Tag: body cam

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crime and punishment media and media people

With Our Own Eyes

Police body-​cam video cannot bring back the dead. Nor end racism or prevent tragedy. 

What point-​of-​policing video can capture is solid and critical evidence. After a deadly police encounter, body-​cam footage gives the public confidence that the truth will soon come out. 

But only if police consistently and promptly release relevant video to the public.

Consider last week’s tragedy in Columbus, Ohio, where a policeman shot and killed 16-​year-​old Ma’Khia Bryant as she was preparing to stab another young women. Many politicians and those in the media were ready to herald it as “the latest in a string of deadly videos documenting the final moments of a person of color killed by law enforcement.” 

The cop-​cam video, however, clearly showed a policeman firing his gun to prevent one person of color from stabbing another. Just what we want police of any color to do.

NBC Nightly News still managed to mangle its reporting, editing out the image of the knife. In the aftermath of George Zimmerman’s shooting and killing of Trayvon Martin, you may remember, NBC News broadcast Zimmerman’s 911 call but dishonestly edited part of the conversation to inject a racial element where none had been.*

And, sure, even staring at incontrovertible videotape evidence of good police behavior, some took to defending knife-​fighting as a youthful rite of passage.

But everyone can see the footage for themselves.

In another fatal shooting last week, police attempted to serve an arrest warrant in Elizabeth City, North Carolina. But under state law police are not required, short of a court order, to release police body-​cam video. 

Citizens are going to court.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* The local Jacksonville, Florida, NBC affiliate fired three employees over the incident.

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free trade & free markets general freedom too much government

Don’t Follow the Feds

body cam, camera, police, feds, federal, crime, law,

“Federal agents never wear body cameras,” The Washington Post reports, “and they prohibit local officers from wearing them on their joint operations.”

That’s why a growing number of local law enforcement agencies are doing what Atlanta’s police chief and mayor “decided late last month,” pulling “out of joint task forces with the Drug Enforcement Administration, the FBI and the U.S. Marshals Service.”

The Justice Department supplies the usual excuses for their lack of transparency: they are “protecting sensitive or tactical methods” and “concerned about privacy interests of third parties.” But as Houston Police Chief Art Acevedo reminds, “if there’s a legitimate need to redact any [footage], there’s a process available for that through the courts.”

It is the height of hypocrisy, for the use of body cams has been “what they’ve been preaching,” St. Paul (Minn.) Police Chief Todd Axtell argues, referring to the Justice Department’s funding and training of local police forces in body-​camera usage. “It’s ironic they aren’t complying with what they preach to be so important in policing.”

Ironic? Sure. 

Par for the course? Indeed.

The bad example federal police agencies set is hardly limited to body-​camera use. In states where legislation has reduced or ended the outrageous practice of civil asset forfeiture — whereby police can take and keep cash and property from people never accused or convicted of any crime — the Feds are there again to facilitate the thievery known as “equitable sharing.” 

“Federal forfeiture policies are more permissive than many state policies,” a 2016 Post report explains, “allowing police to keep up to 80 percent of assets they seize.”

Make sure your local and state police don’t follow the Feds.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Candid Camera

body cam, body cameras, justice reform, feds, federal agents, U.S. Marshals , police, Common Sense

Support for criminal justice reform, especially the common sense use of body cameras for police, marks a bright spot for the Obama Administration.

Or so I thought.

The president has called on local police to don the video devices. He has even offered $75 million of his own hard-​earned money to help communities pay for the cameras. No, wait — turns out that $75M is not his personal stash but rather our tax money.

Oh, well. While I think local taxpayers should fund their own police forces, without federal subsidies, at least President O’s administration supports the right policy. No?

“The Justice Department is publicly urging local police departments to adopt body cameras, saying they are an important tool to improve transparency and trust …” reports The Wall Street Journal. “But privately, the department is telling some of its agents they cannot work with officers using such cameras as part of joint task forces …”

Weeks ago, the U.S. Marshals “announced that the agency wouldn’t allow any local law-​enforcement officers wearing body cameras to serve on Marshals task forces.…”

I’m only surprised that I’m surprised. I should have known that while preaching to others to use body cameras, the Obama Administration would completely ignore camera use for federal police agencies. I shouldn’t be shocked that it even failed to establish rules for working with local and state police who might be required to wear cameras, at the administration’s urging.

It’s a very candid snapshot of the utter hypocrisy we’ve come to know and loathe from Washington.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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body cam, body cameras, justice reform, feds, federal agents, U.S. Marshals , police, Common Sense