Officers of the law should have their actions recorded with video and audio at all times.
By
Rorek
on June 13, 2008
This incident sparked my attention to this subject.
Agreed
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Discussion (9)
But only while on duty. Not while they are at home and such.
This police action may be recorded to ensure quality...
That story is sickening, but then I already read about a high school girl being tasered by police in her school cafeteria for accidentally dropping a piece of cake. So, it's not exactly news.
Sure. While not on the job, they are not, strictly speaking, officers of the law.
I wasn't sure how that counted, since we tend to use such terms both ways. You might say someone is a librarian while they are at a party, while they are obviously off duty and not being a librarian. Someone may say, I am a police officer when asked what they do, but they aren't currently acting as a police officer. The general tendency in the US to tie people so closely to their jobs and define them by their work even when they are not at work made me figure it is worth commenting on.
But if we said something like wait staff should warn you when you are ordering dessert that creme brulee is on the menu because you might not have seen it and might order a good, but not as good dessert, then clearly we only mean while they are at work, and not in general.
Even on-duty cops deserve a little privacy. They shouldn't be recorded while going to the bathroom, for example.
As Rachel points out, the claim is unclear about the meaning of "at all times". An officer of the law is an officer of the law whether or not they're on the clock, and they shouldn't be monitored during their downtime.
True, I agree I wouldn't monitor them when in the bathroom or on breaks, which I would count going to the bathroom as.
On-duty, it should be a constitutionally-protected right to record what public officers are doing, video or audio, with or without their knowledge.
Employers currently have the right to record what their employees are doing in this way, and police officers are employees of the public.
And going to the bathroom does not count as "on-duty". [Insert "doody" pun here.]
I have set in a class whose task was to analyze such a video in small group to determine "what actually happened." The discrepancies amongst the groups was quite amazing. Has, I'm not sure on this one.