Gems? Not in my opinion.
First he mentions dash cams. Did the Brown incident happen right in front of the police car? If it happened to the side, the dash cam isn’t going to pick it up. The dept. I worked for got cameras put in the cars. The company that installed them screwed them all up and they eventually had to be sent back one by one to be fixed. Then the computers that downloaded all the information were insufficient for the cause and that created all kinds of problems. Point is, a dash cam only picks up things to the front of the car.
More departments are going to cameras that are directly placed on the officer. What the cost is I don’t know.
Then he goes on about the military style clothing. Most of that is worn by SWAT. Do they wear other colors than camo? Yes. We had black, I’ve seen blue. Could they wear another color? I suppose. Here’s the point. A pair of patrol pants cost me about $100 bucks. A pair of BDU pants cost about $30. Patrol pants don’t hold up as well as BDU’s. Same for the shirts. I doubt that SWAT is going to completely go away in America. I think changes have to be made though.
But I think the biggest thing about this article is comparing the police in Germany (also mentioning England and Wales) to the police here. Do we want to become a European socialist state so we can have lower crime? What are the gun laws in Germany? From what I’ve read good luck trying to have a gun there, self-defense evidently is not a valid reason to own a gun.
How many German cops are killed in the line of duty per year? I could find no numbers on that. I did find stats on homicides. In Germany one year (don’t remember which) there were about 660. Same year in the U.S. there were over 14,000. Violent crimes in America way outnumber violent crime in Germany as well.
Two very different countries.
Here’s a “gem.” “Which brings us back to the death of Michael Brown. Let’s assume for the sake of argument that everything the police say about this incident is correct. In that case, whether or not the fatal shooting of Mr Brown is a crime, it’s certainly a mistake. When an unarmed shoplifter* in T-shirt and shorts with a five-buck cigar box in one hand has to be shot dead, you’re doing it wrong.”
Is Steyn discounting the possibility of Brown attacking the officer in the car, trying to take his gun, etc.? If that’s the way it happened I don’t think the officer ‘did it wrong.’
It appears he is, and if the reports I heard days ago, that Brown was fighting the officer in the officer's own squad car, are true, then Steyn is just wrong.
Can't be that high. In Mongolia, they put cameras on their pet eagles.
GoPro cameras run $200-$400 a camera. There are other types slightly cheaper. It’s a good idea for both sides.