing bodycams.” If bodycams keep having to be fixed or replaced, eventually the budget will run out and cops will still get sent out on patrol – alas, without those damned fragile contraptions, you know how new technology is.
That is why I’m focusing on the question of buy-in. Let’s look at another field where life and death decisions are made every single day: Doctors in hospitals. These are people who’ve literally spent over a decade in training. They all know the dangers of cross-contaminations and the importance of hand washing. And yet, a 1999 Institute of Medicine study found that 44,000 to 98,000 people in the US die every year due to hospital errors, most commonly due to the spread of bacterial infections. These are people who, without question, do know better and are still killing their patients. Of course you could mandate that they be supervised at all times and fired for more than a set number of failures to wash their hands… But that isn’t what worked.
But, as I said, the devil’s in the details. Here’s a more recent story from a different hospital where a similar initiative improved the rate of hand washing by just 11%.
All that said, I’d be quite happy with starting from the baseline requirement of all cops wearing bodycams and working on buy-in once they’re all wearing one. The default option has a huge effect, and we’ve got huge amounts of data to back that up, from organ donor opt-in vs. opt-out comparisons to companies changing retirement plan contributions from opt-in to opt-out and seeing a massive increase in participation rates.
As a handy reference, here is <a href=“https://bbs.boingboing.net/t/list-of-things-that-frighten-police/75690"target=”_blank">The List.
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Note how “Cannibalistic Floridian fratboys” isn’t on the list.
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I was looking for that… Shouldn’t we add [applause] (What the stampede at JFK airport tells us about fear) to that?
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@M_Dub is the keeper. Add it to his post with a link to the relevant page, please.
So I’ve come around to the opinion that it is actually great that no one volunteered for this:
- Police deserve the right to organized labor, and the police union almost certainly called a meeting where they strongly implored everyone not to volunteer. That’s what unions do, and that’s what they’re for. Sometimes they oppose a change to a workplace that is in the public interest because it somewhat inconveniences or endangers the workers that the union represents. Then it is the public’s job, not the union’s job, to win out against that opposition by making the better argument. You can’t reasonably have organized labor protections when it’s good for your side of the argument and then give them up when they’re not good for your side of the argument.
- The ideal situation would be to pick badge numbers out of a hat. Volunteers or hand-picked police participating in the pilot would make it less likely that the sample is representative, but even if it were, it might create a public perception that it was not.
I thought this scheme was agreed with the union, though?
Last month, Mayor Martin J. Walsh and Evans struck a deal with the city’s largest police union to outfit officers with the cameras on a voluntary basis. As part of the deal, participants would get a $500 stipend. But after no one volunteered, officials decided to force officers to participate.
I mean, they could have agreed it and then told their members not to volunteer, but that seems odd.
Why not? The Police unions do that all the time.
Seriously, if they refuse to show solidarity towards us (and the police unions have repeatedly refused for many years now with their long history of supporting union busting in other workplaces), why should we show solidarity to them?
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Does it? It seems straight-forward to me. If the union doesn’t agree to body cameras in the abstract, then the city can force the issue by taking it to the press: “POLICE UNION PREVENTS ACCOUNTABILITY”
But if they agree with the policy on the condition that participants have to volunteer, then they can try to deep-six the initiative by agreeing to it “in principle”, and then working behind the scenes to make sure it doesn’t happen by making sure that no one volunteers. Then the union throws up its hands: “We tried our best, but the rank and file just didn’t want to volunteer for this!”
It’s a little underhanded, but that’s politics – if you made the union do the principled thing then they’d be at a disadvantage in negotiations with the city government (which will absolutely not stick to doing the principled thing).
You make a great point. The only response I can possibly make is to say that everybody gets to use the same tools. Anything you can do to undermine and weaken the police union will be used against your own union too, and with more vigor and effectiveness because the police union has more support – both populist and institutional – than yours does.
If you don’t agree to it out of solidarity (and I can’t blame you there), then you can still consider agreeing to it from a sense of self-preservation.
And I’m sorry how much that comes across as: “nice labor movement you have there…be a shame if something were to happen to it…” I really don’t mean it that way.
My brother is now an x- RCMP officer precisely because of this. He went into the job treating people he interacted with on the job like humans and has now left his job with his whole hope for humanity destroyed. My other brother thrives in the RCMP I think due to the fact he can view the some people as “bad guys” and his actions are justified if he can stop them.
I think it is easy for us to sit at our computers and judge police making errors in judgement like the rest of us. I think body cams can be used to help police the police and or justify their actions.
Unfortunately the media seems to be biased to show body cam footage police committing violence because that can be shown in a 10 sec clip, rather than the much more common event of police helping people which takes longer than a commercial break. I think that negatively skews the public’s view of police, and makes other police departments more reluctant to spend their limited budget on a technology they don’t know how to deal with.
I think body cams are a step in the right direction to make the police more accountable for their actions, and hopefully can be used to weed out the bad apples who abuse their authority.
And that’s just their coworkers!
Sorry, that’s pretty unfair of me, but I thought it was funny. Funfair – LOL.
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I’m curious on what authority you represent and are speaking for the majority police? If we are just pulling hypothesis’ out of our asses, lets own that.
Do you think it is possible that the resistance to body cameras could have anything to do with the ‘culture’ of police forces? If you spend any time browsing police social media groups, it begins to appear that there is an 'us (police) vs. them (criminals, minorities, media, academics, etc, it’s a long list) mentality that could easily lead to reticence to give any headway to ‘them’ by voluntarily giving ‘them’ more access and opening up their actions to scrutiny. It is my understanding that these cameras are only expected to be activated during stops and interventions with the public, not operated continuously throughout the entirety of the officer’s time on duty. From a strictly self-interest point of view, a ‘good’ officer should be eager to participate in this, as s/he only stands to gain protection from those who might claim s/he acted improperly when in fact s/he did not.
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It depends. I’m a cab driver. Driving black-out drunk college girls home is something I do several times a week. Personally, I would LOVE to have full video/audio recording in my cab, to protect myself. Who’s to say someone didn’t slip one of those girls a roofie right before I picked her up at the bar? (Date rape is shockingly common where I’m at). She wakes up and the last thing she remembers is getting into a cab with me (and maybe she lost her wallet at some point in the night but doesn’t remember. Cabbie must have jacked it? Cabbie might have done god knows what else?) For this reason, I simply will not take a girl that’s looking blackout level drunk home alone, for her protection and mine, she has to take a soberish female friend along for the ride (even if I have to give her friend a ride back to the bar for free).
I regularly am alone with and responsible for sick, old, mentally ill, children, etc. So, like I said, it really depends on the particulars of what you are doing. I personally don’t understand why cops wouldn’t welcome this technology for the same reason I would.
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Well, except in this case, the danger to the public is actually killing members of the public.
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