Is it a tough job? You bet. Are they unfairly vilified? Not a chance: police should be held to a higher moral standard than the general public, as they're the ones enforcing it.
The best part of them wearing a GoPro is that everyone wins: civilians get to feel much safer, and police get to show that they're not as bad as they're made out to be.
The issue arises when the cops have that introduced, and accusations of excess force drop dramatically... that sort of shows that yes, they are as bad as they're made out to be...
I largely agree, but to act as a devil's advocate, what about cases when a police officer needs to resort to more heavy-handed methods when their life is in danger? In a dangerous area, a camera cannot capture the entire environment that a police officer must take in, contextual clues to a possibly dangerous situation drawn from a career of near brushes with disaster. So you might see corner cases where a police officer either (a) disregards their gut feeling to exercise caution and speed when apprehending a suspect because they fear being captured on camera, and the officer is injured as a result, or (b) follows their gut feeling, exercises due caution and speed, perhaps is rough on a criminal who has violent intent, and then must allow the criminal to go free even if that caution was necessary, because the jury was more sympathetic to the video of so-called "brutality" than they were to the officer's justifiable mental model of the situation, which cannot be presented so elegantly.
Would this system work for less dangerous areas? Probably. For more dangerous areas, I wouldn't want to be a police officer and have this forced upon me. Because corner cases here can be deadly.
What if the officer is being filmed by a cellphone camera? There is an even greater chance of the incident being taken out of context. Especially if the police cameras are in a standard location for most officers (say pen pocket), then that fact can be used extensively and easily in video analysis.
Secondly, I very very rarely here of juries being "too hard" on police. The current culture is that most police can't be touch even if everyone knows they did it AND has evidence. In a lot of cases, they are untouchable unless their peers want to throw them under the bus or a separate, usually federal service looks into the matter.
There are people that, while wearing a camera in a dangerous situation, can remain calm, cool, and collected. If anything, that should be one of the first requirements of becoming a cop, not an argument against cameras.
> I largely agree, but to act as a devil's advocate, what about cases when a police officer needs to resort to more heavy-handed methods when their life is in danger?
In those cases the safest thing for the police to do is to withdraw to a safe location and wait for backup, which is what they're supposed to do. Engaging in the sort of aggressive behavior that could be "mischaracterized" as police brutality in response to a potentially dangerous situation only serves to escalate the situation and make it even more dangerous.
>> cases when a police officer needs to resort to more heavy-handed methods when their life is in danger
The accused have a moral right to have a jury decide what was appropriate for the officer to do in a given situation. Keeping the data private by its nature detracts from the goal of having a fair judicial system.
NB: to your read, the laws may need to be adjusted to allow officers to legally be more brutal to people who have not been convicted of crimes. That does not change the fact that police work should be able to be done in the light. Nobody benefits when police to feel like they don't have to become criminals to do their jobs.
And the current system is deadly, for police officers and civilians. I highly doubt those corner cases you're discussing will create more violence than already exists, in my opinion.
The proportion of bad cops to good cops is probably about the same as the proportion of pervert sexist programmers who like to sexually harass their female coworkers to non-perverted programmers. If your only exposure to either profession is what you see online, you'll have a dim view of both professions.
It's true that there is a large number of bad cops--but that's simply because there are a lot cops. Most cops hold themselves to a higher standard, but never show up in the news because it's not newsworthy when a cop does his job.
Sorry, but I don't think this is even remotely true. Cops overwhelmingly don't testify against other cops. And, in my book, cops that put up the blue wall of silence are bad cops. Not as bad as the cop they're defending -- I don't mean to equate them -- but still bad.
While something like that may exist in some engineering-heavy workplaces (I've heard stories but never seen it), it's nowhere near as common or institutionalized.
It would also be a drop in spurious complaints which have no merit. If there is recorded evidence, and the potential complainant knows that exists, then they are less likely to make things up.
Many of the people who deal with police on a frequent basis are skilled liars. They know how to stymie investigations by tying the officers up in paperwork. Having video evidence would prevent spurious complaints.
It will also make people less stressed when dealing with cops (as they know the cop will behave well), and it will discourage people from resisting arrest / attacking the police, because they know they'll be caught on camera.
The police are a case of when it goes wrong, it goes REALLY wrong. Instagram down? Not a big deal. Space shuttle software bug? Possible death, explosions and millions of dollars of destruction. The two software systems are developed very differently as a result.
... then maybe people will realise how unfairly vilified the police are, and what a tough job it actually is.
You would think police departments would jump at the opportunity to wear cameras for this very reason, but they have routinely fought it.
A town I lived in the cops fought dash cams for a long time saying they couldn't get enough money to install them. Finally the state supreme court stepped up and started throwing out all DUIs without dash cams and amazingly all squad cars had them installed very quickly.
