[bananamogul]

"In the U.S., the number of civilians whom police have killed annually has only increased each year since the widespread adoption of body camera equipment,"

That is a near textbook case of abusing statistics. Those things are completely independent variables. Perhaps "civilians" (as opposed to what, military?) killed by police increased because crime increased. Or population increased. Or laws changed. Or bullets changed.

Why would we expect widespread adoption of bodycams to decrease the number of criminals shot and killed by police? That starts with the spurious assumption that the police are randomly shooting and killing citizens in droves without cause and bodycams would put a stop to it. As it turns out, this isn't happening, so bodycams have no influence on the variable.

There's no need to read the rest of that article if the authors are trying to secretly sell such a pejorative opinion.

I invite you to go watch a couple hundred bodycam vids on YouTube. It may change your perspective on what police deal with. What I see consistently, regardless of department, is police bending over backwards and using all kinds of non-lethal force, to the point of risking their own lives, before using lethal force. There are well-publicized exceptions but in the vast majority of cases, the officers are facing someone using lethal force against them.

[mrhottakes]

It's important to keep in mind which bodycam vids make it to YouTube and which don't. You are seeing videos selected for a purpose.

[a_conservative]

Some of these videos are the result of FOIA requests. Please, make FOIA requests and post these videos where the police are acting so egregiously. We deserve to know the truth about this!

Some less than positive-for-police videos I've seen-

- a weak police officer doesn't take control of the situation and the officer standing behind the first one is shot and killed

- an officer, while chasing a suspect, tazes him as he exits the median grassy area and enters a lane of traffic. The suspect was killed by traffic.

- a forfeiture case where someone's life savings (cash) were confiscated without due process during a traffic stop

[ChoGGi]

Anything that gets views; police being polite and brutal are both fair game from what I see.