The thing to remember is, *every single time* an officer discharges his weapon, there's going to be some level of review of the incident. I think having the whole thing on tape is a great addition to that -- in the event of a "bad shoot", you have better evidence than the word of the victim (if they're even still alive), and in the event of a "good shoot", you have extra weight given to the word of the cop.
I'd like to elaborate on that last one. I'm not on the front lines, so I don't base this on solid facts, but I get the impression that the weight given to the word of a cop has gone down quite a bit -- there's a lot of anti-police sentiment out there, and/or a lot of sympathy for criminals. I think of cases like Compean/Ramos (the two border patrol agents who got sent to prison for shooting a fleeing drug smuggler in the ass) might have gone a bit differently if they had gun-cam footage where they could pull up a frame, point to the guy's hand, and say, "Here's where we thought he had a gun." Then the jury could look at it from their perspective and decide for themselves whether it looked threatening or whether it was just something they made up after the fact to cover their own asses. I personally believe the former -- well, actually I personally don't care because I don't think law enforcement needs an excuse to shoot a fleeing drug smuggler -- but it would be beneficial to have evidence to help us all decide.
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The thing to remember is, *every single time* an officer discharges his weapon, there's going to be some level of review of the incident. I think having the whole thing on tape is a great addition to that -- in the event of a "bad shoot", you have better evidence than the word of the victim (if they're even still alive), and in the event of a "good shoot", you have extra weight given to the word of the cop.
I'd like to elaborate on that last one. I'm not on the front lines, so I don't base this on solid facts, but I get the impression that the weight given to the word of a cop has gone down quite a bit -- there's a lot of anti-police sentiment out there, and/or a lot of sympathy for criminals. I think of cases like Compean/Ramos (the two border patrol agents who got sent to prison for shooting a fleeing drug smuggler in the ass) might have gone a bit differently if they had gun-cam footage where they could pull up a frame, point to the guy's hand, and say, "Here's where we thought he had a gun." Then the jury could look at it from their perspective and decide for themselves whether it looked threatening or whether it was just something they made up after the fact to cover their own asses. I personally believe the former -- well, actually I personally don't care because I don't think law enforcement needs an excuse to shoot a fleeing drug smuggler -- but it would be beneficial to have evidence to help us all decide.