Should North Olympic Peninsula Law Enforcement Officers Wear Video Cameras?
Today's PDN Peninsula Poll question is:
Seattle police will experiment with small video cameras on officers' uniforms to record their actions. Do you think North Olympic Peninsula law enforcement officers should wear such cams?
Number of votes cast: 486
Seattle police will experiment with small video cameras on officers' uniforms to record their actions. Do you think North Olympic Peninsula law enforcement officers should wear such cams?
Number of votes cast: 486
posted by Tom Harper at 9:52 AM
10 Comments:
Sounds like another grant funded opportunity, to me!
If that's the case, you know the City will go for it.
Privacy? Who cares? You know what they say: if you're not doing anything wrong, why should you care? Besides the reality that the constitution and laws seems to guarantee personal privacy, etc.
Despites that you're not doing anything wrong, even if questioned by the police, cuz, well, we're supposed to be presumed innocent until convicted by a jury of our peers, and all those nice phrases.
Remember "For the good of the State... " !?
Well, if they want to watch me picking my nose I guess that is okay with me.
A Seattle Times article on the subject...http://seattletimes.com/html/localnews/2023610513_spdbodycamerasxml.html
Egos aside, this is about police accountability, rather than surveillance of old guys and paranoid nobodys. Of particular interest is the drop in complaints, as well as use of force in the first place. Statistically at least, these cameras (like dash cams ) seem to lead to better behavior on the part of the public as well as that of the officer.
Back when I was attending the war protests on Lincoln often a goofy old shit got on me about taking pictures. I told him if he didn't want his picture taken that he shouldn't be out in public. He kept getting on me and I told him to fuck off.
Just to pose the question, when do we defend privacy rights?
Do we just give up the notions, once so important as to be the foundation of many laws, so that the actions of the few can be controlled?
I listened with interest to a recent story about Australia taking actions against anti-immunization groups because the government said immunizations were helpful in reducing disease, and they felt the anti-groups were convincing people not to get immunized.
Now, personally, I'm not anti-immunization. But, I can see the "slippery slope" of the acceptance of the position that "State" be able to prevent free speech on the grounds that it opposes a State program.
Obviously, who wants to get sick? Who wants to be the victim of a crime?
But, as has been said before, how many of our freedoms, and how much of our privacy do we give up as we buy into the "fear everything" messaging of the current machine? How much money, and how many laws are to be changed and enacted, until we finally will feel "safe" from every possible threat and occurance?
Does anyone think that the founders of this country, who made such a point of highlighting concerns about freedom and personal privacy as to write them into the constitution of the country, had no disease, or fear of government intervention and control over aspects of their lives?
Or, are we accepting that those things just don't matter to us, any more?
10:46 - I love how you string together non-sequiturs. It makes me want to gouge out my eyes.
5:45- Everyone needs a hobby. I guess gouging ones' eyes out can be one.
It can't hurt...
But will probably cost money.
We could probably sell the videos to the TV show 'cops'
So, because we fear that cops might do something wrong, we will allow all interactions with them to be video recorded, presumably so that we can sue them later. The purpose of the video recorders is not to record them doing a good job; it is there as "evidence" in case there are future problems.
So, why not video recorders on doctors? Dentists? Lawyers, architects and ships captains? Pharmacists and nurses?
You know about 200,000 people die in the US each year from preventable medical errors? By contrast, the cops kill around 500 people in the US each year.
Nurses? You know around 1.5 million are injured each year by errors involving prescription drugs?
So, let's just record everybody, all the time!
Yes, the video cameras will likely encourage everyone to behave better than they would behave if unrecorded.
Post a Comment
<< Home