My name is Lost and I"m an addict.
I'm a Court TV junkie. I find it several thousand times more interesting than daytime television and even though it can get oh soooooooo boring (Peterson blah blah blah) sometimes it brings up topics that really make me think. This morning was one of those times.
It seems that in Toronto and another city they are going with a pilot program to put cameras in police cars. You might say "What's the problem with that?" Which was also my question, considering we see it all the time on TV from the US. It seems the main reason for the implimentation for this was originally because some police in Toronto were accused of racial profiling and there was at least one case of a young black man being brutalized by police.
It seems the officers are upset by this program on two levels. The first is what they consider to be the excessive cost that will be incurred by the police department in installing and maintaining the cameras and the second is that they feel they are being accused of something - that they are required to do this because they aren't trusted to do their jobs competantly.
So because of watching this, you are going to get the benefit of my opinion LOL. I really can't see the harm in having the cameras. I feel they can only HELP the officers, it means they would have an impartial eye watching that can be a witness to anything that occurs. No more charges of racial profiling or police brutality. What I want to know is just how common in-car cameras are in the States - the gentleman that was on television was saying that they are only standard on State Police vehicles and not in urban centres. We see television shows from the US all the time that are pieces of video directly from dashboard cams in police cars. It seems to me that it would just be one more piece of evidence they could present for drunk drivers, car chases etc etc. Am I wrong?
8 years ago
3 comments:
I worked in a relatively small department and we had camera's in each patrol car.
What upsets the officers isn't having the camera's on around them on a vehicle stop or anything, it's the other things management uses them for because they want the cameras running the total time out there. "Oh, you were 30 seconds longer on your lunch break than what we told you to have!" or "The audio picked up the radio gun sound and it sure sounds like you let a speeder get away!"
It those annoying things like those that the officers don't want to be supervised over.
Sorry lost, I wrote that comment.
MrBob
http://middle-aged-guy.blog-city.com/
I thought I was the only one... addicted to Court TV, that is. I have it on all the time. Actually, I switch back and forth to Food TV every once in a while.
Post a Comment