There were 101 people killed at the hands of police in June 2022. More than a year later, police had released body-camera footage of only 33 of those killings, ProPublica has found.

At least 1,201 people were killed in 2022 by law enforcement officers, about 100 deaths a month, according to Mapping Police Violence, a nonprofit research group that tracks police killings. ProPublica examined the 101 deaths that occurred in June 2022, a time frame chosen because enough time had elapsed that investigations could reasonably be expected to have concluded. The cases involved 131 law enforcement agencies in 34 states.

In 79 of those deaths, ProPublica confirmed that body-worn camera video exists. But more than a year later, authorities or victims’ families had released the footage of only 33 incidents.

Philadelphia signed a $12.5 million contract in 2017 to equip its entire police force with cameras. Since then, at least 27 people have been killed by Philadelphia police, according to Mapping Police Violence, but in only two cases has body-camera video been released to the public.

ProPublica’s review shows that withholding body-worn camera footage from the public has become so entrenched in some cities that even pleas from victims’ families don’t serve to shake the video loose.

  • Rivalarrival@lemmy.today
    11·
    7 months ago

    Also yeah, why shouldn’t a SWAT be recorded and subject to request?

    You failed to comprehend that situation. You do not appear to understand the concept of “swatting” if you believe it even remotely reasonable to release that camera footage.

    Humans are notoriously bad at consistently following requirements. If your system requires extensive human interaction in real time, your system will also require tolerance for mistakes that humans consistently make when given only split seconds to consider their decisions. The exemplar scenarios I presented demand significantly more thought and consideration than a single officer’s quick decision as to whether or not to record. Cases should not succeed or fail, and confidence should not be kept or broken on a single officer’s split second decision as to whether his camera should be on or off at a particular moment.

    With your system, cameras will occasionally be off when they should be on. That’s just human fallibility. No amount of punishment will ever prevent an honest mistake.

    We can’t get footage if it was never recorded, so we should err on the side of creating the recording. But, we cannot allow the existence of a recording to create unnecessary harm, either to the officer or to members of the public.

    We don’t need to see any video where there is no suspicion of wrongdoing. When there is a suspicion, we need that camera to have been on. My approach systematically solves both problems; your approach does not.