Body Cameras Were Sold as a Tool of Police Reform. Ten Years Later, Most of the Footage Is Kept From Public View.
At least 1,201 people were killed in 2022 by law enforcement officers, about 100 deaths a month, according to Mapping Police Violence, a nonprofit research group that tracks police killings. ProPublica examined the 101 deaths that occurred in June 2022, a time frame chosen because enough time had elapsed that investigations could reasonably be expected to have concluded. The cases involved 131 law enforcement agencies in 34 states.
In 79 of those deaths, ProPublica confirmed that body-worn camera video exists. But more than a year later, authorities or victims’ families had released the footage of only 33 incidents.
Philadelphia signed a $12.5 million contract in 2017 to equip its entire police force with cameras. Since then, at least 27 people have been killed by Philadelphia police, according to Mapping Police Violence, but in only two cases has body-camera video been released to the public.
ProPublica’s review shows that withholding body-worn camera footage from the public has become so entrenched in some cities that even pleas from victims’ families don’t serve to shake the video loose.
I disagree. Just saw a video on krudplug of a cop shooting a guy right before he can cut up a lady with a butcher knife.
There are crazy, dangerous people in the world. If you can't fight and you don't own a gun, you are at the mercy of others to protect you.
I think it's sad how the vast majority of people who are anti-cop cannot fight and do not own guns. Did they see what happened in CHAZ?
The reasoning you just used was in the form of an anecdote, which undermines your whole point. Anecdotal thinking is one of the most common ways that humans arrive at irrational conclusions.
Why should you care? Well, if you believe what you stated, then you should want other people to believe it too. In order to do this the first step is to learn how to present it without any of the common logical flaws humans are born with.
Your argument pattern is, "Event X happened and I saw it, therefore Y". No. You need a much larger sample size to make a point. I can't teach you rational argument in one post, but hopefully you'll become curious enough to learn. Have a nice day.
Yet most of the negative sentiment on cops comes from anecdotes. And of course now we have the Internet so now there's availability bias of all of the extreme cases that go viral. When a study asked how many unarmed blacks were killed by police each year most left leaning were wrong by an order of magnitude.
Oh, I thought it came from the years of empirical evidence of corruption, bias, and state-funded violence.
There are some biases inherent to the relevant data. For example, you might be right about this specific situation (police shooting unarmed black people), but what about other instances of violence or misconduct?
We need to consider where data about that comes from. Are we to trust the accuracy of police reports and their own statements as they pertain to misconduct? IA investigations that frequently find no wrongdoing even when it's plainly obvious that the situation was handled improperly? Or at least could have been avoided? Should we rely upon charges filed against police and their conviction rate?
There's no official national database for this stuff by the way, and localities almost never produce such metrics willingly, so it's up to someone to comb through public records. And that, like the case of body cam videos, assumes that police will properly follow FOIA requests.
I'm not suggesting that we assume the absolute worst, but we need to recognize that whatever the data says, the situation is almost definitely worse than that due to these biases.
Oh I'm sure it's definitely worse than the data we have suggests. I'm not arguing against police reforms or standardization. But in the situation I stated, there were a large percentage of people who believed it was in the thousands, or 10s of thousands on an annual basis.
The prevailing opinions and rhetoric on police paint them not as individuals, but as a cabal of cartoon villains.
Nothing about this is anecdotal.
You're right, it's a broad generalization followed by a fear-based assumption.
That you segued into with an anecdote.
Okay.
What if I'm physically disabled? Which literally everyone is, in relation to a stronger individual or group (and there's literally always someone/something bigger than you)... Does that mean I don't have the "right" to be anti-murder, even if the murderer is someone with a badge?
Or maybe there's a sliding scale, with how much of a position of principle that I'm allowed hold correlating proportionally to how much I can bench or how quickly I can subdue an opponent?
That sounds pretty fascist.
I'm not going to take your bad-faith arguments seriously. Goodbye.
It's exaggerated to make a point, not a bad-faith argument. Try reading the rest of the comment, boss...
Your position appears to rest on the idea that people who need protection somehow don't have the right to hold positions of principle against murdering police that in theory might also protect them in some scenario. Idk, it sounds either fascist, or like you really haven't thought things through enough..
Sure.
Is this the video you saw?
Yes. And they become a whole lot more dangerous once they get a badge.
No, Clyde... there is no such thing as a "good" cop.
Okay. Call up your friend who can't fight and doesn't own a gun to protect you when someone wants something you have.
Do you think cops can teleport or something
No, that's why we should also have the means to defend ourselves. It doesn't make sense to hate cops while you're incapable of defending yourself.
Funny how you completely ignore that part of my argument, lol.