Morning Fog

Body Cams - Who Sees What?

In the wake of so many recent missteps between police and the civilian population, many sociologists, police departments, and others have embraced body cams as the ideal solution to prevent, or at least clarify, incidents where facts are in dispute or things boil down to one party's word against the other's.

I agree, up to a point, but an argument is developing between police authorities, who in Washington DC and in some others areas are choosing to restrict broad access to the recordings, and absolutists, who proclaim all body-cam footage should be fully accessible to the public. 

I'm with the cops on this. To date, DC police chief Cathy Lanier has mainly cited concerns about the privacy of individuals who turn up in such recordings, combined with the inability of hard-pressed and money-squeezed police departments to devote the time needed to edit out the innocents from such material.   The authors of the referenced Washington Post opinion piece, Adam Marshall and Katie Townsend, say there are "robust privacy protections" that can protect individuals.  That's unconvincing, and terribly naïve, when any idiot knows that whatever gets out in the public "eye" nowadays pretty much remains there.

But to my mind there's a greater danger in total access to everything on body cams.  And not just the unimaginable proliferation of records that will seemingly need to be kept in perpetuity, though that's clearly a drag on society as a whole as well. 

No, the main point is that it represents a further perversion of that process between "law" and "justice" I referred to in my last post.  Many things will show up on a camera that after the fact, will seem evident but may not even have been noticeable by the participants.  I would foresee endless second-guessing of what actually occurred, and what the police or other participants actually saw. People say that's what body cams show. I think they show what they might have seen.  

In serious cases, obviously, we will expect - and get - release of body cam recordings so that disputes can be resolved, and justice delivered, even to errant police officers when necessary.  Again here, the authors are being disingenuous to suggest that ALL videos will forever be inaccessible to the public.  I have no real concern that laws restricting total access would "destroy the very reason for using this technology." 

But extending access to every Tom, Dick, and Harriet looks like overreach to me.  It simply opens the door to lawyerly fishing expeditions into completely routine cases.  The result would be more clogged courts, ballooning costs of administration, delays, and extra work; but on the bright side - lots of billable hours.   

 

Law, Justice, And What's In Between

Within a week of the tragic wreck of an Amtrak passenger train in Philadelphia, the first lawsuit has been announced.   One of the passengers is suing because he was thrown across the car he was in and claims brain trauma as a result.  His lawyer, whom local reporters of course raced to interview, has said it's an obvious case of negligence on Amtrak's part, since technology exists to prevent such accidents but had not been installed.

Here are a few points that bug me:

Within a few days, a diagnosis of brain trauma?  That seems rapid, and maybe too early to know if it will pass in a few days more.  Of course, several people were killed and many more very seriously injured, so it's not at all unlikely - in fact it seems probable - that the litigant did suffer trauma.  But one has to wonder, did he call his lawyer before he called his doctor?

Or more likely, a lawyer called him.  We produce too many lawyers in the U.S., many of them mediocre, and as a result, many of them have to invent legal problems they can resolve - at a price, of course.  No accident can ever be just an accident in today's world; there will be someone attempting to prove fault, and to profit from it.  Thus in this case, the attorney immediately claims "negligence."

However, it's not known yet that the technological "fix" would have prevented this accident. Not every new technology can be adopted immediately across the board; even if it's tested and proved, cost can be a factor, the decisions of corporate boards (or in this case the U.S. Congress) can delay things.  Is that negligence, or just reality?

Certainly, this case and probably many others will proceed, with varying results for the accident victims and their lawyers.

But it leads me to consider the relationship between law and justice.  We all know they aren't the same thing, though they MAY be.  The difference often depends on the middleman: the lawyer.   An attorney may use his knowledge and skill to help someone get justice under the law, but especially where financial settlements are involved, motivations might be mixed. 

One example is our hallowed guarantee of a speedy trial.  The original intent was to avoid having someone thrown in jail and allowed to languish there for years - not so unusual in olden times. Now, however, nothing involving law, even the simple filing of charges, is nearly so quick or simple as it could be.  Delays and continuances seem to be the order of the day, and even if settlements aren't aggrandized by those tactics, fees can be.   

 

 

Correction: Shooting In Theater Not Possible

Re yesterday's post, I stand corrected. 

A Coloradan gun-owner of my acquaintance has pointed out that in fact open carry in the Aurora theater is, or was at the time, illegal.

I actually had considered this possibility, and had checked sources available to me to find out whether individuals with appropriate permits can take their guns into a theater in Colorado, without finding any restrictions to prevent that.  There is some evidence that local jurisdictions may add restrictions of their own.

With a little further checking, I find reports that the theater chain has a policy against permitting weapons, and that a sign was posted outside the place to that effect.  Some have even suggested Holmes selected this particular theater than night because it had such a policy, so he knew or supposed that nobody would be shooting back at him.

Well, whether it's due to law, local ordinance, or a private business's policy, the fact is that careful gun-owners would not have taken their guns into the theater with them.  So to those frustrated carriers who may have been in the house that night, I apologize.  It wasn't that you wouldn't have wanted to stop Holmes, but you were without the means to do so. 

Better luck next time.

Another reader has recoiled at the suggestion that we should be protected by vigilantes, suggesting if people HAD started shooting, the toll could have been much higher.  That, too, is a valid point.  I think many Americans share it.  Yet the reality of present-day America -- there's no denying it! -- is that a lot of people have guns, and.  in these violent times, many might not think it's entirely negative.

A note for readers:  your comments are always welcome and can be entered using the "comment" button below.

 

 

Not Enough Shooting In Aurora

During my recent long period of blogging inactivity, there were any number of violent incidents reported.  Nothing new there, I guess - pick a month (any month), and you'll likely get plenty such reports.

There are always the fairly obvious comments about the nature of American society, the seemingly constant recurrence of excessive police violence against civilians, especially black ones; stories about victims and/or victims' families forgiving (or not forgiving) the accused.  But there also seem to be things we overlook.

One such is the role of vigilant vigilantes.  For example, take James Holmes (please!), the clown-haired individual now on trial for killing 12 people and injuring 70 more in a Colorado movie theater in 2012. 

It's time we asked the serious question:  Where are all those gun-toting folks who, according to themselves and the NRA, are helping to quell crime and make our streets and public places safer by carrying their own personal weapons?  

Colorado's gun laws are not at all restrictive (to say the least) - open carry, concealed carry, hairy-carry, you name it.  So really, in a theater full of people, aren't the odds good that somebody had his/her gun along, in case he needed to plug someone who bumped into him and spilled his popcorn?  Where were those armed he-men and she-women, anyway?  Cowering behind their seats with everyone else?

OK, fine, let's say that by chance, nobody in that theater in Aurora had a  gun with them that day.  (Oh, except of course Holmes.)  But mass shootings have not been uncommon -- movie theaters, churches, malls ... the possibilities are many, yet in none of these large cases have armed private citizens intervening successfully to stop violence. 

Of course, this is a controversial area.  If you google "armed citizens stop violence," you will find a number of examples where this has occurred.  But the number of cases has been small - not at all commensurate with the number of people in our society who have their own weapons - and by far the larger percentage of them have involved off-duty police or other security personnel, not just your average Joe Vafongul'.  

It's a silly argument that the NRA should drop.  But if the argument is to be made, those making it might want to keep in mind that surely no one would object if the Ronald-McDonald look-alike in the room had been the 13th (lucky number!) fatality that day.