This is a false setup; you don't need to trust either. I'd prefer a law that makes the bodycam footage public & accessible by default. It could even be automated with geo-tagging where & when the recording happened.
The fact that police cars can start without the body cams being fully charged, the fact that they don't stream to a centralized and reliable server 100% of the time that they're worn, and the fact that they're possible to turn off while an officer is on duty with effectively zero consequences makes it pretty clear that no one in power cares about bodycams being a tool for the people. They're just weaponized against the populace.
Police get called to a lot of very nasty calls, and see a lot of things that people calling would really rather not be public by default.
Naked people at 2am who just ran a robber off (or are on drugs), domestic violence calls, child abuse calls, welfare checks where people are definitely not okay - and sometimes where people have been rotting for days or weeks in the heat.
Not to mention traffic accidents and crimes with decapitations, dead kids, dead pregnant women, and numerous combinations of the above.
Also, cops need to use the toilet too. And need to talk to people that don’t want others to know they are talking to the cops.
They already get geotagged.
I’m not saying body cam footage should be inaccessible if there is a legitimate reason, but the public is very quickly going to be unhappy if their law enforcement agency posts all their body cam footage on the Internet - or allows anyone else to do the same.
skeeter2020|1 year ago
daeken|1 year ago
lazide|1 year ago
Naked people at 2am who just ran a robber off (or are on drugs), domestic violence calls, child abuse calls, welfare checks where people are definitely not okay - and sometimes where people have been rotting for days or weeks in the heat.
Not to mention traffic accidents and crimes with decapitations, dead kids, dead pregnant women, and numerous combinations of the above.
Also, cops need to use the toilet too. And need to talk to people that don’t want others to know they are talking to the cops.
They already get geotagged.
I’m not saying body cam footage should be inaccessible if there is a legitimate reason, but the public is very quickly going to be unhappy if their law enforcement agency posts all their body cam footage on the Internet - or allows anyone else to do the same.