
North Texas citizens organize to monitor police with video cameras - appleflaxen
http://www.nbcdfw.com/news/local/Arlington-Residents-Police-the-Police-267423681.html
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ndarilek
I have a hard time swallowing police department rhetoric in these situations.
The officer has a gun, and the unfortunate power to make "extra-legal"
killings with it. They're safe. If they irresponsibly use that gun in an
unsafe manner, like all the drunken NYPD officers who shoot people[0], then it
absolutely is our or someone's responsibility to take matters into our own
hands and monitor ourselves until we see that accountability. Relying on
internal affairs/review commissions to provide that is a broken model.

Also, I know folks doing this locally, and have watched officers request that
filmers stand at a safe distance. It's interesting to me how often "safe
distance" corresponds with a) somewhere with a shitty view far away and b) a
position where the filmer is significantly further away than a number of
pedestrians or gawkers whose "safety" presumably isn't in dispute. I have good
friends who were arrested for nothing more than filming, and they were often
given confusing and contradictory orders by an officer who obviously felt he
had the immediate situation well enough in hand to direct most of his
attention ordering the filmer around. It happened almost 2 years ago, no
charges were filed, and if this was a legitimate concern then I'd really like
to see some obstruction charges brought in the several local cases I've seen
of citizens arrested for filming.

I do agree that some of these groups' strategies are a bit busted. I'm
familiar with the Peaceful Streets Project here in Austin, and sometimes the
ragey/personal rhetoric got a bit overpowering. Then again, cops kill people,
often under suspicious circumstances, and get away with it. Perhaps it is time
for a bit of rage, and to make it personal.

0\. [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/05/01/brendan-conin-
nypd-...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/05/01/brendan-conin-nypd-
shooting-pelham-drunk_n_5247504.htm)

~~~
netcan
I don't think reality is as clear cut as that. There is genuine complexity.
Being a cop is legitimately dangerous, gun or no gun. A gun isn't an off
switch. People can confront an armed cop and shooting doesn't always stop
them.

There are also all sorts of rules that are learned on the job and aren't not
in any manual. Ways for maintaining control and authority mostly. Many of
these practices are unsanctioned and unofficial, but still essential for being
able to do the job. Some things are both crucial and illegal.

Cops usually feel like when they get busted for being arrogant, bullying or
outright violence that they are are victims of these situations. They do what
everyone does, what has to be done for policing to be viable. Those pencil
pushers with their removed perspective are making judgments about their
irrelevant rules being broken.

They are under stress. Violence is a part of their days. Most of the people
they deal with are lowlifes, lyres, cheaters. There is real stress. Real
danger

That said, a lot of these practices aren't benign and they aren't inevitable.
The police does genuinely attract many problematic people and it makes other.
They get used to defending their authority and meet challenges to it with
extreme responses. They develop a cops & robbers, us & them worldview that
becomes their reality. More specifically cops, criminals and naive spectators,
citizens & bureaucrats.

They develop a bullying mannerism.

Police manage to do their jobs without guns at all in many places. They deal
with violent crime just like cops in the states. I'm not saying this should be
adopted by US department, but is proof that there are other ways of doing
things.

I think lights good for the paradigm. But, whatever that light reveals needs
to be dealt with. Maybe police modus operandi needs to changed. But, maybe the
rulebook needs to change too. It can be dangerous trying to enforce the
official rulebook after long periods where it has only been enforced
selectively. Maybe the official way of doing things doesn't work.

That said, this following cops around only plays to the problem paradigm. It's
harassment, like what paparazzi do. It's belligerent. Maybe it's valuable as a
protest, but it isn't as solution.

What I think should happen in law enforcement is that everything should be
recorded. Every interrogation. Every arrest. Every time a cop pulls you over.
This is all evidence and it should be part of every booking.

Hopefully that will make the need for this sort of thing go away.

~~~
omgtehblackbloc
_Being a cop is legitimately dangerous_

Not really, no. It's just not that dangerous. We imagine it must be dangerous,
and so do cops themselves. But you're a lot more likely to be killed as a
garbage collector or airline pilot, or a construction worker, or plenty of
other jobs.

It's like with the "war on terror". The fear of danger is much more powerful
than the danger itself. And like with terrorism, the fear is actively promoted
for political reasons.

 _They do what everyone does, what has to be done for policing to be viable._

That seems like an argument against the department as a whole, not a
justification for an individual's abuse.

 _Most of the people they deal with are lowlifes, lyres, cheaters._

Most of the people they deal with are ordinary innocent civilians whom they
assume are "lowlifes" because they have been trained and conditioned to.

 _That said, this following cops around only plays to the problem paradigm. It
's harassment, like what paparazzi do. It's belligerent. Maybe it's valuable
as a protest, but it isn't as solution._

It is belligerent, and it is harassment, and it is protest. And that's the
point. People with power do not voluntarily stop abusing it. They continue
until met with resistance - until they are forced to stop.

Unfortunately it's effectively suicide to physically force the cops to stop,
but we should do everything we can short of that to stand up against them.
Standing up against the cops sets an example for others that we don't need to
fear them, that they don't deserve respect and deference, and that we can do
something directly to stop their abuse.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Oh for pity's sake, follow a cop around some Saturday night downtown, before
lecturing us on what a soft life a cop's job is. Deal with the belligerent
drunks, entitled rich boys, teenagers with too much car and no sense. Enter a
store that gave off a silent alarm, in the dark, all by yourself and tell me
what a walk in the park it is.

"Stand up against them"? See how lovely a world it is without them - what
comes next is very much worse than what you're complaining about.

Cops deserve respect and deference, if only because they stand for public
order and that deserves it.

~~~
parfe
Pizza delivery guys have a far more dangerous job than police. Drive to a
location chosen by a stranger who knows you will show up with cash, food, and
a car which you will willingly exit. And all in 30 minutes or less. And they
deal with the same types of obnoxious people as police, who you think deserve
automatic respect for it.

Policing doesn't crack the top 10 BLS list of most dangerous jobs.
[http://www.forbes.com/sites/jacquelynsmith/2013/08/22/americ...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/jacquelynsmith/2013/08/22/americas-10-deadliest-
jobs-2/)

~~~
MrBuddyCasino
> 3\. Aircraft pilot and flight engineers This was very much unexpected.

~~~
parfe
[http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/17/opinion/The-Dangers-of-
Pri...](http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/17/opinion/The-Dangers-of-Private-
Planes.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss&_r=0)

An op-ed I randomly came across today regarding the topic.

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sarciszewski
Personally, I agree with what they are doing (fundamentally), but they could
probably do with a better strategy for how they go about doing it. If they
continue this pattern, and something horrible does happen, the department
could say, "Well, this group has a history of endangering officers' safety"
and a lot of people would swallow that pill without further examination, thus
defeating the purpose of what they are doing.

~~~
DamnYuppie
I agree I am for what they are doing but they shouldn't do it in away that
endangers the officer or themselves.

Now if only we could get people to follow around our Senators and Congress men
and catalog everything they are doing that would be great.

~~~
sarciszewski
I had an idea along these lines... maybe I'll submit it to HN ;)

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jqm
Maybe the police are more concerned about being filmed napping in the back of
a parking lot (while ostensibly radar gunning for speeders) and less concerned
about being filmed brutalizing and shooting innocent people.

While both of these types of events occur sometimes, the second type is
probably fairly rare and the first type probably much more common.

Maybe the idea is that if police think they are being watched they will act in
a more accountable fashion. I don't see this being a bad thing at all.

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AlisdairSH
Too bad the PD won't have their officers wear cameras while on duty. That
would resolve the issue without the distraction of somebody following the
office around all day.

~~~
x1798DE
Not really, because then the police have the control over the cameras. This
officer in Albuquerque [1] was wearing a lapel cam in 3 separate serious
incidents, after two of which he was accused of using excessive force and
during the third incident he shot and killed a 19-year-old girl. During all
three incidents his camera "died" before anything serious started happening.

They just learn where the wires are that keeps it running and they pull them
out, then reconnect them when they're doing normal stuff. The same thing keeps
coming up with dashcams, too. The dashcam footage gets "lost", etc. Maybe one
day we'll have technologies and policies that don't allow officers to mess
with them, but for the foreseeable future we're the ones who have to be
vigilant.

~~~
stephencanon
Easily addressable — make officers personally liable (as private citizens) for
any actions that are not recorded, and cameras will suddenly become a whole
lot more reliable.

~~~
x1798DE
I would love that _so much_ , but public choice theory makes it clear that
that is anything but the easy solution. I'm fully and 100% in favor of that
idea though.

~~~
zo1
" _I 'm fully and 100% in favor of that idea though._" Good, then vote on it!
I'm sure a drop in the media-influenced pond will make a difference...

Biggest, lie, ever told.

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logfromblammo
If you are interested in this sort of thing, you might want to look up
_CopBlock_ or _Photography Is Not A Crime_. If you can tolerate the foil-
hattery, this sort of effort also appears periodically on _Prison Planet_. And
if you ever watched the television show COPS and wondered what it would look
like if the footage were filmed from the suspect's perspective, just hit
_LiveLeak_ , _Vimeo_ , or _YouTube_ and search for _" checkpoint videos"_.

The increasing prevalence of cameras in mobile phones, wearable action cameras
such as _GoPro_ brand devices, and over-the-air footage-uploading services
such as _Bambuser_ have really jolted this new niche of police brutality porn.
Further court rulings, such as _Glik v. Cunniffe_ , that reinforced a person's
right to record police in public while performing their official duties, have
only emboldened crusaders against the corruption behind the thin blue line.

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Cthulhu_
It seems the police is having trust issues from the people there; with stories
of cops beating up people, I'm not surprised either. This is a good
initiative, but to be honest I think it should come from the police precincts
themselves. I've read that some police forces use helmet cams, that's a good
move - as long as they're mandatory and all footage is checked by an internal
affairs department. If someone turns off the camera, that's suspicious.

tl;dr, police should work at regaining trust and respect themselves. Them not
beating up people following them with a camera is a good first step.

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islon
So finally we found a use for google glass.

~~~
msane
Absolutely. Police should have a lapel camera or a Glass like camera rolling
at all times. Prevents brutality and (more prevalent) false claims of thereof.

~~~
ZoFreX
Some departments do already. I think there's a technical glitch though: they
seem to malfunction or delete their data whenever the cop does something
illegal.

~~~
wwweston
Perhaps police department payroll/funding systems should also malfunction
during periods video recorders do.

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mcv
How come everybody in north Texas is totally reasonable all of a sudden?
People want to film the police but don't hate them, and the police is totally
fine with it, but asks them to do so from a safe distance without distracting
the police officers.

~~~
exelius
As long as the people doing the recording are non-threatening white hipsters,
this policy works fine. But I guarantee some poor black or hispanic kid is
going to get shot because a jumpy cop thinks the camera is a gun, and will
likely get off with a minor suspension because the justice system views
officers as above the law.

~~~
driverdan
You immediately had to make it racial despite the fact that one of the guys
recording is hispanic (Jose)?

~~~
exelius
Latent racism (e.g. white cops being nervous around black teenagers) is a huge
problem in police work. Combine that with the kind of outright racism, the
good old boy networks you see in rural Texas and the sense of "respect mah
authoritah" many cops give off and I can easily see how someone would get
shot.

~~~
awj
> the good old boy networks you see in rural Texas

Arlington, a city of 370k smack between Dallas and Fort Worth is rural?

So the cops will get jumpy and start shooting once a hispanic kid shows up
(which, one of them was) because they're good old boys from rural Texas (which
Arlington isn't) should we keep digging or would you like to admit that your
suppositions don't really have a foundation here?

~~~
exelius
Arlington isn't exactly "rural", but most of the town is definitely not what
most people would call "urban". Dallas has a lot of suburbs that are similar;
they're basically subdivisions full of 5,000 sq ft houses built on cheap farm
land. Also, being Texas, there's a pretty good chance that anyone you
encounter is armed, which makes the cops a lot more cautious.

I'm not saying people shouldn't videotape the cops, but that they should
continue to do so at their own risk.

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izzydata
When I first read the title I wouldn't have thought people were actually going
around following officers. I understand their point, but I also agree that
isn't the right way to do it. You shouldn't be looking for trouble, you should
just film it if it happens near you. Assuming you get enough people to do
something like this then there would be enough people on the road to not have
to follow cops around.

If the same number of people in the US had dashcams as people do in Russia due
to insurance scams I think there would be enough people recording to catch
these kinds of things at random encounters.

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danbruc
WtF?!? This reduces reasons to have a police to absurdity. And at best it will
make some of the symptoms go away but not fix the root problem.

------
andyzweb
sousveillance to maintain the balance

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god_bless_texas
They need a branding program, because Cop Block sounds way too much like Cock
Block.

Just what we need, vigilante justice.

~~~
Tloewald
When taking pictures of something becomes "vigilante justice" then we're in
the world of newspeak.

Reminds me of when, in the wake of 9/11, the Justice Department released a
list of domestic terror organizations that included environmental activists
who had never hurt anyone.

