This is related to what we are talking about much in the same way as a herring riding a bicycle screaming “HALLELUJAH IT’S RAINING MEN”. Once again, if we were in a society where we had to worry about good cops being forced out because of overzealous moral police, rather than a society where it takes people blocking a goddamn bridge to get bad cops who literally murdered people out of the police force, you might have a point. In fact, that is the only hypothetical world where this kind of statement even tries to make sense.
But we live in this world, a world where a cop can be filmed shooting an unarmed civilian in the back and framing his victim for it, and still not be convicted on the first try. A world where rooting out “bad cops” is borderline impossible unless they’re caught on video, red-handed, and even then it’s a crapshoot. So this statement is counterproductive nonsense.
I’m not a cop nor do I have any knowledge of police practices but to me there seems to be so much to question about this 20 minute video that the “I’m hot” comment is the least of my concern/priority.
They shoot the guy in the first minute. A small army of police arrive. They go through the house looking for other threats. Police mill around grab-assing, trying to look busy and like they’re contributing something to the effort (but I don’t see how). The cop who shot the suspect gets on the his cell phone to call his wife to tell her he shot somebody and will be home late. Another cop is seen talking on his cell phone. An ambulance finally arrives. More time passes as a cop finally approaches the suspect by “sneaking up” on him from behind the house (as opposed directly from the road) who continues to lie on his driveway, bleeding, I guess. And all this is going on while more than 15 minutes pass before the suspect is finally handcuffed and presumably eventually gets medical attention.
15 FUCKING MINUTES!
Enough time for personal phone calls and milling about uselessly by about a dozen cops before the live suspect is finally approached.
On the one hand, I can see how it would be uncomfortable doing my job with a body camera attached for reasons totally unconnected to being able to cover up shootings. On the other, the police do shoot people and they should probably get used to it.
I didn’t watch the whole video. Is it the same guy who keeps mentioning that his camera is on, or different guys?
It appears to be filmed from the POV of one cop. The one who shot the suspect. So yeah, I think it’s the same guy saying it. Perhaps to make sure that everyone is aware of what they say and do while on candid camera.
See, here’s a great example of me agreeing with HurricaneDitka. All the points have been made and argued so I don’t have much to add. However, yes, I’m a little concerned that they’ve got to say “I’m hot, bro” over and over. Time will heal that wound, though.
The fact that he did nothing wrong was just as well-established as it could have been with a camera, and it didn’t help.
We want police to wear body cams so we can see what they do. These police are wearing body cams, and they get called shitbags. We want “good cops” to push other cops to behave appropriately. A cop wearing a body cam pushes other cops to behave appropriately because they are being recorded, and that’s suspicious. One cop, under the stress of the situation, makes a misstatement about a gunshot wound, and that’s suspicious. We want more training for cops, to tell them so they will react appropriately. A cop wearing a body cam tells other officer to react appropriately, and that means maybe they shouldn’t be cops. Twenty minutes after the shooting, the situation is resolved, the suspect is arrested and starts receiving medical attention. The reaction from some is “15 WHOLE MINUTES - WHAT TOOK YOU SO LONG?”
Oh-come-the-fuck-on… you don’t think playing cops and robbers for 15-20 minutes while the suspect lies on the driveway bleeding is ridiculous?
I’m all for body cameras. They serve to reveal how much better police training can and should be. I don’t think these cops need to be punished for this shooting. I think a serious review of training and police practices is sorely needed.
Second half of the video (IIRC, I watched it last night), is the POV of the other cop. If you skip around, again IIRC, there’s a big change in video quality so it’s easy to tell.
After things play out, everything starts over, but you’re at the POV of the ‘other cop’ who’s taking cover behind a porch and it goes from there. I believe he even mentioned that he really couldn’t see what was going on from where he was. That would jive with mistaking and/or not knowing where the shot came from.
I think the problem with this is the cop seems like he is pushing other cops to behave because they are being recorded, and not because it’s the right thing to do. As if, if they weren’t being recorded, he wouldn’t push other cops to behave appropriately.
Ah, so there is a time overlap in that case. I admit to skipping a bit through the footage. So perhaps there wasn’t a 15 minute delay between the shooting and the arrest of the suspect?
There’s some time, I don’t remember how long or why it’s an issue one way or the other. But after shooting him, they do wait until they can get eyes on the house before going near him, handcuffing him and dragging him away from the house before arresting him. They may have been waiting for some extra officers to show up. For whatever reason they were clearly concerned about another threat in the house.
Not an unreasonable concern, it could be anything from “be on your best behavior, like you always are” to “don’t shoot the innocent guy in the head, like you usually do.”
As I am of the opinion that donning the uniform and the badge should be a reminder for cops to always be on their best behavior, I do see the warning as unnessary if the cops are already doing their jobs the way they should be doing.
It is my understanding that the police cam footage is not generally for public consumption, and that it is only released to the public when there is something particularly controversial in the recording. Are the PDs releasing video of cops in the bathroom?
If they are bad cops, then I would rather them be bad on camera, so that they may be caught and removed from the force. Warning them that in this particular instance that they need to make sure that they aren’t doing anything illegal does not help in the instances when they can act with impunity.
That should be unnecessary.
Almost the only way that anyone is ever going to listen to those recordings is if they are dead, so they probably don’t worry too much about it.
Or being in front of a cop that has just detained you. Well, except for the part where the video camera isn’t going to kill you.
I don’t know that the OP is “upset” that the cop is reminding the other cops, but more finding it odd to seem to have to remind honest people to be honest.
We want good cops to push bad cops off the force, or at the very least make them clean up their act, both on and off the camera. Just making them act good while they are being recorded does very little good for all the times they are not.
A cop should not have to remind other officers to behave appropriately, because they are on camera. They should behave appropriately, because they are cops.
Because 15 minutes is such a short time when you are suffering from a gun shot wound to wait to receive medical treatment.
I have been around police shootings and the arrests (sometimes with force) of people charged with violent or other horrendous crimes. It is not uncommon to refer to the suspect as an “asshole” or “scumbag” or “piece of shit” in the heat of the moment. While its human nature to disparage adversaries, something like that caught on tape doesn’t look/sound very good . Its not bad enough that the public does its best to Monday morning quarterback but police administrators will use these videos to nit-pick administrative things. “I know you were the first one on the scene, it was a double-fatal accident and was 95 degrees but here’s two days off for not wearing your hat.” I’ve seen that exact thing happen. Or “Here’s a day off for saying ‘fuck’ while fighting with that purse-snatcher”
Its my opinion that the officer was warning others that he was hot in order to prevent them from saying or doing some petty thing that, while having zero impact on the incident, could draw the the ire of the public or upper management. Others will, no doubt, see a grand conspiracy. BTW, the vast majority of I cops I know and train are in favor of body and dash cameras.
My impression is that it’s not terribly uncommon. Ambulances take a while to get there, police are concerned about other things (the potential for additional hostile individuals) and aren’t trained paramedics anyways, so they’re never really in a rush to approach the individual, and when they do it’s usually primarily to handcuff them and secure any weapons they may have had, not render medical aid. Watch the Groubert shooting video for an example of this. I was actually mildly surprised to see one of the cops doing some chest compressions in this case.
It’s actually two separate cops, the two that initially responded to the scene (the only two in the area when the shooting happens). Roughly the first half of the video is the body cam footage from the cop who fired the shot, and the second half from the body cam of the other officer that was on the scene, covering roughly the same time period as the first. Both of them tell various fellow officers “I’m hot”.
It was a little bit less than 5 minutes of actual elapsed time from the time the suspect was shot to the beginning of chest compressions.
I’m realizing I rushed to conclusion on the elapsed time from shooting to arrest.
I’m guessing the phone call to his wife was also after arrest and medical attention.
Anyway, I think the body cam thing and reminders to other cops to be on best behaviour can only serve to make better cops in the long run, whether through self-awareness or improved training. It only makes sense. If there were not existing issues, there would be no need for body cameras.
I don’t actually know, but Officer Walsh was the shooter, who ended up calling his wife after they cleared the house. He parked his vehicle east of the house, and returns to his vehicle when the suspect emerges with the gun, and again after clearing the house, when he calls his wife. The other officer ran to the west, and later returned and dragged the suspect further west (and it was there that a third officer administered CPR) while Walsh and company were securing the house and he was calling his wife.
In other words, it’s not like Walsh was callously calling his wife while ignoring the suspect bleeding out. Someone else was taking care of it.
I don’t know that we should have our officers using dehumanizing language when dealing with humans that they are about to administer justice to.
It has been my observation on this board on several occasions, usually in the “controversial encounters” thread, that you do not need to kill a man to relieve him of his dignity, to dehumanize, and ultimately ostracized them from the justice community by the actions of officers disparaging their adversaries. They demand a level of respect from the citizens they are paid to protect that they would not ever consider returning.
This is a lessor offence than actually killing people and all, of course, but it is something that should be addressed. Treating even suspects of a crime as “adversaries” to be disparaged does not improve community relations.
IMHO, the officer was warning the other officers that they were actually supposed to be following the laws and police procedures for this particular incident, and he knew that they would need a reminder to do so.