Officers, regardless of how many witnesses there are or how much footage there is, get away with so much that it's ridiculous.
We see this in so many different facets of life: police cars crashing into others while driving without a siren on and then blaming the crash on the victim (https://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/zidek-cpd-police-cycli... this also happened to my uncle); civil forfeiture, which I consider to be blatant robbery; near-literal executions, both witnessed and caught on video, of people, pets, children, etc. during traffic stops or raids; trigger-happy police officers shooting randomly at people, and facing no consequences for this (http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-no-charges-lapd-... and now this case where they're planting drugs to get someone arrested. You have to ask, how many times have officers done this and gotten away with it? Of the 2.2+ MILLION people in prison/jail, how many are there for false reasons?
My opinion is that the public holds police officers to such a high esteem that the police are basically able to get away with whatever they want. That whole image of "they're protecting us and putting their lives on the line" needs to go away so we can finally start prosecuting these criminals.
I understand that there are a lot of good people on the police force, but enough's enough. Start jailing police officers. No more "administrative duty," no more suspensions.
We work in a society where the government authority is always right. doesn't really matter your color, even I was military we were told if brought up for even a traffic offense to never imply the arresting officer was wrong, just explain why we were not at fault.
So with regards to camera. In a one vs one encounter the camera must be active and recording unless damaged by the perpetrator and even then the record should be easily destroyed. So while a camera could possibly be damaged during a scuffle it should so this event.
Hence, if no video then no crime unless it can be proven that all available recording devices were disabled through an act of god. No officer should be permitted out of station without having another party verify all recording gear is in working order, same for the cars. Simply put, we force them to never enter the public unless their recording gear is function and soon as a fault is detected it must be remedied then.
Then make it a federal offense for disabling or even turning off any recording device. It has to be federal. we back it up not with fines but termination and jail time. We can give the cops a three strikes and your out.
last note (did not have time to write a short reply) is that we must prevent law enforcement officers fired in one locale from simply getting hired in another
Police, in my experience, are rarely better than your next random street thug. US cops routinely shoot people (especially PoCs are walking targets), German cops love racial profiling (Hamburg, Hafenstraße - look on Twitter), beating up left-wing people (last seen at the police riots in Hamburg, G20) or cooperating with neo-Nazis (e.g. Freital terror group, but also the NSU terrorists had their "helpers"). Yes there are good cops, but they are rare. Most eventually succumb to the authoritarian system and what's called "Korpsgeist".
I'm a socialist myself, but if you want to do anything good for the left, make sure you get your stories very straight.
Certainly, some events at G20 were exaggerated. I agree with you that this is bad - the problem is that there's so much material about cop misbehaviors that it cannot all be faked/exaggerated.
I have seen police attacking clearly visible, free standing journalists with a water cannon. Police attempting to shoot a cameraman down a roof with a watercannon. Police attacking a medic convoy transporting an injured person with watercannons. Police illegally using rubber ammo (it's not allowed by Hamburg police law).
And this is "just" what I have seen at G20. What I have seen and personally experienced at other demonstrations, especially in Berlin and Munich, I could literally write a book about.
German police don't carry name tags, only some carry number tags (in NRW, the requirement got dropped just short after G20, actually!), and next to no carry body cams. Bavarian and Federal police at least carry the number of their group on the backpatch but numerous other countries don't carry any "individual" mark. They are not investigated by independents, but by other cops - and even if they are investigated, only the really high media profile cases actually end up in front of a court. They are above the law and act like so.