Put a Body Camera on Every Cop in America
The jury obviously got it right. Derek Chauvin is a murderer. Anyone who watched any of the videos from any angle, knows it. But at the…
The jury obviously got it right. Derek Chauvin is a murderer. Anyone who watched any of the videos from any angle, knows it. But at the end of this trial I’m left wondering what would have happened if there was no video recording of the murder as it happened ? In this case, without the preponderance of video evidence, I believe the police’s fictitious story most likely would have prevailed as the official narrative. Derek Chauvin would likely be a free man today.
While most of us, and especially those in the African-American community, are extremely relieved that Chauvin will be held accountable for his crime, the question I’m wondering is how many murderous or criminally violent cops walk free every year because their crimes are NOT caught on video ? In a visual culture in which we are taught to believe that things not caught on video are somehow less real, I wonder why 21st century jurors are still having to decide cases involving police officers based on witness testimony alone.
The clear lesson for me from the George Floyd case is that we need body cameras on every police officer in the United States.
The data supporting this is clear. In a test run by the Mesa (Arizona) Police Department, eight months after deployment, there were nearly 3x more complaints against officers without cameras, 40 percent fewer total complaints for officers with cameras, and 75 percent fewer use of force complaints for officers with cameras.
Yet most police officers in the United States still do not wear body cameras in the field.
With video technology and storage costs as cheap as they are, this strikes me as absurd.
I believe that every police/citizen interaction should be recorded on video with the video immediately uploaded and available on a publicly owned database. The video should immediately become a publicly owned asset. In the event that an investigation becomes necessary, the video could be downloaded by investigators or lawyers. In the event of a trial by jury, we the people have the best evidence available at our fingertips.
This way there could be no possibility of police manipulation.
This would also protect police officers who could potentially be falsely accused of crimes they did not in fact commit.
We need a federal law mandating body cameras on every police officer in the United States.