Remember that the police have far more resources available. Once someone demonstrates that they're actually a threat, the police still have the option of applying superior force but they have far more options for controlling when and where that happens and ensuring that innocent bystanders aren't needlessly exposed.
One example where the U.S. seems to be getting it right is high-speed chases, which seem to be becoming less common because it's not worth the safety risks in an urban environment and modern tech + resources make it unlikely that anyone can actually escape for that long. Sure, that'd make for a crappy movie but it's safer for everyone involved.
"One example where the U.S. seems to be getting it right is high-speed chases"
If true, that may be because they are usually video recorded by news channels. If a civilian is injured during the chase, there's lots of dramatic footage for the prosecution lawyer to show the jury, before asking the officers in charge to answer under oath why they made the decisions they made.
Sounds like pretty strong evidence in favor of mandatory police body-worn cameras, along with a right of citizens who are on the receiving end of a police encounter to obtain and review the footage. There's always the worry that the camera would be 'accidentally' turned off by the police, or that the footage would be lost if it showed anything embarrassing to the police, so to make them effective, you probably need a change in the law such that any discrepancy between the officer's version of events and the citizens is AUTOMATICALLY decided by judge/ jury in favor of the citizen if the 'mandatory' video footage is for some reason unavailable.
While I favor body cameras, I don't think your reasoning here holds up. Even if we assume cops only favor their own safety and power, we would expect to see this policy around high speed chases - they are dangerous for the cops as well.
"They are dangerous for the cops as well" - That's true..but hasn't it always been true? Car speeds haven't meaningfully changed in the last 40-50 years, so it's likely that the danger to civilians and police hasn't particularly changed either. So, if it's true that police agencies are encouraging less dangerous means of achieving the same ends, why now and not before? The change suggests some other factor, and my supposition is that widespread video footage of these chases may have played a role.
Eh, maybe. I think decisions need less explanation when they're the right one. Why now? Maybe they just figured it out. Hanlon's razer, &c.
If we need to explain "why now", that's still a question with your hypothesis - high speed chases have been dangerous for a long time, but they have also regularly been filmed for some while now.
"One example where the U.S. seems to be getting it right is high-speed chases"
If true, that may be because they are usually video recorded by news channels. If a civilian is injured during the chase, there's lots of dramatic footage for the prosecution lawyer to show the jury, before asking the officers in charge to answer under oath why they made the decisions they made.
Sounds like pretty strong evidence in favor of mandatory police body-worn cameras, along with a right of citizens who are on the receiving end of a police encounter to obtain and review the footage. There's always the worry that the camera would be 'accidentally' turned off by the police, or that the footage would be lost if it showed anything embarrassing to the police, so to make them effective, you probably need a change in the law such that any discrepancy between the officer's version of events and the citizens is AUTOMATICALLY decided by judge/ jury in favor of the citizen if the 'mandatory' video footage is for some reason unavailable.
I don't think automatically ruling in the civilian's favor is a good idea because as we all know, tech breaks sometimes. I'm quite certain the body cameras exceed the standard definition of durable goods but they, like any other complex electronics, are susceptible to shock, moisture, fatigue, etc. and can break. All it takes is a landmark case of cop vs. civilian where the camera legitimately broke but the cop was in the right yet cannot prove it and then their life is ruined if the case is automatically decided in the civilian's favor.
All it takes is a landmark case of cop vs. civilian where the camera legitimately broke but the cop was in the right yet cannot prove it and then their life is ruined if the case is automatically decided in the civilian's favor.
I think there's a middle ground somewhere between "toss the case because the bodycam footage went missing" and "lock up the cop and throw away the key"
Judge each person's criminal case on their own merits. If neither the civilian nor the cop can be proven to have committed a crime, they should both go free.
Civil cases, on the other hand, merely need to meet the standard of "a preponderance of evidence" to support the claim. A mysteriously malfunctioning camera ought to meet that standard, and thus be grounds for an award of damages due to misconduct. This cost will be borne by the police department (and thus the government it belongs to, and thus the public of that area) rather than by the individual officer. This will help encourage the department to keep their stuff in good working order and make sure their staff aren't deliberately disabling the cameras.
The absence of evidence is not the evidence of deliberate tampering. The tech is not flawless and this kind of outcome is really not fair to either side. The camera only shows 1 point of view and if for X reasons it is used to judge the officer or the civilian as the overwhelming evidence then it can have severe consequences for either or both sides if it does work or does not work.
Example: civilian makes grandiose claim that is untrue and that cannot be refuted due to the camera malfunctioning. Officer is punished.
Example: civilian makes legit claim that cannot be proven due to camera malfunctioning. Officer successfully convinced court that camera failed to work and it's nonfunctionality was not preventable due to outside circumstances. Officer is not punished and civilian does not receive justice.
Absence of evidence is evidence of tampering. It is not proof.
The popular phrase "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence" is wrong. Absence of evidence is evidence of absence. How strong that evidence is depends on just how much you'd expect to find evidence if the thing were actually true. For example, if you go looking in my garage for aliens, the absence of evidence is pretty compelling evidence for the absence of aliens in my garage, but it's extremely weak evidence for the absence of aliens in the universe.
When it comes to cameras, the question in how often they fail on their own compared to how likely tampering is, and any relevant context which might modify those basic probabilities. If the demonstrated MTBF is 10 years and your cameras are failing on average once every year then something is going on, for example.
Your mention about punishing the officer makes me wonder if you actually read my comment, though. I explicitly suggested that a camera malfunction should not be considered sufficient to clear the "beyond a reasonable doubt" bar for a criminal case, and that while it should work for a civil case, the cost there would not be borne by the officer.
Absence of evidence is evidence of tampering. It is not proof.
The popular phrase "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence" is wrong. Absence of evidence is evidence of absence.
When it comes to cameras, the question in how often they fail on their own compared to how likely tampering is, and any relevant context which might modify those basic probabilities. If the demonstrated mean time between failures is 10 years and your cameras are failing on average once every year then something is going on, for example.
Your mention about punishing the officer makes me wonder if you actually read my comment, though. I explicitly suggested that a camera malfunction should not be considered sufficient to clear the "beyond a reasonable doubt" bar for a criminal case, and that while it should work for a civil case, the cost there would not be borne by the officer.
The actual popular phrase is "the absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence" and that is NOT what I was referring to. The absence of evidence is still not evidence of tampering unless tampering can be proven. A hair fiber belonging to a suspect that is found at a crime scene is evidence that the suspect was there. A lack of a hair fiber of a suspect at a crime scene is not evidence that the suspect cleaned up their hair from the crime scene. Bleach on a floor at a crime scene is evidence of an attempt to clean it up. Does that make sense?
I'd argue that body cameras have not been around in wide circulation long enough to provide any meaningful data on their failure rates. Also I can safely assume they have some sort of warranty on them but that does not prevent a handful of defective ones from making their way into active use amongst law enforcement personnel.
Civil cases, on the other hand, merely need to meet the standard of "a preponderance of evidence" to support the claim. A mysteriously malfunctioning camera ought to meet that standard, and thus be grounds for an award of damages due to misconduct.
This is the passage I was replying to and you paraphrased another user's comment regarding a default judgment in favor of the civilian if the camera malfunctions. A malfunctioning camera does not necessarily prove a deliberate tampering and to hang an entire civil case judgment on that is not giving the losing side a fair shot at winning their case. The officer is employed by the department and a judgment born by the department in reference to the officer when the officer did not do anything wrong can have adverse consequences on their career and by extension, their life, far more than you are giving credit to.
Given that BWCs (body-worn cameras) weren't even significantly tested in the U.S. until 2012 and are still not what most people would agree is considered "widespread" then we can hardly conclude much of anything about their failure rates in active use.
Lack of a hair fiber is both evidence that the suspect was never there and evidence that the suspect was there and cleaned up his hair afterwards. How much weight it lends to each depends on context (i.e. if you have a lot of other evidence that he was there, then then cleaning theory is much more likely) but it does support both.
Look at it like this: beforehand, there were three possibilities: the suspect was never there, the suspect was there and left behind hair, or the suspect was there and cleaned up. (You might add more, like the suspect being bald, but the general approach is the same.) If you then do a thorough search for the suspect's hair and find none, that removes the "left behind hair" possibility, leaving you with the other two. The probability of each is increased compared to before. How much each one increases depends on the context.
As for civil cases, I don't really see the problem. All you need to show for a civil case is that your version of events is more than 50% likely to be true. Even if body cameras fail on their own with great frequency, the odds of one failing naturally right at the critical moment when an officer supposedly abused a civilian are extremely low.
I also don't see why we can't make good estimates of body camera reliability right now. They're not magic. They're just electronics, not fundamentally different from a GoPro or similar. How often do those fail? The rates should be much the same.
There should also be weight given to the nature of the failure, of course. If a capacitor exploded, it was probably "natural causes." If it was mysteriously smashed, with a tread pattern that matches the tires on the officer's squad car, that ought to be enough to win a civil suit. Other circumstances will vary, but I'd say the number of cases where you have a "mysterious failure" that really is a legitimate electronics failure will be low.
It's a fact of our justice system (and indeed any reasonable justice system) that if you murder somebody but there isn't any way to prove it, you go free.
How many cases have there been of the police taking lives of civilians who were in the right and can prove it but were given no chance? How many time does evidence and video have to be conveniently "misplaced"?
Likewise how many cases were there where civilians filed complaints against officers which ultimately led to demotions, terminations, otherwise good cops not being able to get promoted, etc.
I'm completely 100% for the body cameras and for transparency but I also understand that they shouldn't be the only evidence used to decide guilt or innocence and should not hold more weight over other pieces of evidence.
I should have clarified I'm assuming worst case scenario where a cop shoots a civilian and kills them. The camera malfunctioned so the cop couldn't prove that for X reasons the civilian was a deadly threat then the cop is charged with murder and automatically convicted due to the video evidence not being there to support their claim and due to the civilian automatically winning due to the previous poster's proposition.
Why would the cop's life be ruined? There are already way too many cases where police body cameras "mysteriously malfunction", often on multiple officers at once. There need to be repercussions for such behavior. This is just an extension of innocent until proven guilty. If cops want to make arrests, they should make sure their camera is working. They would never go out without a functioning gun, radio, or car.
One example where the U.S. seems to be getting it right is high-speed chases, which seem to be becoming less common because it's not worth the safety risks in an urban environment and modern tech + resources make it unlikely that anyone can actually escape for that long. Sure, that'd make for a crappy movie but it's safer for everyone involved.