The Pros And Cons Of Body Cameras For Police

http://www.theonion.com/articles/the-pros-and-cons-of-body-cameras-for-police,38405/

The Onion makes a pretty good, and comical, case for putting body camera’s on police officers.

However, in all seriousness the article overlooks the obvious flipside of police body cameras:

1. Pretty soon every police contact with a citizen will lead to an arrest.  Since there will be a video and audio record of the contact the police officer will be left with less discretion to let people off with just a warning. Why. Because the police officer's supervisor will be able to see exactly how he handled a situation and challenge his judgment. Why did you let that person go? Why didn’t you give him or her a ticket? That individual clearly violated the law and we have unchallengeable video evidence of that fact. Go back and give ‘em a ticket. Keep in mind that the poorer the community the more the local government depends on the revenue acquired by fines to operate (the welfare recipients in the community sure aren’t paying taxes and neither are the businesses that long ago moved out of the area). Will this make people more comfortable when they contact the police or less?
2. A video and audio record of your “youthful indiscretions” will be stored somewhere on the Internet FOREVER. Every violation of the law and every breach of the peace will be recorded and will be a public record that anyone will be able to look at. So remember, the way you behaved toward the police when you were apprehended for being drunk and disorderly will be available for evaluation whenever you apply for a job, entrance into a college, a loan, a security clearance, etc., etc. Keep in mind that businesses today are afraid of getting sued more than anything else and they the reason they are most often sued is because an employ messed up. So employers will likely become more risk adverse and very wary of hiring anyone who has a public record of misbehavior that could be used against the company in a predatory lawsuit.

Of course the considerations above have been rendered irrelevant henceforth, since We, the People, have now decided that we cannot trust our police not to harm us unless they are closely monitored with electronic surveillance devices.