Posted on 07/27/2015 9:33:24 AM PDT by donna
We’ll just disagree about what cameras accomplish.
We’re suppose to be a free people. We should serve and protect ourselves without the interference of government workers.
We vote for representatives to pass the laws we wish to live by and we hire cops to enforce those laws. Those cops must be of good character because they have desecration and power. But, they also must be tough, bossy and scary.
“Protectors” do their work for honor and all those other masculine reasons that make someone come to your aid when you call them. Any burdens that we can remove from their shoulders helps them do a good job and it is a kind thing to do for men who take risks in their jobs.
We should try to attract to the job, those protector types and skip the authoritarian wannabes.
We should also show them some mercy when they make a mistake.
But most cops I've been stopped by were thoroughly professional. And they also had me dead to rights. I've only gotten one traffic ticket in fifty years of driving. Even the county cop who gave me the ticket was polite.
There are 700,000 leos across the country. Some of them are going to bad. That hardly makes all of them out of control.
The trouble is, absent a specification of a duty to protect by statute, thanks to a recent SCOTUS decision, the only duty of police is to enforce the law. The profession now attracts folks who like enforcing, period, not protector types, almost by definition authoritarians.
A society's first line of defense is not the law but customs, traditions and moral values. These behavioral norms, mostly transmitted by example, word-of-mouth and religious teachings, represent a body of wisdom distilled over the ages through experience and trial and error. They include important thou-shalt-nots such as shalt not murder, shalt not steal, shalt not lie and cheat, but they also include all those courtesies one might call ladylike and gentlemanly conduct.Policemen and laws can never replace these restraints on personal conduct. At best, the police and criminal justice system are the last desperate line of defense for a civilized society. This failure to fully transmit value norms to subsequent generations represents another failing of the greatest generation.
- Walter E. Williams, Nov. 21, 2007
Did you even read the first link I posted?
A cop goes into a cemetary in the middle of the night and discharges his service weapon into a grave, then lies to a responding state trooper about it and the guy is still on the force?
It’s the “still on the force” part that I take issue with. Any rational person could look at this situation and maybe write it off as a situation where someone had a breakdown and should be shown some leniency. Should he still be in a position in law enforcement? He’ll no.
LEO’s are granted a heck of a lot of power as a result of their position. They are compensated well, are granted substantial benefits packages, and can retire fairly young with both. I don’t think it’s too much to ask that they be heald to AT LEAST the same standards the average man.
Yeah...I’m sorry...because one or a few cops are bad, every cop is bad. My mistake. Have a nice day.
Nope. Not that easy.
Do you disagree that LEO’s should be held to at least the same standard of law as an average citizen?
Indeed.
And that has made Plato’s old problem of who guards the guardians even more acute. Hence my advocacy of body cams, imperfect though they are.
The problem? That’s big brother, not American freedom.
American freedom is safeguarded by hobbling the agents of the state. Cameras everywhere is Big Brother. Cameras on cops isn’t: it provides a partial solution to Plato’s problem. You’re already under surveillance when there’s a cop nearby — by the cop — and subject to the whims of his reporting of what happened. A camera and sound recording can help make sure the cop’s report of what went down accords with reality even when reality isn’t in the cop’s favor.
Recordings don't even resolve a debate over an incorrect football call.
Should the government put cameras on anyone who gets a government check to ensure there is no cheating? Public school teachers - I want to tag them, lol. (Not you of course!)
Maybe if they held the recording for court so the emotion would be removed . . . even then, I have no faith in it.
Protocols for handling the recordings should necessarily involve the courts. Actually, any agent of the government who is able to deprive you of your liberty, property or life as part of his or her duties should wear one unless a court provides a warrant for conducting undercover work. School teachers last I checked don’t fall into that category. IRS auditors, cops, DEA agents, EPA agents,. . . Everyone who’s the pointy end of the government spear vis-a-vis the citizenry should wear one unless a court for sound reason gives a waiver, again the protocols for granting such warrants would need to be worked out.
I can’t think of one time when a camera did anything but cause more debate.
I have no idea why you put your faith in one.
It is not something I want to force on any other American.
P.S.
Thanks T_R_D, It’s fun talking to you.
But it’s precisely because they encourage debate (ideally in a court of law, rather than the court of public opinion) over the propriety of police actions that I advocate them.
It has been fun chatting, but we won’t agree, so there’s probably not much more point.
See you on another thread sometime!
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