now that is a poorly-worded headline
NOW we have a First Amendment issue.
“…and we’ll continue to move that line so that more and more protests are illegal. We’re not trying to shut down lawful protests, just the unlawful ones.”
The officer should get fired twice. Once for the demeaning delight in another person’s death and once for being an idiot.
Hey, there might be some justice after all!
bolding mine
Ok, so, the definition of a “reasonable and prudent person” is …? How much do these legislators drink?
I’m sure they’ll tell you that they drink no more than any other reasonable and prudent person.
…a police officer.
“Lets draft a law that we can guarantee will be swatted down like pesky fly by the Supreme Court!”
He also said in court that his body camera had failed to record the interaction.
I’ve decided that if I’m ever on a jury where a police officer turns off or fails to turn on his body cam I’m immediately voting for acquittal and jury-nullifying the $#!t out of that case.
I like my idea, where if it is ever found that a police officer deliberately turned off their body camera, then every subsequent action of theirs is treated as if they are an ordinary citizen with no police powers whatsoever. They should no longer be allowed to stop, detain, question, touch, arrest or assault any person at all, full stop starting from the point the camera is turned off.
If they do any of these, they should be prosecuted.
Watch this video about Stavian Rodriguez:
Naturally the police waited until the teenager dropped the gun before they started shooting (and killed him).
Then the camera needs to have a an indicator on it so that I can tell if that uniformed person is legitimately on duty.
This is one of those stories that makes you say “What the Actual Fuck?”
But then you see it, “Oh. Texas.”
A link that doesn’t require a subscription:
Texas Rangers just stopped using hypnosis to investigate crimes (insider.com)
I like my idea where the camera is always running and if it must be turned off* they have to radio in to their supervisor or dispatch and request it be turned off for X minutes. Even then, (in a perfect world) if their gun/handcuffs/pepper spray is taken out of their belt it turns itself back on. If accelerometers notice the officer appears to be running, falling, fighting etc, again, it turns itself back on.
So now you have a situation where it’s always on and always recording and there’s a log of each time it was turned off, a reason and who ok’d on it.
Furthermore, if it ‘breaks’, that is, if it stops recording for any reason other than the officer and their superior allowed it to turn off (so, low battery, run out of storage, broken, etc) it can send a signal back to the station and the officer can be told to come back for a new one.
TLDR, they should be always on but can be turned off, not always off but can be turned on.
*ie using the bathroom or doing some thing otherwise sensitive/private that’s on some list of times it’s acceptable to have it turned off.
More details from Louisiana regarding the police beating of Antonio Harris:
I’d go even further. If a cop makes up a law that does not exist they are acting as a private individual and thus
- No qualified immunity for any actions.
- There is no resisting arrest crime since you cannot be arrested for a made-up crime.
- The LEO is held as a private individual for any crime they commit such as “arresting” the individual for the non-existent crime is kidnapping or “taking into evidence” any object is stealing.
- The LEO is automatically suspended without pay for a set time as a minimum and they must pass a test on what are laws and what are not before they return to duty with pay.
- If an officer’s body cam is turned off, they cannot testify to anything that occurred during the time the cam was off.
- For multiple infractions of turning off body cams, making up laws, or gross abuse of power, etc. the result is the person is not able to be a law enforcement officer OR even carry a guard card (private security) in that state.
SWAT team destroys house, and city refuses to pay for damage. Homeowners insurance company also refuses to pay.