Thursday, August 6, 2015

Body Cams: Why Every Cop Should Always Wear One

The Making Of A SJW Martyr

3 comments:

Russell said...

To protect citizens and cops, I agree. The police have shown themselves too unreliable to trust implicitly, and there's too many out there ready to believe, and in this case fabricate, anything that casts the police in a poor light.

Unknown said...

Full disclosure: I have a brother who is a police officer.

The major problem here, as usual, is the media. Viewing the world through the distorted filter of the news cycle inevitably warps one's perspectives on reality. A 2008 Bureau of Labor Ststistics report put the number of sworn LEOs in the US at 765k. More recently, the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund put the number north of 900k. Either way, that conservatively puts the number of LEO-public interactions in the millions PER DAY. Of course, only the handful that go bad ever hit the news and specifically, especially since Ferguson, only those which can be given racial overtones make the front page. The public perception that we have a racially tinged police problem in the US is the inevitable result.

I don't buy that narrative.

Unfortunately, credible figures for the numbers of deaths both of and at the hands of LEOs is impossible to come by, but what data that exists would seem to indicate a downward trend in both figures.

For perspective, I remind myself of a life-long friend of my mother's who was a police officer in a medium-sized community in upstate New York. In over thirty years on the force, he claims he only had to draw his weapon once in the line of duty; it was never discharged.

Even my brother, who served in some fairly rough neighborhoods in Dallas, only drew his gun four or five times in over seven years. The three hours' paperwork merely unholstering his gun engendered, he claims, put a damper on any enthusiasm he may have felt for doing so :)

Stan said...

It's probably happened in most communities: perp gets jailed, convicted, then sues the cops, the jailers, the district attorney, his own lawyer, which costs everyone time and expense. Sometimes it boils down to evidence-free accusations which actually turn against the cops or jailers or someone. It takes patience and character to be a cop or anyone in the law enforcement field. I admire them. I'm glad I'm not one of them.

Some cities - LA, NYC - have reputations for bad, even evil, policing. Forcing the wearing of body cams during all hours of duty would protect both officers and citizens. Daylight is the best disinfectant.