| You are a private citizen. A police officer is not while in the process of carrying out their duty. This is, in part, why they wear a uniform and why the are badged and numbered. The police have a very special and privileged place in our society. They apply the law which means that they individually (and as a group) are given special rights by society for our protection. However, they are in a unique (and uniquely easy) position to abuse those extra rights. How can we fight corruption if the people who's job it is to fight corruption are corrupt? How can we prove that they aren't? The extra powers the police are given make it very easy for them to be corrupt and to hide the fact. Complaints against the police force are rarely about them recording their work, it is about them recording private citizen't going about their business for no good reason. Legitimate protestors legitimately protesting. The police complain that they shouldn't have to be recorded going about their business as no-one else puts up with that. But they are wrong. They apply the law, the final step in the chain — and that isn't recorded. Everything said in parliament is recorded, everything said in court is recorded. Hell, even truck drivers have tacographs! Should police cars have dash-cams in this day and age? Yes.
Should police have google-glass-like recorders recording what they see and what they do? Yes probably.
Should a police gun record everything it shoots? definitely. And the same applies for prisons and prison officers. These are exactly the people who society has a valid, just reason to record in their duty. A good cop has nothing to fear from more cameras. Even better—automating the process should, if done correctly, mean the death of a ton of paperwork. The other argument for the police recording themselves is the fact that recording equipment is now so prevalent on walls and in the hands of the citizenry that they would surely need their own evidence to back up what the cops say. How many jury's will continue to take the word of a cop over two conflicting video recordings? Imagine how persuasive video footage of a cop being punched in the goggles would be? Surely the cops need that? |