It would appear that it makes sense that cameras while on duty improves performance and improves public perception of law enforcement.

In light of that, I propose that the Chief Law Enforcement Officer occupying the White House be required to wear a camera and that the public be able to access.

I know, I know, fat chance and there are national security issues. But look at what a missing 18 minutes of WH audio tape did.

Thanks to Mr. Halling I have been able to listen to Ayn Rand's Ford Hall Forum lectures. As a result I am of the opinion that our society culture is in a state of deterioration that is accelerating so fast that it will not be stopped to reverse anytime in the distant future. Of course all of these shooting can be put jobs by the unmentionables in the cesspool area of the country so they can continue to have a stronger voice to rid the country of the private ownership of fire arms.

On a separate point, ratting some one out has consequences in every culture no matter what the culture is. It could glorify ratting (1935 Germany) and you get food and praise for doing so, also true in Soviet Union. It could vilify it or it could not even care about it. Even in a society where ratting is rewarded other people will very quickly identify that hay, if I do some minor thing this guy is going to tell everyone, and others will then react accordingly to protect themselves, even if its just to protect their privacy. This effect is in place no mater what society recognizes about the subject.

I did -1 you for this because it is such an obvious bad argument that anyone should be able to recognize it.

Consequences always exist for every action, or inaction a person takes or does not take. Sometimes minor in nature but always exist.

Well your response tells me three things.

1) Blinders are convenient for you. Cops are being asked and trained to do things they should not accept or do and cops who ignore those things are breaking the law. That has everything to do with Nazi Germany it is how Nazi power and control was established.

2) The Reardon example is completely relevant to the point I am making which is that laws are currently broken and cops are asked to follow laws and have attitudes they should not have.

3) You and I are not even in the same conversation I am in. You are talking about obvious breaking of natural law. IE Cop pulls his gun shoots a guy and covers it up. I am not. I am talking about some procedural crap that is in place and perhaps should or should not be followed. The obvious stuff is just that obvious and need not be discussed.

You are probably right. I simply detest that we simply focus on black lives matter, and not on all lives and the objective problems. Every time we make significant distinction we extend the problems of discrimination another 10 years.

It's disgusting what is happening today and most of it is based on some thug and criminal that is also a liar. "Hands Up, Don't Shoot" movement was just an excuse to riot and have a good time for the rest of the thugs and criminals. The movement was not just a coincidence and surely got it's start from that liars comment. Sure there are bad cops, but we can's throw them all under the bus for it. We've just got to obey or prosecute based on our laws, for both sides, period. Just because blacks murder more, blacks are not all murderers. America needs a real wake up call, something is happening that is getting totally out of control that will eventually severely hurt this country. Being divided now, about half the people are blinded and can't see it coming. Perhaps we really need a Trump in the White House, someone that will bully the place back into shape. I wonder if he will use the Secret Service or use his own security force if he's elected.

To whatever level we may have an honest disagreement about the police, I think it is telling that we do agree on the one important takeaway from my earlier post, namely that we would all be better off if the police were required to wear body cameras during their shifts.

How would taxpayer money be better spent? A million bucks for police body cameras to improve their interaction with the public in general or a million bucks to settle the neverending use of force complaints against them?

Actually the people they stop are not likely to kill them. That's absurd and demonstrably false. Do you know how many traffic stops there are a year? Versus how many result in violence from the person being stopped?

There are something like 17 million people stopped at traffic stops every year in the US. In 2014, there were a total of 126 police officers total killed in the line of duty. That's every part of the line of duty - FBI, swat raids, apprehension of fugitives, responding to robberies and violent crimes, etc.

From the national law enforcement officer memorial fund: 56 of those were shot by firearms. 49 were traffic related incidents (like car crashes or being struck by a car). The number one single cause was ambush assaults of police officers at 15 of the 56 above.

The odds of a police officer actually being killed by a civilian during a traffic stop are comparable to the odds of you being killed by a police officer. Depending on how you slice the numbers they are both close to 1:300,000. Neither is a "likely" event.

I am at risk of them abusing their authority. Of them searching me or my car without probable cause. With them responding with force or violence if I make it clear that I understand my constitutional rights.

Thanks for the post. I do not share your distrust of the police based on my judgement and what my eyes and ears tell me. My experience with the local police in my area have been good. I have shooting buddies that are policemen and I have had some pretty candid conversations about training and their jobs. One of the 5 living cops I know is a bit of an ass in his personality but not bad, corrupt or wrong in what he does other than he treats people like an ass would universally. The other 4 are good guys that treat people well. The 6 cop I use to shoot with was shot when he stopped a meth dealer and girlfriend. When the meth dealer got out of the car, the girlfriend shot him through the rear window of the car. He is dead. He and his wife lived two houses down from me. He was a cop that got killed because people doing wrong shit like to kill a cop rather than get busted.

That is not to say that I do not think there is a bad eggs in there, or that there are not those that are attempting to (from the top) manipulate the police into something they never should be.

I like the idea of a Camera on every cop while on duty, It would likely help a great deal with making things stick to those that need it when talks with the judge occur as well as provide a much higher level of visibility.

Some Police depts. are out of control. My brother-in-law came home one day and found his front door was open. He went to a neighbor's house and called the SWAT team, and they came! The whole street was evacuated and barricades set up. Nothing was found in his house. Nothing! I asked him why in the world did he call SWAT instead of the regular police? He said he just wanted to "lay it safe". What bothers me the most is not my BIL calling them, but that they responded instead of passing it to the local police dept! Ridiculous waste of tax dollars!

Gave you a +1 for everything but the last line. I would rather they do not turn terrorist. BLM wont, but offshoots like this nut may/will/have.

He made the comment in the video that BLM did not go far enough. He is going to take it further, or at least encourage others to take it further.

His stupid buffalo bit was funny, I was thinking as he gave it that they only get the weakly ones and the buffalo do not have guns.

Let me start by saying that my response is to the statement, "The police aren't the bad guys", not the content of the op-ed piece titled that way.

I will put it bluntly. I do not trust the police. I just don't. Everyone says that 99.whatever percent of all cops are good with just a few bad apples mixed in getting all the media attention. It's an easy, comfortable platitude I guess, but it flies in the face of reality. Bad cops CANNOT exist in a world full of good cops. As long as "good" cops remain quiet behind their blue wall of silence, you have a few bad cops and a whole bunch of guys aiding and abetting. That makes them all bad cops, in my opinion.

As far as this notion that they have a dangerous job, I don't buy that either. It seems that as often as not when there is video evidence of the interaction, the cops are the ones escalating the situation to a violent confrontation. They are trained to do that. Your civil rights mean nothing, probable cause means nothing, the actual law as it is written means nothing. When a cop with an attitude shows up on the scene, he is the law. Make no mistake about what I am saying with that. The guy with the gun, taser, baton, pepper spray, handcuffs, and a radio to call in his boys is the law. The actual law is of no consequence at all. They will do whatever they please to whomever they want with no fear at all of any kind of retribution. They get to write up the story of what happened in their report after the fact to cover any misdeeds, and they all know that none of their fellow officers will say a peep if it is full of lies.

The good news is that there is a way to improve upon this in a big way. I wish I could find the YouTube video that made mention of it, but there was a town in California that tracked all complaints of wrongdoing for their officers. Before all of their officers were required to wear body cameras, citizens' complaints were through the roof. After the officers were required to wear body cameras, the number of complaints plummeted. Both citizens and cops were on better behavior when all the cops wore a tamperproof, impartial 3rd party witness that would tell the unbiased, unvarnished story. Sometimes the cops were guilty of wrongdoing. Sometimes, the videos completely vindicated the police. Either way, the numbers of incidences dropped dramatically, and internal investigators were able to deal with an objective witness instead of 20 cops all swearing by the same lie to protect a brother in blue.

I started by saying that I do not trust the police. I do, however, trust my own judgement and what my own eyes and ears tell me. I would feel much better if all cops were required to wear tamper proof videos of the entire time they are on duty and those videos were made publicly available. If the cops would actually do that, I think they would get more respect and more/better convictions instead of charges being plead down by defense attorneys.

Just my $0.02.

Edit: Here's a YouTube video, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6UWud..., that makes the case I was saying about the drop in use of force incidents and citizens' complaints against the police. It's actually not the video i was referring to earlier in this post, but it says essentially the same thing. Also, if the use of force incidents drops so dramatically, how can anybody feel good about the police as they are today? If they know they are being recorded, suddenly they behave better? Presumably that means they were behaving worse before. One thing follows the other, no?

You are not in the situation where the cop is likely to kill you. The cop is in a situation where they stop people that are likely to kill them. To compare the two is a very apples to oranges comparison.

It has consequences for the person being ratted out. It only has consequences for the one who does the ratting if the culture of the organization excuses criminal activity but abhors ratting.

They take an oath to uphold the law. If they have a colleague breaking the law, and they know it and do nothing, at the very least they have violated their oath.

The Reardon example is completely irrelevant. Reardon never denied breaking the law. He admitted to doing activity that was illegal. He knew it was illegal when he did it. He won by naming the fact that it shouldn't be illegal.

It has nothing to do with Nazi Germany in 1935. It has to do with upholding the laws that police swore to do and protecting the public as they swore to do. And a police culture that places a higher value on silence than it does on goodness.

The irony is that maintaining the silence ultimately hurts the police in the long term as the public no longer trusts them.

I disagree. Police and military are the henchmen of a very oppressive government (USA). They serve the bureaucrats and help keep them in power. They also arrange for the imposition of fines which support the very government that passes the laws and runs the courts. Perhaps there are some "good" cops who want to protect my rights- but they work for a system bent on taking away my rights.

Are they that much different from the SS in Germany in principle? The rules here arent quite as bad as Nazi rules, but look at how our police use the anti-drug laws to break down your door in the middle of the night. Its brutal.

Seems like this black supremacist is like white supremacists and mostly supremely ignorant.

Buffalo are not really "picked off" by lions. The indigenous Maasi (black by the way), are not afraid of lions, but they will NOT mess with buffalo. The only buffalo lions get are young and sick, or an individual male that is pounced on by a pride. Lion vs buffalo goes badly for the lion in general.

I hope the BLM movement does turn to cowardly terrorist behavior. It will undo any misguided sympathy anyone every had.

Ratting a person out has consequences to the person being ratted out and the one who does the ratting.

Does not matter what your job is. No special requirements or consideration need be applied because they serve the public, that's a double standard and wrong to even consider.

A person has to evaluate what they think the consequences are and decide if they rat out the other person or do not.

Do you break a law to catch a guy you know has raped and will rape again, or do you let him get away and rape again?

I do not agree that a person is corrupt because they choose either of those choices, or corrupt by association.

So by the same logic Reardon was corrupt for selling his metal to Danager and Danager was corrupt for agreeing to get it. Anyone else who knew about it but did not report it was corrupt for not reporting it. Sounds like 1935 in Germany to me, in or out of a police department.

"When the police break the law, then there is no law, only a fight for survival." --- Billy Jack

Then I should treat any cop who stops me as an adversary until proven other wise as well. It is the only way I can be so I do not end up dead.

I don't think that that is a path we want to go down.

Agreed!

Although, it should not imply the next level of continuous whistle-blowing for irrelevant problems, just like turning everyone in the office in for ethics complaints from reciting last nights SNL skits should not happen.

A cop who ain't a bad guy won't pull me dino over for a malfunctioning brake light and ask if I have a large sum of cash.
That bad guy cop would make a liar out of me.
Christian me doesn't think God would have it in for me, either. Why?
I take "Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor" quite literally.
Should Daddy Warbucks be riding with me, he can speak for himself.

"It is the only way you could be and not end up dead."
It's a dangerous job. Anyone's interaction with a stranger is potentially dangerous. We don't respond by avoiding going outside (we do with kids, but that's another sad development) and having our guns on feather trigger any time we talk to a stranger.

yes, I think there is a movement that is criminal and against any authority.

when did that happen in America? That was not the case in my youth.