Police like nothing better than to have it come down to a credibility contest between them and someone they have arrested. They know this is a battle they can win almost every time in front of jurors. A few years back, a local police force began videotaping field sobriety tests on DWI arrests. They quit doing so after a few months, because in too many cases what they wrote in their reports was not backed up by the tape.
There is a simple way to keep police honest, and that is to make them record. If a person is really guilty, it will reinforce the case for the prosecutor.
ACLU Launches Phone App to Record Police Stops: Should Police Recordings Be Required?
thezilch
2012/07/05 18:00:00
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All too often, police officers are accused of acting unlawfully. Either officers are wrongly accused of brutality or they have indeed brutally handled a case and gotten away with it. Well, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) wants to have your back.
A new phone app, called "Stop and Frisk Watch," plans to deal with shady cops by recording video and audio of all police encounters when the authority stops you. So, how do you feel about it? Should we equip our law enforcement with recording devices that both hold them more accountable and also help to better protect their rights as officers of the law?
AUTOBLOG.COM reports:
A new phone app, called "Stop and Frisk Watch," plans to deal with shady cops by recording video and audio of all police encounters when the authority stops you. So, how do you feel about it? Should we equip our law enforcement with recording devices that both hold them more accountable and also help to better protect their rights as officers of the law?
Shortly after the New York branch of the American Civil Liberties Union created an app called Stop and Frisk Watch, in response to the law enforcement
Read More: http://www.autoblog.com/2012/07/05/aclu-launches-p...
Top Opinion
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Roger47 2012/07/05 18:27:32
It provides protection to both police and the people they stop.
in fact i think the ONLY time an average citizen should be recorded doing ANYTHING is when they come into contact with law enforcement.
BPAR...
Maybe time to make something like that happen, to ensure the police cooperate with it.
I served in a Military Police role between 30 and 40 years ago. If we had done the thuggish behavior shown by some officers now (with their own cameras running) we would have been under the gun for excessive use of force. Heck, I was accused of excessive use of force a couple of times and never came close to what videos show these days.
But the cops in the city of Edmonton?? NO way would I want to be in their hands!! They're taser-happy, to begin with, with more than a few fatalities to their credit from overuse of such, they're incompetent, thuggish, and rather Authoritarian.
We had drive-by shootings going on in Edmonton, Asian gangs blasting the hell out of each other, and all they had to say was; 'There is no Asian gang problem in Edmonton.'. The bodies of innocent folks caught up in them offered evidence to the contrary I think...
However, what about the millions of people who don't own iphones? There's no way I'll waste that much money on a smart phone.
I wish everything cops did was recorded, like any other criminal's activities.
Up here in Canada we've had a lot of deaths because cops love using their tasers too much.
Arrogance and stupidity will, likely, l make the cops forget, or not care about the cameras being around, but, at least, It will likely help with prosecutions.
The app could be used for the same.
You liberals should be careful what you wish for.
What would you gain from recording teachers?