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The key takeaway from the article (at least IMO) is that police bodycams can be fooled/sabotaged in this manner to hide/alter evidence. Think about the countless cases out there, where there is no 3rd party footage to corroborate the story told by the bodycams.

Without the 3rd party CCTV footage to expose this, the suspect would probably be facing additional penalties for "resisting arrest".

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"Interfering with a peace officer" and "resisting arrest" are nearly always bundled. The two together are hard to defend against in many scenarios, unless there is a record, or a very strong witness.

The arrest is often structured in a way, such as shouting "stop resisting!" almost no matter what, to make it difficult for observers to understand what they are seeing. It's liability management. They lose nothing by doing this and gain a very serious personal and department risk reduction.

It's frightening to think of the tens of thousands (or more) of suspects treated in this way in the eras before bodycams. Only the rarest cases (e.g. Rodney King) were documented in any way.

It is. Most of us had no idea. I know I didn't.

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