[cody3222]

Police actively try to resist this.

I saw something really interesting when getting pulled over by the police a while back (on a boat). When they saw us recording them while they were writing a ticket, they shined a bright flashlight at our camera so that it would ruin the exposure and not capture anything useful. They were very deliberate about this and it was quite effective.

Something does seem wrong about police in public not wanting to be recorded while doing their (taxpayer funded) job and holding extra power over the citizen (a police's word in court generally comes with a special authority).

[kevin_thibedeau]

I had a cop in an unmarked car (with no lights or siren) try to shove me out of my lane while following a speeder he was going to ticket when their lane ended. I get pulled over instead for holding my ground and after explaining how he broke the law in so many ways he made a whole show of checking out the vehicle while monitoring for cameras.

[aeternum]

I'm pretty concerned about how this ends. It's clear there's a major problem in police departments within the US and it is getting worse instead of better for a few reasons:

1) There a significant camaraderie that is very much part of the job. Unlike most jobs, police depend on their coworkers to keep them alive. From a game theory POV, the price of defection (not corroborating the a partner's story, or testifying against another officer) is extremely high.

2) Confidence in police is at a record low, the majority of American adults no longer trust police. This will yield an increased 'us vs. them' mentality and even more divisiveness. Officers that were more moderate/compassionate will be squeezed from both sides: general public assuming they are corrupt and fellow officers questioning their 'loyalty'. This pressure will cause some number of the moderate/compassionate officers to leave.

3) Calls to cut funding for police departments as well as the public perception changes economic incentives. From an economic POV, rational individuals are less likely to choose to be police officers. This means that the average 'rationality' of our nation's police is likely to decrease.

[m463]

I wonder if bad laws might be part of the problem.

If the war on drugs, civil forfeiture or even a low speed limit makes everyone resent the police, is that a root cause?

I wonder if there could be a way that the police are viewed like firemen or postal workers. Did the UK policemen that didn't carry guns have better acceptance in that respect?

[throwaway2048]

Another significant factor is police departments in the USA are almost always hyperlocal, meaning very corrupt practices can fester for a long time, all that has to happen is the sherif/police chief keeps getting re-elected.

[jedimastert]

> Something does seem wrong about police in public not wanting to be recorded while doing their (taxpayer funded) job

For devil's advocate, there's a lot of negative feelings toward workplace surveillance, and for good reason. Having everything you're doing recorded isn't a very good feeling. It really takes away freedoms of judgement and latitude.

Whether or not you think police should have any freedom of latitude is a debate in and of itself, I suppose. I come from a city that has an apparently unusually strong track record with traditionally disadvantaged peoples (POC, homeless, immigrants, etc.) so I have very different gut reactions about police than most of the internet.

[inetknght]

Workplace surveillance generally isn't surveilling someone with extra authority to end someone's life (whether literally or just putting them behind bars) and then have their word (and only their word) trusted in a court of law.

Workplace surveillance generally isn't surveilling someone doing their work in public which usually has significantly different privacy expectations.

[lmkg]

Entirely setting aside the current debate on whether police have enough accountability for the unique powers they wield...

Public sector employees are subject to extra scrutiny that private-sector employees are not. That's simply part and parcel of being employed by a democratic government. Your employer represents the general public, and therefore you are accountable to the general public.

For example, government employee salaries are public record. And not just in-theory records, this data is often easily-searched online databases. If you're employed in the private sector, having your compensation disclosed is considered a breach of privacy; it's considered mandatory in the public sector.

So yeah, I think it's reasonable to expect a certain level of workplace surveillance in the public sector that would be unacceptable for a private company.

[Merman_Mike]

Last I checked, they're not drafting police officers in the US.

If it hurts your feelings to be recorded while performing your public service job: find a new job.

[quintushoratius]

"Find a new job" is equivalent to "move to a different country". It's a bullshit response that implies that a certain group should be allowed to do something controversial.

If you're going to exercise exceptional infringement on someone then you should be able to offer a solid rationale.

[athms]

>Find a new job" is equivalent to "move to a different country".

No it isn't. Switching from cop to ditch digger doesn't require an immigration visa, learning a new language and culture, figuring out the metric system, uprooting your family and maybe supporting your spouse because they won't be able to acquire a job in the new country. Shall I go on?

[Merman_Mike]

> If you're going to exercise exceptional infringement on someone then you should be able to offer a solid rationale.

You're almost all the way there to thinking this through. Keep going!

[thatguy0900]

Is being able to record the police controversial?

[emteycz]

Police service is not a job for everyone, what applies to factory jobs does not apply to it. It is a position that by definition requires good psychological profile, good reputation, unique qualifications, and so on. Such person surely has no problem finding a job. The police is not there to employ the unemployed.

[LocalH]

We give police extra rights over the average citizen. Those extra rights must come with oversight, otherwise they'll be abused heavily (which, depending on region, does seem to be happening a lot).

[ClumsyPilot]

You are missapplying the term. 'workplace surveillance' is continous surveilance by your boss / employer.

The ones recording here are the public (customer?), and it's not continous, its occasional - so it's a completely different phenomenon.

[NL807]

In the case of the police, being subject to workplace surveillance should be part of the job. When someone is given the authority to exercise power over the public, trust in them should never be implicit.

[vlunkr]

I agree with the thought process here, but the reality is that almost no one wants to be recorded in public, especially knowing that it can easily be posted and shared online, where they will likely look like the bad guy.

[heavyset_go]

Cashiers that make $10 an hour are under more surveillance and public exposure than cops are. Police are often the highest paid employees on a government's payroll, often making more than software engineers do, and they get to retire with a full pension after only 20 years of working.

Given that they're the strong arm of the state, and that they're paid handsomely to be it, they can at least handle the same amount of accountability that cashiers do, if not more.

[codecutter]

Comparing compensation of cashiers and police officers is unfair in my opinion. Police officers risk dying in line of duty. Would you play Russian Roulette for say $100k? I wouldn't.

[heavyset_go]

Actually, retail workers and cashiers have similar murder rates as cops do[1].

[1] https://www.vox.com/2014/12/2/7313827/workplace-homicide-mur...

[ClumsyPilot]

Its not even in the top 10 most dangerous jobs.

[codecutter]

It is still riskier job than a cashier or software developer. OP's comment about police compensation is irrelevant, IMO.

Talking about risk, would you play a Russian roulette for $100? If you win, you will make $100 in less than a minute, far better hourly pay-rate than a police officer or a pilot.

[throwaway2048]

But not a riskier job, than say a delivery driver, I doubt you hold them in the same esteem.

[athms]

Farm work is more dangerous than being a cop, and the federal government lets children younger than twelve work on a farm unless a state sets its own rules. Age, hour, overtime and minimum wage provisions of the federal Fair Labor Standards Act that protect young workers in other fields don't apply. Seventeen states have exempted farm work from most or all their child labor laws: Alabama, Delaware, Georgia, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Texas, West Virginia and Wyoming.

[LocalH]

They're not really comparing compensation outside of the context of surveillance. They're saying that $10/hr cashiers are more heavily watched than police officers. It seems to me that we should maybe have more oversight over individuals whom we decide to present with lethal weapons as tools?

Kinda makes one feel like money is treated as more important than human life, when you look at it from that perspective.

[austincheney]

How do you prove that cashiers are recorded more than police? I also don’t think there is any indication that police are generally the highest paid government employees.

[heimatau]

> How do you prove that cashiers are recorded more than police?

You've never worked as a cashier. If one is behind the till, they have a direct camera on them for their entire shift.

[heavyset_go]

Usually several cameras, all pointed at the cashier and their hands from different angles, with even more cameras littered throughout their workplace.

[austincheney]

I have. It depends where you work. I am curious what the point of that is because cameras don’t determine whether cash is improperly removed from the register.

[analog31]

As I understand it, there's a lot more to it than stealing from the till. I used to work for a company that was peripheral to the security industry, so I got a lot of their literature. One was a pamphlet showing more than a dozen fiddles that are possible at the cash register. I've also read that most shoplifting is an inside job, at least involving an inside helper.

There's stuff like having a bar code on the palm of your hand, so you scan a cheap item while passing an expensive item through the scanner.

[heimatau]

> I have. It depends where you work.

Is the company that you worked for, are they still in business? I'd be surprised if they were. If they are, I'm curious how large this business is. B/c I suspect they are able to charge it (the losses) to the owners.

[myself248]

Simply look overhead next time you're paying for something. There's a camera on the cash drawer, a camera watching your face, a camera watching their face, probably a camera watching the whole lane from a wider perspective.

I used to work on point-of-sale equipment, typically fixing scanner-scale or receipt-printer issues, but all the database equipment is in the same back room as the security DVR. The number of cameras in a modern store is staggering, and nowhere are they more concentrated than the checkout area.

[austincheney]

That completely depends on where you shop and your geography. There aren’t that many cameras in Texas or Kuwait.

[Shared404]

> There aren’t that many cameras in Texas

Yeah no. I worked in a restaurant. There was one camera directly on both tills. One camera indirectly on each till. One camera directly in the main queue area and multiple indirectly on the main queue and otherwise covering the remainder of the lobby from multiple angles.

Edit: This is just the front of house stuff. The back of house had it's own complement which I won't detail here for obvious reasons.

[alsetmusic]

Well, this was a surprise to me. I had been under the impression that police had better salaries than what appears to be the case. A quick web search suggests that the average salary is roughly $60-65k. I had thought they were more around $80-120k, depending on position and seniority. I don’t recall where I got that impression.

As mentioned by others, cashiers are monitored by security cameras constantly. It’s just that footage of them stealing from the till doesn’t go viral. Police brutality does.

[olefoo]

Police work a _lot_ of overtime in most jurisdictions.

So the base salary may be misleadingly low. Especially since many police contracts have a 2x or even 3x payout for overtime under some conditions.

As with many statistics around policing there is a deliberate and calculated intent to muddy the waters and prevent effective policy discussion.

[heavyset_go]

Median salary for cops is $105k[1] in states where the median salary for software engineers is $96k. They can surpass $250k a year with overtime[2].

[1] https://www.nj.com/news/2017/05/how_much_is_the_median_cop_s...

[2] https://www.nj.com/somerset/2019/11/4-cops-in-this-nj-town-e...

[jkaplowitz]

Does that count overtime? That's a significant piece of comp for many police officers.

[willcipriano]

I have observed others with a similar impression so I suspect it is a common misconception. Good on you for having the courage to acknowledge it.

[austincheney]

You don’t monitor theft from the till with cameras but by counting the cash in the till against a reported balance. This is determinate down to the penny without any camera.

[Broken_Hippo]

Oh, but you do! Not all till shortages are due to theft, and not all theft at cash registers happens in ways that the till is off. Folks do lots of tricks to try to make sure the till count is correct: For example, scanning cheap items, not scanning things, charging more than the register total (and pocketing the rest)... and so on. Occasionally, it gets you out of being in trouble (some dude took goods and walked out of a place I worked at, after I scanned it but obviously before he paid, for example). Most places have variance built in as well - no one is perfect, after all. Some are stricter than others, and many places share the till between people because it takes more labor to do otherwise.

The till not being able to catch everything is a reason for the cameras, and the reason they aren't just around the till. (cosmetics often have cameras as do receiving areas). Bag checks are really common as well. Sure, you could just have an inventory management system, but again, these aren't foolproof nor do these systems give you a clue about who is stealing or if it is a simple mistake.

[Cyph0n]

You wouldn’t be able to distinguish between a genuine mistake and theft without a camera. The same applies to police.

[dgs_sgd]

As the parent comment says, police are tax payer funded and hold extra power over citizens. I think that trumps them being worried about "looking like the bad guy".

[wpietri]

Then maybe people who don't like that shouldn't take jobs working for the public in public while enforcing public laws to uphold public standards of public safety and public order.

Just a thought.

[ClumsyPilot]

This is quite well put

[vlunkr]

I can't edit now, but I'm addressing the point that it "seems wrong" for cops to not want to be recorded. It seems completely natural. I'm not saying they shouldn't be filmed or should attempt to stop it, just that it's not surprising that they might not like it.

[viztor]

the right to record isn't necessarily the right to publish.

[happytoexplain]

Yes, of course, but the police are not just anybody.

[SrslyJosh]

Not being a cop is free. =)