Not unlike the FBI seem to have done in this example:
Cops can and do lie to suspects in an effort to get them to confess. I think thatâs wrong, too; itâs been shown, IIRC, to lead to false confessions.
Iâm more concerned with the reaction of police to the perception the system is out to get them. Rightly or wrongly, many seem to believe that civilians are looking to micromanage and second-guess their every move. When people believe the system is out to get them, they find ways to work around and against it.
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If what you thought at the same, what actually happened at the time according to the footage, what you remember, and what you report do not line up, then this is important evidence in determining what happened, why, whether anyone needs to be charged with anything, and how to make it not happen next time. Allowing the witness (that they are a cop has no rational relevance) to see the footage before making a report/statement is tainting the evidence in a way that is unrecoverable.
Not at trial, no, they have to disclose all evidence to the defense (doesnât always happen in practice and can take decades to prove if it doesnât, unfortunately, but still). During questioning they donât have to tell you anything, and in many cases (IANAL, I donât know the boundaries) they are permitted to lie, for example to say they have evidence they donât actually have, etc.
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Maybe there has been a pervasive law enforcement culture which has cultivated police to have these expectations. Some may have even joined for this!
Civilians are the ultimate authority. Governments exist to run things on their behalf. Police answer to the government. In police/military language, this represents a âchain of commandâ. A few generations in the US have yielded a system of government which resents answering to the public. When this happens, governments use police against civilians.
So yes, management of government and police by civilians is long overdue. And micromanagement is what people do when they have no trust for the person doing the job. No, thatâs not healthy. But there is a clear reason for why it has happened.
Cops can and do lie to suspects in an effort to get them to confess. I think thatâs wrong, too; itâs been shown, IIRC, to lead to false confessions.
Iâm more concerned with the reaction of police to the perception the system is out to get them. Rightly or wrongly, many seem to believe that civilians are looking to micromanage and second-guess their every move. When people believe the system is out to get them, they find ways to work around and against it.
Excuse me, but if I havenât been charged with anything, the public has absolutely zero interest in seeing my interaction with the police without my consent. Double that if itâs within my own private property.
You donât get to assume that they âshouldnât mind being seenâ by anyone in the public just because the police unilaterally decided to intrude on their lives. You ask.
Thatâs fine, but I am not going to ask for oversight of the police in their public duties, I demand it. So they will need to stay out of your house.
And what does being âchargedâ have to do with anything? Whereâs your consent for dealing with cops in the first place? Maybe government should meet with citizens as equals to discuss their concerns - instead of sending armed thugs to confront them.
Or, ya know, reasonable safeguards could be put in place to allow people to consent to the recordings being made public if they would like them to be. So people who are concerned about their interaction can open those interactions up to public oversight.
Itâs a very simplistic way of delineating the point at which the public has some interest in the private person the police are interacting with. Itâs not where Iâd draw a line with video recordings, either - itâs just an extremely basic example.
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True, but as far as I know none of those have stood up in court, and some have resulted in financial settlements against the police.
Google is our friend. Hereâs what the ACLU has to say:
Police officers may not confiscate or demand to view your digital photographs or video without a warrant. The Supreme Court has ruled that police may not search your cell phone when they arrest you, unless they get a warrant. Although the court did not specifically rule on whether law enforcement may search other electronic devices such as a standalone camera, the ACLU believes that the constitution broadly prevents warrantless searches of your digital data. It is possible that courts may approve the temporary warrantless seizure of a camera in certain extreme âexigentâ circumstances such as where necessary to save a life, or where police have a reasonable, good-faith belief that doing so is necessary to prevent the destruction of evidence of a crime while they seek a warrant.
Police may not delete your photographs or video under any circumstances. Officers have faced felony charges of evidence tampering as well as obstruction and theft for taking a photographerâs memory card.
Police officers may legitimately order citizens to cease activities that are truly interfering with legitimate law enforcement operations. Professional officers, however, realize that such operations are subject to public scrutiny, including by citizens photographing them.
Note that the right to photograph does not give you a right to break any other laws. For example, if you are trespassing to take photographs, you may still be charged with trespass.
This seems like the sort of question that (while it isnât wrong to ask) is actually a false dichotomy that suggests a need to modify the underlying assumptions in the face of new technology.
There isnât anything ânaturalâ or âfundamentalâ about the âPolice reportâ as a document. In an environment where independent machine recording was impossible or highly unlikely and only available by happenstance, it was fairly logical(recognizably imperfect; but probably the best available option), for âThe Police Reportâ to be the officerâs reporting of the situation, according to his observations and to the best of his recollection, possibly combined with any witness statements taken and similar.
In an environment where independently produced(either by 3rd parties, or by equipment worn by the officer but operating outside of his direct control) footage exists, why ask âShould the officer get to watch the video before making his statement?â rather than have âThe Police Reportâ now be a product combining the officerâs account of events, according to his observations and the best of his recollection; and recordings of what any witnesses interviewed report, and any available footage(bodycam, witness-shot, surveillance cameras in the area)?
Even if we have no reason to suspect that the cop is prone to testilying(and, with apologies to any who arenât, as a class we canât afford to not suspect this); why do we need the cop to play historian and synthesize a written account of the occurrences from all available evidence? By happenstance, some cops might be quite gifted writers; but we donât select for that, hire for that, or pay them for that.
Given that they were at the scene, likely playing the part of, at least, a major supporting character, we would definitely want their statement(just as we would want to collect a witnessâ statement); but what additional value is added by showing them anything except what they saw before they make their statement? We wouldnât even consider bothering to ask âWell, should we show a witness the forensic reports from the crime lab before asking them what they saw?â As a witness, their value is in reporting what they saw. Once theyâve done that, we can add their account to the full report. An officer is likely to be an important witness; but isnât fundamentally different from any other witness(when we donât have the alternative we tend to treat him as more authoritative; but if we do have the alternative there is no reason to continue doing that).
I would say that the short answer is âNoâ; but that the longer answer is that a âreportâ as a narrative synthesis of a historical event, seems like something that you wouldnât even want the cop writing if it can be avoided. The âreportâ should include the copâs account, as it would that of any other available witnesses, and such audio and video data as are available and relevant; but is just fine as a compendium, to be analyzed, rather than as an analysis conducted by one of its major characters.
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Iâm reminded of the old joke from beyond the iron curtain:
Q: why do the police always travel in threes?
A: One knows how to read. One knows how to write. And the other one is there to keep in eye on the two intellectualsâŚ
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Should cops be allowed to see bodycam footage before filing reports?
Depends if you trust the cops, oh, wait, this is about US cops, yeah, you should probably have a lawyer following them around at all times just to be on the safe side.
Where video tends to be practically and legally distinct from still photography is the inclusion of an audio track. In many US jurisdictions at least, any audio recording of public space can be considered âwiretappingâ. Legally, having police record audio in public constantly could be construed as a government right to wiretap anyone, anywhere. And like any surveillance, I think it tends to be dangerous to put its use in the hands of a self-interested minority of control freaks. There are grey areas, such as journalists recording in public spaces where there is a consensus that they have a valid reason to do so.
When it comes to citizens interacting with police, this is precisely when it is very much advantageous to have audio as well. This is another reason for streaming the feed, because not unlike a PA system or a hearing aid, the person in question is not making a recording. This makes the legality as I understand it much safer. Of course, some other person or system could be recording the stream elsewhere. But neither party in the field has direct control over that.
Not to mention babyish.
What about both?
Officer makes their official statement without seeing the footage. But then gets to view the footage, and based on the content of the footage they have the option of making an ammendment to their statement explaining the discrepencies.
This still inhibits lying since they canât know what was on the footage before they made the original statement. But it also gives them a chance to proactively correct the record as well as sets a standard for what those discrepencies look like.
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Officers are supposed to be investigators, they should be filing reports and those reports should provide very valuable information.
Itâs also a mainstay of interrogation techniques used by police on civilians. Good for the goose, good for the gander. Iâm for consistency. If cops get to see footage before they are interviewed then so should civilians.
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I in no way devalue their reports(as noted, they are likely to be an atypically important class of witness, because itâs their job to investigate, because itâs their job to run toward crime scenes rather than away from them, and so on). However, I simply see that as a difference of degree rather than kind.
Also, the fact that they are atypically likely to have valuable information to report is arguably a reason to avoid tainting them with emotionally salient, authoritative-looking, things like video before theyâve reported it.
Even with the greatest honesty, and most intense focus on remembering accurately, itâs quite common for people to end up with âmemoriesâ that are unconsciously constructed well after the event, sometimes even of things that they couldnât have been present for, based on photo albums and the like. Some hilarious undergrad psych experiments in that vein.
Iâd bet good money that showing someone a video of âwhat actually happenedâ is a very good way of ablating their original memory of it and installing a partial confabulation based on the tape. Debrief them first, while their memory is still actually the one they formed at the time, get those data, then show them the video and let the synthesis begin.
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