Salt Lake City Police To Wear Camera Glasses 307
Psychotic_Wrath writes "The Salt Lake Police department will be much more transparent with their law enforcement. A program is being rolled out to require officers wear glasses equipped with a camera to record what they see. Of course, there are several officers opposed to this idea, who will resist the change. One of the biggest shockers to me is that the police chief is in strong support of this measure: 'If Chief Burbank gets his way, these tiny, weightless cameras will soon be on every police officer in the state.' With all the opposition of police officers being recorded by citizens that we are seeing throughout the country, it is quite a surprise that they would make a move like this. The officers would wear them when they are investigating crime scenes, serving warrants, and during patrols. Suddenly Utah isn't looking like such a bad place to be. Now we just need to hope other states and departments would follow suit. It sure will be nice when there is video evidence to show the real story."
Re:Weightless cameras? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:The devil is in the details (Score:5, Informative)
For the sake of argument, let's assume that everyone in the Salt Lake PD gets a camera.
Now the question becomes: who gets to review the footage and for what reason.
Anyone who has a subpoena from a court, either because they are charged with an offense, or because they have a civil suit against the police. This is exactly how it works with any other evidence collected by the police. Was this supposed to be a hard question?
Re:Recording avialability (Score:2, Informative)
I don't know the answer but I would guess that more often than not, when its you or I in the courtroom against a cop, the cop will usually be believed. shiny blue uniform, all that crapola.
juries are stupid. only idiots make it thru voire dire.
sorry, but our system finds the least thinking of our citizens and hires THEM for jury duty.
I would not want to be judged by my 'peers', truth be said.
Not necessarily true. At least not from an anecdotal case. I served on a jury recently on a misdemeanor DUI case. We heard evidence for 2 days, and ended up deliberating for another day and a half. All of the discussion was deliberative, was calm. We were given specifically in instructions that because the testimony came from a cop it didn't necessarily automatically make it correct. We were also specifically given instructions as to what to consider and what we were not allowed to consider as evidence, and every member on our jury could make that distinction clearly.
After that experience I have a lot more faith in the criminal justice system, at least in San Francisco...
Re:Recording avialability (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, you are stupid. You're ego just demands
Priceless.