Won't matter if we put cameras all over the place. Guy who assaulted the biker gets absolutely nothing despite being on film.

It'll be sort of like statements to the police, they will always be used to portray the civilian in the worst possible light, and will very rarely be used to exonerate anyone.

Well, the biker guy did get 65k from the city and he did get the charges against him dropped. Without the camera he's convicted of assaulting a police officer.

I suppose I was thinking more about cop-carried cameras, like their cruiser dash-cams or those operated by local law enforcement personnel. Those have a nasty tendency to malfunction at opportune times or disappear.

If you're talking about just lots of citizens putting up their own cameras and filming what they can, then I agree that some good may come of it (although it's still an uphill battle, as evidenced by the lack of criminal penalties for the officer who assaulted the bike rider).

DBJ, how would you feel about having a camera in your uniform that recorded everything you do all day?

Could save your ass in a he said/she said situation no?

*Not that I think DBJ's opinion would be universal as he's far better than the average cop and infinitely better than a dirty cop

This. If every cop acted like DBJ portrays himself here, and every prosecutor acted completely opposed to Jman's "Relax, it'll get pled down, baby" motto, there would be nothing to go in these types of threads.

Which would be ideal.

They make the clip on chest cameras. The problem with them is that they're going to come off/break/get covered in the situations you really need them most, such as fights, foot pursuits etc.

I dunno maybe make the clip stronger?

Meh, I'm not much into the manufacturing business. You do it.

This is a market problem. There is no incentive to make the clip stronger because the user of the clip (the police) don't want a stronger clip. If they wanted a stronger clip, it would be made.

We can go further and apply revealed preferences theory to deduce that the police don't want to be subject to scrutiny

Of course cops don't want to be constantly under surveillance. Would any of you want a camera trained on your desk all day?

The prob isn't that cops are per se bad, it's that there are no market forces available to check bad police behavior. If my barber gives me a bad haircut I find a new barber. If my cop sucks...well I'm more or less stuck with him.

Somebody should invent a camera that automatically turns on when the cop draws his gun/handcuffs/baton/etc.

You truly feel that in this specific situation the user of the clip is the front line officer?

In other words, if you produced this product, your marketing campaign would be aimed at front line law enforcement?

I know where it would most likely be aimed, and I doubt it would be aimed at the street officer, in the way Blackhawk and Galco market to street cops.

Dbl, if I'm understanding you right (and perhaps I'm not, it sounds like you need to distinguish between the user of a product and the beneficiary. The public would be the beneficiary, but the cops would be the ones paying for the clips and it's the cops you have to get to sign off on them.

In this example I am not differentiating between officers on the street and the management of the police. If we were doing that, we would have to include the influence of the union and any politics they choose to play with it. So yes, we are back to this being something that the officers that have nothing to hide would be for and the ones that don't want to be recorded would be against. I am sure form your posting that you are an officer that would welcome being recorded. I think there is either a significant minority or an majority (I don't know which, there isn't much difference between 45% and 55%) that would not want the inconvenience of always being recorded.