Post auditing is obviously not taken seriously by these departments, and Flock could build tools to do this out of the box (identify weird search patterns) if they wanted to.
Edit -- I see Flock does have some audit tools, https://www.flocksafety.com/trust/compliance-tools. If those work as they should, it is more on PDs to use them properly.
I think that I agree to a large degree, but with the caveat that elected sheriffs that don't serve their communities get voted out. Incoming elected sheriffs know well why their predecessors lost their seat. In theory, but to a much lesser degree, this should also apply to commissioned LEO, but often in large municipalities there's only one pool you can pull candidates from.
This isn't perfect, but it does largely function in places with sane government/electorate. Also it kind of just follows that in such cases abuse of power (and who it is abused against) is at the direction of voters.
These abuses happen because at some level, we want them to. Just not to us.
Aside: I would like to see more departments where the boss of cops is not just an appointment by politicians, but an elected position accountable to voters and not controlled by other political office.
If you have a system that isn't designed around accountability in a place like a police department, you won't get accountability, and you will get institutionalized poor behavior. It's one of the reasons that state police organizations are usually considered more "professional" or better disciplined than most local departments.
Bureaucracy and size reduces random dumbass employee use of their discretion. People look the other way less often when there is a record of malfesance right in front of them. You don't need to be "pro" or "against" police to demand accountability.
In Toronto, police are pressured into gang-like conformity to support their bad apples - from last week:
> A Crown attorney is being accused of suggesting a police witness should have provided false evidence while testifying in court.
> According to the Toronto Star, a heated interaction occurred in the hallway of a Toronto courthouse earlier this year, between Crown attorney Marnie Goldenberg and Constable Edin Hasanbasic of the Toronto Police Service.
> Hasanbasic had been called as a witness in the case of a man accused of hitting a different officer with his motorcycle, with the intent of causing harm.
> Hasanbasic had just told the court that the officer who was struck by the motorcycle “seemed like he was fine” after the incident.
> Goldenberg, according to Hasanbasic’s notes about the encounter, allegedly got angry about his testimony, because it went against the Crown’s case.
> “What am I supposed to do? Lie?” Hasanbasic recalls saying.
> The attorney allegedly responded by saying, “We protect our own.”
Not really, something definitely should be done to correct it but some people have this notion that throwing out the baby with the bath water is and starting over from scratch is the correct action. If anything that will just create new problems and make the ability to hide misdeeds even easier.