Yes, for their protection as well as our own. However if such a policy were adopted I'd be concerned as to who would have access to the footage - would it be publically available, or held by the authorities themselves? If the latter, such an initiative would be just about useless.

 

I think there are already processes for this sort of thing. The data protection act for your particular country may cover it, as well as whatever freedom of information act is applicable to where you live.

And if there's no legislation either at the state/district or government level, it needs to be introduced.

 

I'm in the UK - I'm 99.9% sure we do have some form of legislation as CCTV footage is commonly used in criminal proceedings.

I was more addressing the thread topic of every single policeman having to wear a camera whenever they're on duty.

 

After certain recent events in the US: Hell fucking yes.

 

Maybe the police should be made to wear cameras but I doubt it would really improve things. There are structural reasons behind the routine abuse that the police heaps upon the people. The militarisation and racism that exists can't be demolished by cameras alone. There must be a system that is actually prepared to take action and that is clearly lacking because we already know that cops get away with murder. Awareness isn't the issue.

I mean look at fucking Ferguson, the cops there are going full on dictatorship and what do you think is going to happen to them for it? If Arpaio can putter along undisturbed then this sure isn't going to lead to structural changes.

 

All this surveillance society stuff, the world seems to be getting more Orwellian in every conceivable way. That's an observation, not necessarily a criticism.

Let's face it, it works. CCTV has made things a degree safer, you really see the difference it's made with stuff like subways/underground.

It's like when more people were religious in the past, and there was the idea that an all-seeing God would keep people honest, but now with technology we can actually do that in a secular society. I'm going to miss the days when you could be honest, law-abiding and anonymous, and you weren't just doing it to preserve your reputation and look good on camera.

That'd apply to what they see while they're walking the streets and such, but as soon as there's any sort of private property search, or strip search you wouldn't want that in the public domain.

There's probably other scenarios to consider as well, such as criminals using it to target 'rats' and people who may have cooperated with police or given them tip-offs. Personally speaking, I wouldn't want everything I might tell cops to be publicly available unless it's later required to be used as evidence.

 

Yes.

 

We have the technology. We can rebuilt them.

 

I can see this being a good thing to help protect the officers and the public, BUT the Government will ultimately find a way to abuse this and choke more of our conational rights away from us.

 

The police would be willing accomplices. Who do you think enforces government policy?

 

Yes, GoPros are cheap enough. It may stop some stuff. Other stuff it won't. Police officers are regular dudes and dudettes. Just like me they probably have "cowardly" moments, when their first instinct is to protect themselves and shoot rather than process everything in their mind and make sure nobody gets hurt. That aside, we only see the 1 to 2% of actions of Police officers who made bad decisions, we don't see and thank the actions of the 95% of Police officers doing it right. 9/11 seems so far ago. And we tend to forget that any day could be a police officer's last.

 

A lot of police departments have audio recorders on their officers that work similar to dash cams.

As for streaming every second of a Police Officers shift to a public server, wouldn't that violate some privacy rights? Police Officer and citizens.

Chuck

 

I got to arrest this buy, but first, let me take a selfie.

 

Yes.

 

Everyone should wear cameras for defense against other people with cameras.

 

Don't they already have some? It's called Dash Cam and COPS lol.

 

As much as my irrational Orwellian fear of too many cameras is clouding my brain I can't help but see this as a good thing in building trust between communities and the police and accountability of both sides.

This in a strange way reminds me of an anecdote from a Russian person at my work who has been living in the UK for over five years (I think) were they said it was common place for most people to put cameras on their cars and I asked why and they answered so that it made it more difficult for the police to falsify a crime and rinse money out of you. They complained that this was a regular occurrence for some people if the police thought they had money. Pretty scary stuff.

 

When cops murder someone it very rarely is out of the blue (hehe). Mostly they have a long line of escalating behavioural problems that finally led to them killing someone. This is something that the 95% of police you claim are doing right didn't do anything about. Never mind that after the killing they join up in support of the murderer because of another thing your post touches at: the feeling of being under siege, of constantly risking their lives in a war zone. The militarisation of police have led to them viewing the public as enemies and their patrols as battlefields.

 

Yes. It benefits cops and citizens.