I don't disagree about needing law enforcement and yeah, the public is often behaving poorly, but I think the transparency of bodycams are a benefit to society. I think the lack of transparency leads (or worse, masking of law enforcement) inevitably leads to infringement on rights and lawlessness. Just my opinion, of course!
The only people who really wanted to defund the police are the ones who don’t ever have experiences with them because they live in gated and upper class neighborhoods. I say more cameras for police—it’s not so much about “exposing” them, but protecting them from claims that most of the time are totally untrue. (And when they are true, we want a record.)
But really is just a form of degradation of the world and culture when so many people walk around with them (decisions from grated communities). You would hope people could understand 2nd and third order effects of these things (most cannot)
People who have never met a predator are the only ones who naively want to defund the police. When you look someone in the eye who will take what you have with violence, and doesnt care if you live or die in the process, then you won’t care if police are courteous. I don’t mind a rough and rude cop because I will soon be on my way, I respect that they deal with the predators daily.
Precisely correct. I didn't include this in the story, but a best friend of mine in college was killed in a random act of violence (stabbed). He was the kindest kid you've ever met. Police managed to catch the 2 criminals, who both spend several decades behind bars. If these guys were still on the street many more could have been killed. Many are shielded from the reality of this.
i think it’s mainly fringe communities that genuinely hate the police and call for their abolishment, but I do think a downstream effect of the widespread adoption of body cams will be that these positions are stop bleeding into the mainstream as the public becomes more conscious that the vast majority of police act in a reasonable way in an unreasonable situation.
I don't think it surprises many people that the police deal with difficult situations. Even before body cams we had the reality TV show Cops which showed exactly what bad behavior policie were dealing with.
What body cams have showed is the small percentage of cops that were doing unthinkable things, like killing people of color who were cooperating. Those got the headlines because we never saw those before, and the police had always denied them. Just because it's a small number of police doing them does not make it unimportant and that was the primary reason for them.
You have smoke detectors in your house for the extremely rare possibility you have a fire. We have police body cams for the very rare occasions when police become the problem.
Agree with this. One note, I think (and others have pointed out) COPS was biased to certain neighborhoods and crime profiles, whereas the bodycam footage if you look at the raw feeds is a wider selection of society so it's way more interesting for analysis and to tell the story of both cops and citizens who interact with them - as it's not edited by TV producers. So you see when either side of the trade is behaving badly. The smoke detector analogy is a good one btw. I'd like to see very strong enforcement against officers who ever turn these off.
Great piece Adam. Living in Atlanta I've made friends of cops and you're totally right, they are unbelievably courteous and patient in my experience. The upside of bodycams is that they (hopefully) seem to prevent memetic social martyrs that spiral out of control. I don't think I fully appreciate how difficult that job truly is, nor how many don't become fully cynical toward society. I'm genuinely grateful to have them.
Yes also talk to your lawyer friends who have seen everything, they will tell you we absolutely need good law enforcement. It's people who have 'luxury beliefs' that think there should be no laws or police or anything like that.
I don't disagree about needing law enforcement and yeah, the public is often behaving poorly, but I think the transparency of bodycams are a benefit to society. I think the lack of transparency leads (or worse, masking of law enforcement) inevitably leads to infringement on rights and lawlessness. Just my opinion, of course!
The only people who really wanted to defund the police are the ones who don’t ever have experiences with them because they live in gated and upper class neighborhoods. I say more cameras for police—it’s not so much about “exposing” them, but protecting them from claims that most of the time are totally untrue. (And when they are true, we want a record.)
Yes - luxury beliefs strike again!
may we all be lucky enough in life to have them!
But really is just a form of degradation of the world and culture when so many people walk around with them (decisions from grated communities). You would hope people could understand 2nd and third order effects of these things (most cannot)
People who have never met a predator are the only ones who naively want to defund the police. When you look someone in the eye who will take what you have with violence, and doesnt care if you live or die in the process, then you won’t care if police are courteous. I don’t mind a rough and rude cop because I will soon be on my way, I respect that they deal with the predators daily.
Precisely correct. I didn't include this in the story, but a best friend of mine in college was killed in a random act of violence (stabbed). He was the kindest kid you've ever met. Police managed to catch the 2 criminals, who both spend several decades behind bars. If these guys were still on the street many more could have been killed. Many are shielded from the reality of this.
i think it’s mainly fringe communities that genuinely hate the police and call for their abolishment, but I do think a downstream effect of the widespread adoption of body cams will be that these positions are stop bleeding into the mainstream as the public becomes more conscious that the vast majority of police act in a reasonable way in an unreasonable situation.
I don't think it surprises many people that the police deal with difficult situations. Even before body cams we had the reality TV show Cops which showed exactly what bad behavior policie were dealing with.
What body cams have showed is the small percentage of cops that were doing unthinkable things, like killing people of color who were cooperating. Those got the headlines because we never saw those before, and the police had always denied them. Just because it's a small number of police doing them does not make it unimportant and that was the primary reason for them.
You have smoke detectors in your house for the extremely rare possibility you have a fire. We have police body cams for the very rare occasions when police become the problem.
Agree with this. One note, I think (and others have pointed out) COPS was biased to certain neighborhoods and crime profiles, whereas the bodycam footage if you look at the raw feeds is a wider selection of society so it's way more interesting for analysis and to tell the story of both cops and citizens who interact with them - as it's not edited by TV producers. So you see when either side of the trade is behaving badly. The smoke detector analogy is a good one btw. I'd like to see very strong enforcement against officers who ever turn these off.
Great piece Adam. Living in Atlanta I've made friends of cops and you're totally right, they are unbelievably courteous and patient in my experience. The upside of bodycams is that they (hopefully) seem to prevent memetic social martyrs that spiral out of control. I don't think I fully appreciate how difficult that job truly is, nor how many don't become fully cynical toward society. I'm genuinely grateful to have them.
Yes also talk to your lawyer friends who have seen everything, they will tell you we absolutely need good law enforcement. It's people who have 'luxury beliefs' that think there should be no laws or police or anything like that.
Cameras don't fix the statism problem.