The United States has a police brutality problem.
Beyond the reality that the United States incarcerates more people than any other nation in the world, our police officers shoot and kill more people in any given year than Germany and the United Kingdom combined over the past decade.
Police in the town of Pacos, Washington, with 59,000 people, have shot and killed more people the past six months than police in the United Kingdom, with a population of more than 60 million. And American police aren't shooting people left and right because they all have guns. Almost daily, a man or woman without a gun is shot and killed in America and problem is getting worse.
If the problem of police brutality warrants a 20-prong solution, mandatory body cameras and dash cameras should be one of those prongs. For far too long, police have been able to argue that completely unarmed people were strangely "reaching in their waistbands" and warranted being shot and killed out of fear.
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Police went so far as to lie and say they heard and saw unarmed teenager Kendrec McDade shoot at them in Pasadena, California, and the officers still kept their jobs. Imagining danger is enough nowadays. Cameras could have shown us so much in this case.
Ferguson Police Officer Darren Wilson, after chasing Mike Brown for over 150 feet and shooting him multiple times, claimed that Mike Brown then starting charging at him like a bull. Cameras could have shown us so much more in this case.
However, what we are seeing is a complete clusterfuck on the local policy level with all things related to police wearing cameras.
After assaulting Cortez Bufford, you can clearly hear St. Louis Police in this video saying they all need to turn off their body cameras to help themselves.
A Missouri lawmaker, in Senate Bill 331, is now proposing that all police-related videos be banned from public viewing. Here's the short bill proposed by Republican Senator Doug Libla:
590.810. 1. Any recording captured by a camera, which is capable of recording video or audio and is, during the course of a peace officer's official duties:
(1) Worn on the person of a peace officer;
(2) Attached to a peace officer's motor vehicle, watercraft, or aircraft; or
(3) Attached to any other device used by a peace officer,
shall not be a public record for purposes of the state's open records law under chapter 610 and shall not be disclosed by a law enforcement agency except upon order of a court in the course of a criminal investigation or prosecution or civil litigation.
2. No law enforcement agency shall be required by the state to provide cameras as described in subsection 1 of this section to officers employed by the agency, nor shall the state require any peace officer to wear such cameras.
Conservatives in Arizona
have successfully advanced similar legislation that will prohibit the public from seeing footage from police cameras.
A recent study found that half of the LAPD squad cars that were under review had tampered with their recording equipment to avoid being monitored.
The officer who chased, shot, and killed Darrien Hunt in Utah was actually wearing a body camera, but claims it was turned off.
An officer wearing a body camera in Washington state shot and killed a man sitting in his car, but claims he failed to turn his camera on.
This New Orleans officer turned her body camera off just minutes before shooting a man in the head.
This Daytona Beach police officer just resigned after being caught turning his body camera off before an arrest.
An Albuquerque, New Mexico, officer literally turned his camera off right before shooting and killing a woman and turned it back on right after it was over. He was fired, but never charged with a crime.
These New Jersey officers were indicted after wrongfully arresting and assaulting a man and faking like he "went for their gun" for one of the police dash cams—only to be filmed acting it all out on another dash cam. The man almost received 30 years in prison.
This Syracuse, New York, officer turned his camera off before arresting a fellow officer.
This Mt. Juliet, Tennessee, officer turned his camera off before committing several violations that eventually led to his termination.
This Ohio officer was allowed back on the job after turning his camera off during a threat he was making to a couple.