Beyond failing to satisfy transparency concerns, police body cameras also pose a massive risk to privacy and could support mass incarceration. In these ways, cameras are not merely a distraction from the police accountability movements underlying aims, but could actively set it back. First, body cameras are oriented not toward police officers, but rather toward the public. Nor are they particularly focused. Rather than specifically capture footage of people involved in police encounters, body cameras monitor anyone within their field of vision, without the individual basis for suspicion constitutionally required to justify a police search. The presidents body camera proposal would ultimately expand government surveillance of people suspected of no crime, without doing much to check or balance police abuses. By extending surveillance, cameras could also fuel mass incarceration. Cameras could capture footage used against defendants in criminal trials - either where the footage depicts criminal acts, like jaywalking or selling loose cigarettes, or where it merely supports suspicion of potential crime, justifying subsequent stops and searches that would otherwise be illegal. truth-out.org/opinion/item/28357-police-violence-body-cams-are-no-solution
Posted on: Wed, 07 Jan 2015 23:41:16 +0000
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