Somehow people are forgetting what cops think of Occupiers.

[quakerboy]

68. small progress has been made, with even greater degredation

Many of the powers they are given may be necessary. Though I am not sure that they all are. There are certain rights that have been granted to police in regards to search, seizure, detention, etc that I disagree with.

That said, I feel that the improvements that you mention are dwarfed in effect by the negative effects of the increasing militarization and insularity of the police community. I think you will find that the evidence of many video cameras backs up that belief with room to spare. Police persons, with very few exceptions, care more about covering each others backs than about protecting you or I. Police abuse of the populace will never stop so long as protecting other police members is a higher priority than protecting the individuals that make up the populace. If this were not true, when a policeman clubs an unarmed civilian, misuses equipment in ways likely to injure people such as scott olson, or unloads pepper spray on a penned group of protestors with no provocation, we would see other officers step in to stop these actions, or at least to detain these offenders. But we do not. I have as yet to ever even hear of an officer being pulled back, much less actually arrested while committing violence on civilians while on the job.

Cameras in the cars are a start. But how many of these protests have police cars pointed at them, recording? Can a dash cam see inside a house or building when the police enter it? I think it needs to go the next step and have the recording device on the policemen themselves. And we need to explicitly make it a protected, non prosecutable action to film a police officer. How many cases could be easily resolved by such action, and how many more would be prevented if the police? I think about the black veteran in the news recently who was shot dead after accidentally hitting his life alert bracelet. If those police were outfitted with cameras and audio recording, we would know what happened, what was said by whom, how those on both side acted. Would the police have shot him if they knew that their actions were subject to review?

And that information needs to be transformed into real accountability. We give police great power and extra rights. And I am OK with that, as long as it is accompanied by a higher standard of accountability. Not a lower one.

Other professions are not accorded the right to shoot me with a high likelihood of getting no worse than a reprimand. Unless you are aware of others that are, they are not relevant to this discussion.