Posted on 05/26/2020 11:16:19 AM PDT by yesthatjallen
“Then he’d erase the recording. He never explained why he did that.”
Can’t subpoena a recording that doesn’t exist anymore.
Occam’s Razor: Because recordings are harder to fake than notes reconstructed from memory after the fact.
I tried to watch that HBO miniseries “Million$” about the crooks scamming the McDonald’s Monopoly game.
I couldn’t get through it because the FBI agents were as unctuous as the perps. It was all “Aren’t I cute”, “Aren’t I clever”, “Aren’t I a rock star?”. Just smug arrogant Peter Strzok types. Ugh.
I miss Efrem Zimbalist Jr.
Then he’d erase the recording. He never explained why he did that. I found that to be very puzzling.
= = =
Well, that’s easy.
Sheila Jackson Lee explained it all with her Biden’s Ain’t Black comments.
A person listening to the recording does not know what it means. All they hear is words. They don’t get the ambience, the body language, the drips of guilty sweat, and so on.
And on top of that, a lowly ‘untrained’ citizen is not capable of listening to a recording (even if complete and unedited) and get the proper meaning. In fact they are likely to hear some facts that are not the truth, and cause unjustified confusion. In fact they would probably end up guilty of ‘interfere with an ongoing investigation,’ and ‘lying to the police.’
Meanwhile, a paper summary (like a 302 maybe) might be useful to evaluate witnesses’ reports quickly, in the big picture, BUT KEEP the recording. It should trump any paper report. Heck, these days they could video the interviews and store it all easily. So you could see the guilty sweat.
> Can’t subpoena a recording that doesn’t exist anymore. <
Right. But I’m guessing that such an action wouldn’t sit well with a jury.
Defense attorney: Where is the audio recording of my client’s so-called confession?
Cop on the stand: I erased it.
Defense attorney: You erased it? Why?
Cop on the stand: Uh...it’s policy, pal.
Actually, it’s a lot cheaper than that now days...
https://www.zdnet.com/article/best-cloud-storage-services/
$1.99/mo. for 100GB. And that’s for regular Joe retail customer. $24 per year.
And that includes full back-up and restore services.
And voice quality audio uses about 72MB per hour.
You can buy 30TB, with full back-up, for $1,800 per year.
Imagine the cost of storing, copying and retrieving all those paper 302s. Not to mention the cost of creating them.
Gosh, don’t ya know it Condor.
I do not trust any thing FBI or federal gub mint at this point.
Sad statement but true.
For the same reason other criminal organizations don't document their crimes.
It's really pretty straightforward.
I would record everything I ever did but that is just me. The FBI is so bizarre.
An honest law enforcement agency would want every one to know they are honest, therefore they would keep a audio and video records.
This is nonsense. Street cops and detectives have been using the camera feature of their cellphones for investigations for over a decade. You can use the record feature even easier - click the icon and start asking questions. When you are done click another icon to upload the file to the server. 10 year olds do it every day. Not much of a challenge at all
Because it’s more effective to observe and listen to the interviewee and take notes later than to be distracted and maybe miss a tic or a tell. I understand the process, but erasing a recording is spoliation pure and simple, even if not done with malicious intent.
The ensuing investigation established that Mateen's wife, Noor Salman, was involved. This led to federal charges of obstruction of justice and of providing material support to a terrorist organization. Noor Salman faced life in prison if convicted. At trial though, the jury acquitted her on all counts.
Why? The jury did not credit the FBI's account of their unrecorded interview with Noor Salman and the damaging admissions that the agents claimed that she made. The excuses the article offers for not recording the interview had little application in that instance, with Noor Salman an obvious potential target for prosecution.
Notably, in media interviews after the trial, Noor Salman's family insisted that she was an abused wife and acted under duress. Tacitly, they admitted that she had helped her husband to plan and carry out his terror attack. The FBI's preference though for unrecorded interviews let her walk free. The Bureau's ability to phony up their 302 reports after unrecorded interviews is too politically useful a practice to abandon.
I have one that is about the size of a half dollar that produces pretty good recordings. It will record for about 40 hours.
What would the distraction be? Click an icon on your cell phone and then start asking questions and taking notes like you always do. As an attorney I do this every time I take a witness statement and it’s no distraction at all.
that’s why we don’t record the interviews...see how that works?
= = =
Yep.
Cop body cams seem to be pretty glitchy and unreliable.
They seem to be getting away with that, so far.
Too much of a "protest" that it's just too hard to do a job with due diligence.
This isn't the old days, when cops were trusted. Far too many dirty cops and corrupt Feds have tainted every single cop that lives and breathes. And, just who is to blame? Look directly in the mirror, officer. YOU are to blame. Accept the full responsibility for keeping that Blue Wall of Silence when one of your own screws up. It'll take decades and lots of hard work to begin to regain some semblance of dignity and honor within the law enforcement "profession".
A smaller than phone size digital recorder as you say blows the FBI’s excuses away. If I can’t record MY copy of an FBI interview there is no interview. They have shown with the 2016 election and it’s aftermath they are corrupt and dirty cops. If they’ll try a coup against a duly elected president what won’t they do to John Q.Public to get a conviction. Federal law enforcement can’t be trusted at this point from the courtroom, to the Oval Office to even their press conferences. They are dirty and they did it to themselves.
Because the fbi is a corrupt agency, like the KGB, hiding behind the mask of a cleancut, honest, upright, patriotic agency.
It has the power, but not the right, to put people in prison for life, to destroy their lives and reputation, and seize their money.
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