I will never understand why it’s up to officers when to turn their body cameras on or not.
I mean, by the same logic law enforcement routinely uses, if you’ve got nothing to hide, you shouldn’t mind a little invasion of privacy, right?
Their own privacy, sure. But body cameras that are always on would also invade other people’s privacy.
Well in his defense, I wouldn’t want to be interviewed either, particularly given the potential for a criminal case.
I don’t want to demonize police officers individually or collectively. I don’t think Officer Noor had nefarious intentions when he discharged his weapon. It’s almost certainly the result of either poor training by the department or perhaps simply a matter of the department not screening well enough – not everyone is cut out to be an officer of the law. Another reason to consider budget cuts and cuts to public sector pensions carefully – we absolutely want to hire the best people for these jobs. Lives depend on it.
But tragedies like these are going to happen unless we stop accepting that “I was afraid” as a standard defense. In recent decades, it seems like the top priority of police departments has been to ensure the safety of their officers over the safety of the general public. Presumably, all right-thinking people respect the work that officers do and want them to return home, but from the general public’s point of view, that’s not the priority. It’s to protect and serve. Taxpayers pay soldiers to defend their country, and recruits sign commitments knowing and accepting that it might cost their lives. Officers have made a similar pledge and accepted similar risks.
I support officers and agree that end up having to put up with a lot of unnecessary shit, but what I oppose and would like to see changed is the militarization of police departments and the assumption that the word of a public official in any capacity has more weight than the evidence itself. Officers’ cameras have been presumably purchased to serve as evidence, and yet they were not activated in this case and this is not the only instance. That shouldn’t even be an option. They should be activated the moment the uniform is put on, in much the same way that a cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder are activated the moment pilots enter an aircraft.
This.
Oh, you were so afraid of the 12-year-old who may or may not have a gun that you rolled up and shot him within seconds of appearing on the scene? You were so afraid of the black man who told you he had a gun in his glove box that your immediate response is to empty your weapon into them? Your craven cowardice cost someone their life, and the fact that you were afraid does not justify it. You were never actually in any danger, you were the danger. These people should not be cops. They shouldn’t be on the street. They should be behind bars.
And then I remember that a cop was fired because he didn’t kill a suspect, and instead would have successfully deescalated the situation had his partner not opened fire, and my eyes start wandering towards the liquor cabinet. He was fired for showing correct judgment. Go on, tell me there’s not something fucking rotten about police in the USA.
That’s not even the most egregious miscarriage of justice. Walter Scott was basically executed by a South Carolina police officer. Both the execution and the attempt to obstruct justice by recreating the narrative of events were caught on tape – and yet there was still no conviction at the state level. Only the airtight case of civil rights violations and the officer’s capitulation to the massive resources of the federal government landed him in jail.
If they’re interacting with uniformed police officers, they are in the public, not private, sphere.
IMO, all interactions public servants are involved in should be on public record if possible (exceptions granted for undercover cops and national security, and sensitive info like post-rape interviews shouldn’t be public, but should be recorded for review) - from librarians to top politicians and everyone inbetween.
It’s different because this situation is comparatively much, much rarer.
It’s easy to call into question this cop’s conduct because 1) he’s black and 2) the victim is a white woman. Because it’s so easy, cop defenders are not going to be see this as part of the larger problem we’re seeing with violent policing overall, but rather a problem with this particular “bad apple” cop. His narrative is going to be rejected out of hand because of that.
Pay attention to the number of people bending over backwards to argue the victim did something wrong, like they were inclined to do with Tamir Rice, Castille, and other victims. I don’t think you will hear anyone say she was asking to be shot for approaching the drivers’ side in the dark or for not holding her hands up in the air or for breathing a little too loudly. Because her innocence is assumed.
I wouldn’t be surprised if this cop was charged with something, and I definitely think he will lose his job. I’m confident in this because he’s black and the victim is white, not because I think the justice system is becoming fairer. This is the problem.
FTR, I haven’t entirely agreed that the officer is 100% to blame in all of these high profile cases. I’m not going to get into a debate about the specific incidents as those have probably been done to death already. But as critical as I have been on this thread, I do acknowledge that there are circumstances in which some of these officers were forced to make irrevocable decisions in the blink of an eye, and the ‘victims’ didn’t exactly help themselves.
But there are some cases that are just incontrovertible. I really don’t know what should happen, and where the fine line is between a horrible mistake and gross negligence. All I know is that “I was afraid” can’t be an acceptable standard. The top priority has to be protecting and serving the public, not resorting to no-holds-barred just to ensure an officer’s safety. They need to accept a certain level of risk and hazards that come with the job. As it is with a lot of public sector jobs, from school teachers to air traffic controllers, we need to pay and train officers a LOT better than we do, which would hopefully make the job more appealing and allow a higher degree of selectivity, and also pay for more professional training.
Body camera footage shows officer planting drugs, public defender says
Ah. Baltimore PD, didn’t you recently get reviewed by the Justice Dept.? But now, I bet this is the type of policing Sessions will ignore. He seems to be in favor for long drug sentences for minorities.
At least he wasn’t shot:
Cases like that just show me that officers need to have way less control over when their body cameras are active. If the body camera is only active when the officer wants it to be active, it’s only going to show what they want it to show – unless the officer is a total moron like that last example.
At least he didn’t lose 6 months of his life locked up in jail for a crime that he was framed for by the police.
I will be surprised it the officer in question even gets fired, probably be some “disciplinary action”.
IMHO, this officer needs to spend some time behind bars.
There are controversies as to whether or not an officer should have been justified in taking someone’s life, and there are differing opinions on any particular case.
I would hope that everyone is on board with condemning our police officers framing people, but sadly, I am afraid there will be those along to justify the officer’s actions.
“Police cameras have a feature that saves the 30 seconds of video prior to activation, but without audio…”
So either the cops were told this feature exists, and this particular cop is too stupid to chew his own food, or this information was strategically withheld from the police because they were too untrustworthy to know it. Well, cat’s out of the bag now.
If the police are in a public place, then there is no invasion of privacy. And if they’re in a private place, then they’ve either been asked in there by the property owner, or have entered in order to deal with an incident requiring their attention. The body camera merely records what the police are already seeing, and if the footage is not released then the people in the footage have suffered no more invasion of their privacy than was caused by the simple presence of the police.
And there can be safeguards. Video footage of police encounters need only be released when there is some sort of complaint or controversy, or where the contact leads to a trail and the footage might be needed as evidence. In cases where police contact does not lead to any of those things, the footage can remain private, and innocent people suffer no unreasonable invasion of privacy.
I value my privacy, especially in places like my own house, but if a police officer has to enter my house for any reason, i’d prefer to risk giving up a little bit of that privacy in order to ensure that there was a recording of the officer’s actions. Especially given some of the things that police officers have done to the people they have contact with.
Well, i’m sure the officer knew that the suspect really, truly was a drug dealer, so planting some drugs just speeds things up. Just speeding up the inevitable, right?
In full view of 2 other officers. I wonder what their body cams caught?
It’s not really framing someone if you already know that they are guilty, right?
Well, we know that cop was guilty of possession.
Regarding the police shooting death of Justine Ruszczyk (Minnesota PD case) - Marcia Chatelain, a fellow at the New America Foundation and co-host of a podcast on the death of Freddie Gray says the reason Blue Lives Matter and other pro-police groups aren’t speaking up in defense of Noor is that he’s black. Of course. What else could it conceivably be? How about the possibility that most cops are saying to themselves and each other “WTF? How could that have happened? That sure doesn’t look good. That cop probably fucked up.”
Unlike BLM and others who, while they may have a point to their argument, cite the wrong examples (e.g. Michael Brown) Blue Lives Matter is holding their collective tongue until the facts are in. Naah, its racial.
Or they are putting their collective heads together to come up with a plausible scenario where the unarmed white woman who called 911 could have looked like such a threat where the officer feared for his life, pulled and fired his weapon while still in the car with his partner in the line of fire.
*That *one is gonna take some time.
Well, that’s cool if they are holding their tongues in this case. Sounds like they are finally learning that their brothers in blue are not all perfect.
Hopefully, this will be a lesson that they keep with them for the next shooting as well, even if it’s a white cop next time.