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Comment by mgrennan | Hacker News Reader

Correct - More people die in hospitals then anywhere else. So should you be scared of going to the hospital?

"Hospital Errors are the Third Leading Cause of Death in U.S." Add strains of super-bacteria that thrive there and I'd say that's a yes.

http://www.hospitalsafetyscore.org/newsroom/display/hospital...

>So should you be scared of going to the hospital?

Ludicrous. Hospitals are where the sick and dying go for treatment. Police are there to Protect and Serve. Terrorists try to kill you. Why do the former do more damage than the latter?

I agree that the headline is sensationalist, but if you don't think we've got a real police problem, your head is in the sand. Fortunately, the solution isn't that difficult (body cams), and is essentially around the corner.

It's important to remember that there is a downside to bodycams. #1) It turns all cops into walking surveillance machines. #2) We don't know yet how much violence it deters, or whether it makes the police more likely to be prosecuted when they commit illegal acts. Initial studies seem promising that it is helpful in some ways, but we don't know how helpful yet.

Personally, I think disarming the police would have a lot more effect than body cams.

> It turns all cops into walking surveillance machines

Cops already function as defacto surveillance machines. The bodycam doesn't capture any more than the cop does with his/her own eyes and the cop has the authority to act based on that alone, the bodycam is at least an impartial representation of the cop's (or citizen's) allegations.

Yeah, a cop is like a body cam that can lie, has imperfect memory and if used in court can only testify against you.

However, the problem with technology is the scale. You can't systematically collect everything a cop sees in a database; with a camera, you can.

Police are there to Protect and Serve.

Only the state: https://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/04-278.ZS.html

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