Article by Colonel Nogov on Sept. 22, 2015
21,000 new police body cams will be hitting the streets soon, after the U.S. Department of Justice gave 19.3 million dollars in federal tax funds to 73 police departments in 42 states on Monday.
The government and media outlets have been pushing the use of body cams as a solution to police brutality. This, despite the historical evidence that cameras under the direct control of police officers are used to prosecute citizens, not to hold police accountable. Similar to the police cruiser dash cam, when the police control the cameras, they turn them off, lose the footage, or otherwise prevent the general public from witnessing acts of police abuse, with rare exception. Cameras in the hands of citizens has done more to expose police brutality than any police controlled cameras.
About the police departments who receive the federal tax funds, Ryan Foley of the AP reported, “Grant recipients must develop policies addressing when the cameras are turned on, how videos are stored and what can be done to balance privacy considerations with public access to mountains of footage they collect”.
In other words, the police control the cameras, decide when to turn them on or off, how videos are stored or not stored, and decide if or when the public can see the footage based on some arbitrary “privacy considerations”.
The Obama administration is pushing for 29,000 additional cameras for a total of 50,000 to be disbursed with the aid of federal funds to police departments nationwide.
This response to police brutality by the government shows they are not serious about ending police brutality. If they were serious they would encourage citizens to record police and prevent police officers from interfering with any private citizen recording police activity with severe penalties for police who do.
This response to police brutality is the exact opposite of the government trying to end police brutality. Putting more cameras in the hands of the police is an attempt to further intimidate the people by increasing video surveillance on them.
The government sees the relatively recent exposure of their enforcers, the police, harassing, assaulting, robbing, murdering and generally abusing citizens as simply a storm to be weathered. These body cams are a two fold solution for them; 1) A way to appease the majority of the population who are starting to question the narrative that police are the good guys, and 2) A way to increase surveillance on any potential trouble makers. The videos the police release from these body cams will undoubtedly be all pro-police propaganda, with mainstream media cheerleading.
We’re seeing the mainstream media reporting more police abuse lately. This is just to “sell” the “solution” of body cams. Once this pilot program of 21,000 body cams for police officers is reported to be a “success”, it will be pushed nationwide for every department, every cop. The police state marches on.
Citizens paying for their own oppression in the forms of surveillance and propaganda.
Edit update 9/24/2015
The following was posted at the free thought project one day after this article. Click image to read full article.
