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Comment by NickC25 | Hacker News Reader

>Regardless of whether some of the time, a police department is full of bad apples and concealing or destroying body-cam footage

Make it a felony to conceal or destroy body cam footage.

Also, make it so that if a cop is accused of violating rights or involved in foul play, and their body cam "suddenly malfunctioned or were turned off or was left in the car" , a default judgement is given against the officer in question.

Make it as ubiquitous to cops as a parachute is for someone who goes skydiving. This must be enforced as harshly as possible. Cops aren't operating on their own dime.

If I'm a cop and the choice is leave my camera on or lose my job, my union membership, my retirement, my pension, and also face serious jail time, I'm leaving my camera on every time.

The watchers MUST watch the watchmen, and the watchmen must have no expectations of privacy while on duty or being paid by the public.

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While I agree with what you say for the most part, it's not a question of "what rules can we add on top of the existing structure?". Which is why simply adding bodycams has been so ineffective. We're only really going to be safe from cops by essentially nuking the entire system and starting over.

The core issue is that cops are far less vulnerable to prosecution or even non-legal accountability than almost any other citizens. Largely this is due to police unions. In addition to the structural inertia, there's cultural inertia - cops don't want to hold each other accountable either.

This is why people talk about reforming police from the ground up. It's actually easier than "fixing" the current system, which actively fights against accountability.

There one but 1 reform that will do the most... Putting an end to the moronic judicial created doctrine of "Qualified Immunity"

it is very sad that we had the opportunity to do so in 2020, with both Democrat and Republican Support, but that opportunity was wasted by using that political interia and capital on the moronic "De fund the police" mantra's where by the new status quo seems to be "Well if the police act like criminals lets to all be criminals and never arrest anyone for anything"....

"Qualified Immunity" is one of the Root Causes of the policing problem, and it needs to end

> Make it a felony to conceal or destroy body cam footage.

Destroying evidence of a crime is already a felony.

Conceal is a tricky one though as depending on placement the camera could definitely be obscured by normal day to day action (like a tussle). But again, if it can shown the action was deliberate, it’d be an action in furtherance of a crime.

The suggestion I've seen is to legislate changing the presumption such that if body camera footage is missing then it should be presumed to be foul play unless the police department can show evidence otherwise.

> Make it a felony to conceal or destroy body cam footage.

You mean it's not a felony to destroy evidence?

In theory, it is. In practice, prosecutors are very reluctant to go after cops for such type of crimes, or for any others that relate to their professional functions - perjury, excessive force, evidence tampering, violating disclosure rules, unlawful searches, etc. Plus, there's qualified immunity thing, which makes it very hard to gain a successful conviction even if the prosecutor is willing. It'll take a big SCOTUS decision dismantling that construct to start seeing any change there, and that may take a long while to happen.

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