Lax oversight allows Chicago police to avoid turning on their body cams
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My personal philosophy is that if called to be on a criminal jury, if the case relies on the officer's testimony and there is no camera, I will return a verdict of not guilty under the justification that the state has failed to prove its case.
A couple of hung juries and the powers that be may get the message
It’s a huge problem.
In my case the guy was (as best I could conclude) legitimately guilty of one of the lesser included charges, but there was some dodgy testimony, and I was the only one, in my group, to question it, and suggest that it might have some bearing on which of the many charges that might actually make him guilty of. It took quite some convincing to get anyone else to drop to anything lower than the top charge.
While I realize that this sample size of 1 is statistically insignificant, it really seems like if you wind up in court on criminal charges, odds seem to be you're screwed. "Innocent until proven guilty" felt, to me, like a pipedream.
As a jury we ended up deciding that the defendant was Not Guilty because without that filed paperwork, it was just two people's recollection of the events and we didn't feel the officer was more trustworthy.
I wouldn't have thought much about it after the fact, except that the prosecution was visibly upset at the decision which made me realize that that was likely not what normally would have happened.
I'm cynical enough about lawyers (having seen a few in action) that I wonder if "visibly upset" wasn't trying to manipulate someone - either the judge, or the jury members in case they serve on a jury again some day.
There's a reason that DUI defendants almost universally request jury trials.
And if their camera is off they lose their insurance policy. Then no more access to qualified immunity.
Being police is a luxury not a right.
//side note, FDR agreed.... which is ironic given that most people that support Public Employee unions think we need a new new deal FDR style
It's a service, not a luxury.
Money is fungible. Even if the union doesn’t negotiate this insurance on a group level, passing along the premium could be quite easily baked into contract negotiations.
Not saying it's a good scheme just that there's more at play than just money.
They could purchase, maintain the body cameras, collect and handle the footage and be trusted.
If Biden is looking to score some points this would be a good way.
I'm not really familiar with the details, but it's my understanding the Seattle PD are under some sort of probation system with the DOJ, which I'm guessing the FBI was involved with. So I think this sort of thing does happen, though I guess not enough.
They have a certain amount of ability to do that if the state or local government is violating Federal law. But they do not have general oversight or police powers, since the Federal government as a whole does not. Nor is it supposed to.
Aside from activating / deactivating the camera (with clear guidelines and penalties for doing / not doing so), and connecting it to a network at the end of a shift, it should be a black box. None of the IT functions should run out of the same police force.
Consequently, this also protects officers in the case of equipment failure: timestamp the activation / deactivation signals in a separate log file. If the footage isn't there, but they activated, then it's no longer their reputation on the line, because they had no involvement in the chain of custody.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_bureau_of_investigation
I agree it should be a black box. Rule #1 for accountability is that you don't rely on the entity that's being examined to give absolutely correct info. Whether that's debugging a process or reviewing an organization, outside instrumentation is essential.
Not... entirely accurate.
Many states possess their own military forces [0], and state National Guard units are dual-chained to both state and national military leadership [1] (in different scenarios).
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_defense_force#Active_sta...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_National_Guard#N...
If only a significant % of america didn't refuse to acknowledge police abuse of power was a big deal (or even happening)
It would also help if police were not tasked with enforcing a litany of nanny state laws that shouldn't even be on the books to begin with. Any cop that wants to mess with a citizen can always find some excuse; with all the laws we have, all of us are violating some law every day.
Moreover corrupt cops thrive because of close knit relationships between local DAs, local law enforcement, local judges and local politicians. A national wrecking ball is needed to break these toxic corrupt relationships and a strong, national institution is needed to create the institutional inertia against systemic police corruption from arising again.
You can't vote corruption out of office. It has to be rooted out from outside. Even the cleanest politicians cannot operate from within a corrupt system.
The US is a union of states. Although we have a pretty massive and powerful federal government, many things are the responsibility of the states and the federal government has limited ability to intervene. Using the FBI is one of the avenues I believe though.
In other words, if the corruption is not just particular localities, but infects the national government as well, then we're all screwed?
They get stuck with it because 1st world countries insist on continuing to send aid even though the corrupt governments take all of it and it never benefits the people. Not to mention 1st world countries giving legitimacy to those corrupt governments in many other ways.
In other words, on a global level, the idea that corruption in 3rd world countries is "a global problem" has made the corruption worse, not better.
"Let local residents handle it" was how America went through Jim Crow laws.
Bad officials unwilling to prosecute bad cops is a second symptom
Apathetic electorates electing bad officials unwilling to prosecute bad cops is a third symptom
Municipalities spread all around the country are suffering from the same combination of symptoms. Whether that suggests one national problem or the same local problem in replicate is a question of semantics.
No, "let Democratic State governments of the Southern states handle it" was how America went through Jim Crow laws. Localities would never have gotten away with it if the State governments had not supported them and helped them crack down on local citizens who pushed back.
Well, no, we nationally have gay marriage because of federal court decisions voiding state actions prohibiting same-sex marriage as violations of the federal Constitution.
And we don't have legal marijuana anywhere in the United States (we have states which have chosen not to layer state prohibition on top of federal prohibition for some acts involving marijuana, an federal law mandating deferring prosecution for certain acts involving medical marijuana that are consistent with state law. Anyone who actually makes significant money in marijuana would still be subject to the federal drug kingpin laws were the policy deferring prosecution ever to be lifted, and technically without that if any part of their business involved any acts not entirely within the required deferral of prosecution.)
I apologize, but I don't quite get how you arrived at the conclusion you have, specifically this point. Help me out here?
> Leaving it up to local voters makes it sound like it's ok for a police dept to misbehave, eg harass minorities or evade accountability, as long as the majority voters in that city/county are ok with it.
This isn’t to say that federal policies don’t also have issues. If we think something is a right of all citizens (Such as to not be subject to abuse by the police), that only really takes hold if it is applied across the nation, which is federal.
For example, if I live in a small town that where 80% of the people intent their C code with tabs and I use spaces, they could theoretically elect a police chief who espouses tabs-jingoism and treats spaces-programmers less fairly.
Here's a good example. Sheriff, under the influence, attempts to interfere with the arrest of a stabbing suspect, buddy of his. https://youtu.be/pKraZkl0-eA
We know about this one sheriff because his staff stood up to him and he got arrested but it tells you a lot about the quality of local law enforcement in small towns.
In the extremely unlikely event that a majority are ok with it, yes, that would be correct as far as local laws are concerned. That's what "freedom" means: it means people are free to make mistakes. Note, however, that if the corrupt local cops are violating state or federal law, they're still liable even if a majority of local voters are ok with it. I don't have a problem with, for example, local cops being prosecuted for violating a citizen's Constitutional rights.
However, I strongly doubt that a majority of voters in these localities are actually ok with police corruption. I think they either don't bother voting because they don't think it will make any difference, or don't know about the corruption because they haven't personally experienced the consequences. Even in a large city like, e.g., Chicago, the majority of voters will never have a personal encounter with a city cop.
> going to a couple levels in governance (state or federal) makes total sense given the systematic nature of some of the problems
You're assuming that the state and federal levels of government don't also have systematic problems that would prevent them from fixing corruption. That strikes me as a highly unlikely assumption.
While state and federal government aren't devoid of corruption either, at least more homogeneity can be achieved at these levels. Local jurisdictions are more prone to extreme population disparities just by virtue of being smaller.
Overall, no. But the overall averages conceal a huge variation in risk by locality. I agree that "it's a dangerous job" doesn't excuse shooting innocent people or their pets. But the danger of the job in particular localities should not be underestimated.
> Changing their mentality from a warrior to a guardian also does wonders in lowering use of force.
Can you give specific examples? I agree with the general idea but I have not seen much actual data on specific localities where this is done or what effect it has.
> almost half the country think those who got shot by police probably deserved it
Citation needed.
> Almost the same crowd protests wearing masks as stepping on their liberties.
The protest is not against wearing masks where it makes sense to do so; it's against being ordered to wear masks whether it makes sense or not, and subjecting people to criminal penalties for non-compliance. For example, according to some orders (fortunately for me, not the one currently in effect where I live), you are subject to arrest for simply walking out your front door without a mask on, even if you remain on your own property and nobody else comes anywhere near you.
And don't forget that the same cops whose corruption and lack of judgment you and I both deplore will be the ones to enforce these orders. Frankly, it strikes me as illogical for people to be talking about defunding the police on the grounds of corruption on the one hand, and talking about issuing draconian orders that would have to be enforced by those same police on the other.
I wish more people understood that the reason the USA was set up the way it was was to allow individual States and localities to compete. Corruption doesn't stand up well to competitive pressure: if all the productive people leave your town because the cops and the local government shake everybody down, your town won't survive. So where you see corruption, the first question you should ask is: what barriers are being put in the way of people just leaving?
This "solution" is exactly what created the troubles of inner cities to begin with.
How much did they buy them for in the first place if the place is corrupt and everyone is trying to get out?
If the place became corrupt after all those people moved there, well, whose fault is that? If your answer is "corrupt politicians and corporations who took advantage of the people", well, there's your barrier to free and open competition between localities.
> This "solution" is exactly what created the troubles of inner cities to begin with.
No, what created the troubles of inner cities was completely unrealistic political expectations. People thought that using the government to fix social problems was a wonderful idea. Inner cities today are tragic evidence of how wrong they were.
I think what would be more powerful would be to empower citizens to bring criminal cases against police offers acting in their official capacity. Then at least we could be assured that the prosecutors are motivated to win the case for their clients.
In a national department? You get to the top by putting dirty cops in jail. Your boss's boss does not need to maintain an good relationship with a judge in Georgia. They win in their career by putting more dirty cops in jail.
The more national and centralized and separate from the rest of the police a department like this is the more ruthless it can be.
I reject the idea that all problems have a national solutions, which this seems to be a part of.
Federalism is good, and we should not continue the path of destruction of our federalist society
The closest thing (and its fairly close, though it doesn't answer to the states or the President directly) is the US Department of Justice, particularly the Special Litigation Section of the Civil Rights Division, which addresses "1) the rights of people in state or local institutions, including: jails, prisons, juvenile detention facilities, and health care facilities for persons with disabilities; 2) the rights of individuals with disabilities to receive services in their communities, rather than in institutions; 3) the rights of people who interact with state or local police or sheriffs' departments; 4) the rights of youth involved in the juvenile justice system; 5) the rights of people to have safe access to reproductive health care clinics; and 6) the rights of people to practice their religion while confined to state and local institutions." [0]
But weakening oversight of local law enforcement by DoJ was a major early priority of the current Administration, so it hasn't been particularly active in the particular role you are concerned with for the last few years.
> If Biden is looking to score some points this would be a good way.
I can't really imagine a Biden Administration not ramping activity regarding law enforcement oversight back up.
A couple of hung juries and prosecutors will be sure to start asking this specific question in order to strike you from the jury. They already do this for the death penalty.
If wearing a body camera is a requirement of the job then the penalty for not doing so should be the same as the penalty for not doing any other aspect of your job, you get fired.
If they don't exceed the penalty for being caught in a particular instance of wrong doing, then it's not likely to be effective in those cases.. which are likely to be the most important of these cases.
> A couple of hung juries and the powers that be may get the message
DAs are elected. Let them know they shouldn't even bring these cases, or you're going to unseat them for even trying a single one.
We shouldn't rely on the long tail of justice to save us here, we need protections at every level of the system. Peoples lives hang in the balance during a trial, why should we chance it?
While you cannot remove QI you can probably get away with unpaid leave when an officer is under investigation but I expect that to eventually get overturned by union activity.
Politically its radioactive, note the choices made on both sides for candidates and who got to speak at their relative conventions. If anything we will see increased funding for police with the typical wording to make it sound like we asked for it.
So non-compliance is the default.
And compliance failure is as easy as an incorrect double-press that fails to start recording. Is there even any feedback that the double-press has registered?
Why not buffer 5 hours by default?
But seriously, I would imagine the storage costs aren’t that terrible relative to the costs it would save in lawsuits for the police departments ?
Because then you end up with recordings of things that you shouldn't have, like the officer using the restroom or a victim who has asked not to be recorded. Also, several minutes of buffer fits nicely in RAM. 5 hours would require a lot more RAM (making devices more expensive and thus harder to get deployed) or would require it to be written to flash disk which introduces new technical and legal issues.
Additionally, recording 5 hours for each incident has one significant problem: every video that gets recorded has to be stored on device during the shift (not a big problem), but it also has to be offloaded and stored somewhere for archival. Do the math sometime on what kind of bandwidth and storage capacity a large agency like NYPD, LAPD, Chicago PD, etc. would need to upload several hours worth of officer-recorded video each day. I've done that math and the numbers are staggering.
If you're concerned about writing potentially sensitive video to non-volatile storage, that can be solved via technical means. Just encrypt the video with an ephemeral key kept in memory, then store the encrypted video on non-volatile storage. You get best of both worlds.
>I've done that math and the numbers are staggering.
Mind showing your calculations? Keep in mind you don't have to store the videos in perpetuity. Limiting it to 180 days (with option to extend if the incident is being disputed) would suffice for most cases.
Once you've recorded that video it's subject to FOIA requests and rules of evidence and all kinds of things like that. If your recording only includes the past minute or 2, you can be reasonably sure it doesn't include something it shouldn't (such as a victim who asked not to be recorded from an hour ago). If hitting that button commits a 5 hour buffer, then you're going to have all kinds of stuff now "in the public record" that maybe shouldn't be there. But also you now have 5 hours of more or less useless video that you have to store and account for (which costs $).
> Mind showing your calculations? Keep in mind you don't have to store the videos in perpetuity. Limiting it to 180 days (with option to extend if the incident is being disputed) would suffice for most cases.
It's actually less about the storage and more about the bandwidth to transfer that data to the storage location. Though the cost of the storage itself can still be an issue even if you're only retaining it for 90-180 days.
There's a whole bunch of factors of course, but pick a reasonable bit rate (5-10 Mbps perhaps) for your recording and multiply it by the number of hours recorded per officer and the number of officers in an agency. Chicago PD has 12,000 police officers. I don't know how many of them work on a given day but let's say 10,000. Say each one records 5 hours per day based on the 5 hour buffer proposed here.
10,000 * 5 hours = 50,000 hours of footage per day
50,000 hours * 5 Mbps = 112.5 terabytes per day
112.5 terabytes uploaded in 24 hours = 10.4 Gbps
(you need to be able to upload a full day's recording within 24 hours or you'll never catch up)
Doing this quickly so hopefully my math isn't off but it's in line with what I remember. 10Gbps being uploaded 24/7 to the cloud. 20 petabytes stored at any moment if you're holding everything for 180 days.
Sure, you can attack some of these numbers (not every officer will have a recordable interaction every day etc.) but I hope it gets the point across.
that might seem a lot if there's only one server, but it's really not that much considering that it's going to be uploaded from multiple precincts. Wikipedia says there are 21 "districts", so that works out to a 500 Mb/s link per building, which seems pretty modest for a institution.
>20 petabytes stored at any moment if you're holding everything for 180 days.
If it's being stored using aws glacier deep archive, that's only $20k/month. That's probably a drop in the bucket compared to the rest of the costs associated with running such a service.
We're talking 500 Mb/s of upload 24/7 though, which can't be used for anything else (i.e. you need capacity beyond that for any other internet traffic). I doubt a regular old 1Gbps business class connection will cut it there (I'm sure they'd shut you off after a few days of uploading like that).
Despite another post that cited a large budget for NYPD, most agencies are cash-strapped. Telling them they need a $thousands/month internet connection at every precinct isn't going to go over well.
I've been to several PDs (think suburban city - probably like the majority of agencies) where their entire "internet infrastructure" consisted of a Comcast cable modem screwed to a sheet of plywood on a wall. Like I said elsewhere, most PDs are the opposite of high-tech - compared to most companies, their employees don't spend nearly as much time on computers or the internet.
That's an interesting point, but I'm not sure this specific case matters? Are there things a person speaking to a police officer has any expectation that the officer may not relay as said to them? I would rather have it always recorded and strong laws about it's accessed.
> Do the math sometime on what kind of bandwidth and storage capacity a large agency like NYPD, LAPD, Chicago PD, etc. would need to upload several hours worth of officer-recorded video each day. I've done that math and the numbers are staggering.
It's a lot, but it's really just a matter of funding. If there's money to be paid for the service that someone can make a profit on, someone will step in to offer that service. I think the amount of storage required is actually pretty close to the amount Youtube adds in content every day (if we assume not all of the 800k police officers are recording every day, and not all of them are out on the street with a need to record). That's a lot, but the requirements aren't quite the same (you could start at high quality and re-encode to lower quality at age intervals unless flagged as important) instead of encoding to many qualities initially. Additionally there wouldn't need to be nearly as much serving infrastructure as youtube. It's the sort of problem the Federal government could throw a couple billion at a year that went to departments through grants and we would pretty quickly have a competitive field of companies offering storage for this as a service. Managing the security of the data would definitely need some regulation though.
If you watch the Jussie Smollet video he requested that officers turn off the cameras and they did so. I have no idea what the laws around this are, but as I understand it people have that right. That may not apply out in public but it seems to in private homes at least.
I understand and agree with people's need and right for privacy (although I'm not quite sure how the right interacts with this depending on who starts the interaction), but I think if HIPAA like stringency requirements were enacted on the data, with severe penalties, we could possibly hit a sweet spot where people had an expectation that their interaction videos would be private, and yet we could still rely on active monitoring by video of what those we've enabled with extra rights and abilities for the purpose of protecting us actually do, as a form of oversight.
Does it though? The source of all your objections here is that if body cameras had a 5 hour buffer, it's vitally important that buffer be saved even if nothing important happened. It's fine if you think that's true, but your alternative is to throw out all footage after a 30-second buffer unless an officer decides that they are in an important situation, implying that the footage missed is not important at all.
How about not offloading 5 hours of video if nothing happened? That's not somehow less honorable or ethical than never recording the video at all when you know, from endless examples, that the camera will often not be turned on in critical situations.
In the interest of sanity, I think we can suspend recording for personal moments: - Bathroom - Medical - Break time (e.g. eating)
We can potentially switch to a lower-resolution / audio-only take for the vast majority of a shift. E.g. idling in a cruiser.
As someone else highlighted, what we absolutely want to record is: - Use of weapon (holster switch) - Conflict (volume trigger?) - Immediately preceding interval before camera turned off (presumably, will contain a request / rationale to disable)
Effectively, what we want to do is switch from a trigger-on to a trigger-off. Cops shouldn't have to even think about cameras. They should just work.
Then make the recordings encrypted, and ONLY let the DA have the key that decrypts them. This solves the lack of data problem, but it also prevents the police from using their own footage without authorization.
> Do the math sometime on what kind of bandwidth and storage capacity a large agency like NYPD, LAPD, Chicago PD, etc. would need to upload several hours worth of officer-recorded video each day.
You don't have to save full quality video indefinitely. After several days, remove all color from the video. After several more, reduce the frame rate. After several more, reduce the resolution. If you built your system carefully, you could save much more video than people tend to estimate.
Beyond that.. there is a statue of limitations. I expect the police to keep their body cam recordings for up to 90 days, beyond that, unless they're directly related to a case, they should be allowed to reclaim that storage.
Instead of having an "Off" button, make the button begin ciphering the data with an officers private key. If the courts discover that there is something of interest in the duration of time that the camera is encrypting, they can compel the officer to turn over her encryption key or face a contempt charge.
This would allow either side (prosecution or defendant) to bring an argument forward and to have a judge decide if there's enough merit to warrant a decryption of the recording.
Unfortunately, That doesn't work.
Police officers, supervisors, and internal affairs often need to refer back to recording when making or reviewing police reports. Body cam and dash cam videos often need to be shared internally or externally. Also, many precincts take random samples of body camera footage and do spot check reviews to make sure officers are behaving in line with policy.
There are tons of people who need access to body cam footage on a regular basis.
40,000 officers (rounded up)
8 hours of full HD video can be stored in 10 gigs of storage
do this 365 days a year for every officer
S3 standard costs less than 3 cents per gigabyte to store per month
result: about 50 million dollars to store 8 hours of FHD video of every officer every day for a year
The NYPD anual budget is 5 billion dollars. Thus, storing all this video would cost about 1% of the budget. I've made generous roundings in favor of overestimating this cost, and in reality it would be much less.
I had a hard time finding the bandwidth costs, but since you've done the math already, I'd like to hear what you came up with.
But if they pull someone over, press the stop button that either has penalty or minimally should have mandatory 'shadow of a doubt' implications
Storage is so cheap I believe it's silly we don't have this. And top down to force local muni's who's citizens support police violence and biased over policing.
But unfortunately it doesn't even matter yet there are so many police who have clearly committed crimes/murder/manslaughter that was caught on camera without large/any consequences
Easily solvable. At a single press of a button they can temporarily turn off the camera for 15 minutes at a time. At a double press it is turned off for 30 minutes.
Now if a cop says the camera was turned off while doing official business, it was turned off on purpose and they no longer have an "excuse" that they forgot to turn it on.
"woops - accidentally shot someone for no reason. Better press save on the body camera so I can be prosecuted/sacked!"
Body cameras are not marketed to police departments as instruments that keep cops honest.
They're marketed as instruments that keep people from falsely accusing cops of crimes in court.
Cops just want body cameras that they can turn on only when they feel like they might get a raw deal, and that's exactly what they bought.
The problem is, as in so many cases, fundamentally about power. Until police have less power (that is, less funding, fewer numbers, and a smaller scope of responsibilites), i fear these kinds of abuses are almost unavoidable.
Part if this is because many other social services are cannibalized either due to drops in tax revenue, or in order to fund the constantly bloating police budgets.
Part of the "defund" process (I know, very poorly named!) is to take both responsibility off police shoulders and $$$ out of police budgets and put those dollars into social response.
A great example are mental wellness response to psychotic breaks among homeless. Rather than having police have to deal with hours of interaction (and police report paperwork), send in qualified health workers, i.e., those that have been trained for years to deal with this rather than a rookie cop with 6 months at the academy.
This would prevent cops from having to handle all kinds of other stuff, especially situations where they are not at all qualified to handle.
Building a camp out in the desert somewhere where people like this can get three square meals and a bed would both be an improvement on their present situation and a total money saver once you take into account all the problems and waste of police/ambulance time that they cause. Even better if you extend it to drug addicts.
If the police are substandard it means we need to pay them more to get better quality applicants into the system.
We also need a better funded prison/drug rehab system so that police don't have to waste their time dealing with the sort of habitual offenders who should have been permanently removed from society a long time ago.
There's no indication that funding is an actual problem that a lot of these "bad" departments face. Teachers regularly have to buy their own supplies for their classrooms. Have you ever heard of a cop needing pay out of their own pocket for ammo for their service weapon, gas for their patrol car, or batteries for their radios?
So it's natural such communities would want less money to go to police, which they probably see as victimizing a community, putting people in jail for low-level drug crimes and messing with people's jobs and livelihood through bail/fines, and more money to go to schools, which they see as helping a community and providing beneficial services.
Source: Chicago resident who has filed complaints
But the problem here isn't one that we can solve with tech alone. It's cultural to the institution of policing.
It's not just culture, it's the police unions as well. Any new tech (like auto-recording when the weapon is drawn) generally has to have union approval. Unions are frequently resistant to these kinds of changes.
That, and also police agencies in general are pretty much the exact opposite of high-tech. The younger officers probably embrace technology having grown up on it, but a lot of the more senior people are wary of anything technological and see it as just another hindrance to their job. These are not people who sit in front of computers all day like we do.
It shouldn't surprise you that few people will choose monitoring beyond what's legally required.
This has already been around for a few years https://www.axon.com/products/axon-signal-sidearm, not sure about adoption numbers though
Exactly what is needed.
> CBS 2 obtained data on more than 340,000 of those stops between the start of 2018 — the first full year all patrol officers had body cameras — and June 30, 2020.
> More than 62,000 stops during that period didn't have body camera video, the data showed.
> About half of the interactions that weren’t recorded involved police officers who are not required by policy to wear body cameras, including those on specialized teams.
> In order to find out how many stops were potential policy violations, CBS 2 isolated stops made by cops who would normally wear body cameras. It shows about 34,000 stops — roughly 10 percent — were made by officers not assigned to gang, gun or saturation teams.
If only there was some sort of sign that these people can't be trusted.
This is educational if you are interested in leveling up your thinking on it https://static1.squarespace.com/static/59ead8f9692ebee25b72f...
The real issue is that even when police impropriety is discovered, with mountains of evidence to support it, oversight bodies have no ability to censure the officers involved.
In Seattle, for example, the civilian oversight office offers non-binding disciplinary suggestions to the only body that can discipline police officers - their union. Unsurprisingly, the union takes those non-binding suggestions, and puts them right into the paper shredder. On the county level, until quite recently, the oversight organization couldn't even subpoena records from the sheriff's department - it would ask the department to turn over records, and the department would kindly tell them to go pound sand.
The only other form of oversight is raising a criminal case against the officer involved. Because of the discretionary nature of prosecution in this country, and because of a huge conflict of interest, where 99% of the time, prosecutors work in tandem with the police, prosecutions are frequently sabotaged for political reasons. (See the Breonna Taylor indictment - where the prosecutor deliberately sabotaged the case he presented to the grand jury.)
And on top of that, the bar for a criminal conviction of a police officer is astronomically high.
No amount of body camera technology is going to fix either of those three problems.
Yes we know they’re bad/unethical and a problem for Americans. But is this really something that “gratifies one’s intellectual curiosity”?
Isn’t it just flamebait now?
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/bn5a55/city-of-silence-11...
edit Will add context. Police oversight will always be a totally unbalanced fight for power. Police obviously do not want their behavior analyzed because of the obvious and frequent abuse of that power. For some reason, lots of america believes that being a police officer should come with total unchecked power amongst their communities - even so much as scrutinizing their use of excessive force has become a politicized nightmare.
So no, it is in no way surprising that police oversight is garbage and continues to give police easy outs.