The word youāre looking for is impunity, from the Latin for āno fucking consequences at all.ā
serving the overlords, not the public
Dashcams and bodycams are only half of the solution. The other half is serious consequences for neglecting or sabotaging them. Like, lose your job and possibly go to jail consequences. Thatās the trick, of courseā¦ police already can straight-up murder people consequence-free, so good luck getting them in trouble for breaking a camera.
Too bad that ballot initiatives are pretty much just a western thing, or this crap would be a perfect target for one. Simple ballot initiative that says that tampering with dashcams or bodycams constitutes destruction of evidence and obstruction of justice and is an automatic firing.
Oh. There will be consequences. The thing that these assholes donāt think about, that should be keeping them up at night, is how incredibly terrible those consequences will get the more they put them off for some future where people will have seriously had way too enough of their bullshit.
Why canāt the manufacturers of dash cams build in all the spyware / sneaky recording / hidden features that we the public get on our smartphones and windows computers? Seems simple enough to make them tamper-resistant or to call home to say that itās been tampered with which ought to be a red flag that someone needs to check out the operators of said vehicle right away.
Of course that assumes those who would be in charge of following up werenāt part of the cover-up.
Making subtle tampering difficult is one of those āharder than it looks but doableā things(something like, say, not providing the user with the ability to change the real time clock settings, to prevent them from concealing gaps, would be an obvious good step). Making destruction difficult requires, sooner or later, that somebody who cares exerts physical control over the device(or at least checks up on it and demands an account from whoever checked it out).
This isnāt to say that some designs are trivially worse than others for āfailure is bad, potential for āfailureā is also really badā environments; but as any sad, neglected, payphone can tell you, you can only resist physical attack for so long. Adherence to good practice(suitably chosen connectors, resistance to common operator errors, avoidance of fail-silent conditions, that sort of thing) can help; but if HQ isnāt willing to kick asses about nonfunctional equipment, itās hard to save hardware from the user.
Yup. If I fail to file certain financial records in my normal civilian job, I will be fired and go to jail so fast your head will spin.
What makes cops so special they can destroy evidence of their crimes and get away with it? Nothing but cowardice and collusion with other members of city government.
Hereās the solution: fire the force, bring in a fresh batch of cops, and then stop paying them whenever a device āstops workingā. If it even slightly looks like monkey business, go directly to jail. Do not pass GO. Do not collect $200. The cop has tampered with evidence. Jail is where they belong.
No cam footage, no pay for the day.
Iād love to get a scientific study on the breakdown of reasons for why the officer disabled their cam/mic. Would the majority be related to violence brought against the locals? Was it because they hate their supervisor/superintendent/DA/mayor, and said so in earshot of a cam/mic? Are they screwing someone elseās [partner]? Fraud?
I can see the need for some separation of the recordings from the PD organizational structure, given past experience with corruption/fraud from the top-down as well as from the bottom-up. But that would mean LEOs would have to act in a role subservient, at worst, to the public, and they really donāt appear to like when that happens.
Why is anyone surprised? The CPD has a history of: torturing suspects with electricity; running a āblack siteā where other suspects were tortured. This is just more frosting on their corruption-cake.
I like the idea of the badge of office being a functional video and audio recording device and without that badge, you have no authority to police.
I have a friend who is a highly educated civil servant. He trades high pay and sexy research for a good retirement pension and consistent employment. I think that criminals have similar options in police work.
Thatās an interesting way to look at it. Weāve certainly all heard the stereotype of people who say their rough childhood meant their career choices were either police/military or else becoming a criminal. At least in the military there is rigorous training to develop a cohesive, disciplined unit. Are we really getting our police recruits from a pool of would-be criminals who are smart enough to know policing is the less risky option and lazy/cowardly enough to want to avoid the military?
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