I don’t understand what everyone is complaining about. This is a serious proposal by the Republican party to address the rampant problem of police officers committing murder, assault, and other felonious mayhem against innocent Americans, of which a disproportionate number are African Americans. I guarantee that the number of such incidents caught on camera by citizens will be reduced by this important and thoughtful measure. You will hear a lot less about these problems once this legislation is passed.
Don’t you libs want to do something about this problem???
I would like to know the ACTUAL purpose of the bill. Apart from making it harder for cops to get caught abusing the citizenry.
It’s like this dipshit looked at a graph (helpfully supplied by the police union, I’m sure) that directly correlated cell camera ownership with cops getting caught shooting helpless citizens.
20 feet is too damn close for me. I don’t trust cops to get that close to them. Also, that seems to me to be close enough they could arrest you for interfering with an officer.
But, once it’s on the books it becomes very easy for legislators to expand. Because then the discussion wouldn’t be about whether it’s a good idea in the first place but how far the limit should be.
I think that’s exactly the case Meri. Look, I know a cop here in Tucson. Been on the force 40 years at least. He happens to be a reasonable guy and he relates that the cops see the world as “us against them”. And “them” is anyone not a cop. So all civilians are seen as real perps/threats.Other than this one cop I cite every other cop I have approached reacts with initial tenseness before relaxing. Example: There was a fair near our home. To get to it my wife and I had to cross a busy street under the watch of two cops doing traffic control. We are older folks and so I thanked one of the cops who reacted with a surly “Yeah sure”. His partner quickly said “Lighten up dude”.
Any bets this assgasket also thinks that this proposed law would not apply to the Vanilla ISIS crew hold up in Oregon when they get within 20 feet of law enforcement officials?
Loggers have an even more dangerous profession. IIRC their work-related risk of fatality/serious injury is equivalent to one office worker in a 10-storyoffice building being killed or maimed every day.
Sorry guys, but I have to say this isn’t something we need to get flamed up about. If it was 50 or 100 feet, I would call it an overreaction to police being caught misbehaving and an obvious infringement of rights. But 20 feet? All an officer has to do is warn someone to stay back 20 feet and everyone is good. Otherwise, as Kavanaugh says, it’s a distraction: You’ve got an officer trying to deal with what could be a potentially dangerous suspect while he senses people coming up behind him — people who may be accomplices or about to be new victims of the suspect. This is a recipe for yet another idiotic and preventable incident, yet openly and legally filming from a safer distance is still going to have the same effect on any police who favor violent aggression. Don’t confuse a good camera angle with endangering yourself or a police officer doing his duty.
Note: Nothing in the above shall be construed to imply that people fighting against police abuse don’t have my complete support. But let’s not waste energy fighting sensible ideas. That is what we have the NRA for.
“looked at a graph … that directly correlated cell camera ownership with cops getting caught shooting helpless citizens.”
I don’t think so. I think Kavanagh’s experience as a cop tells him that there is a safe distance from which to use a camera and there is a distance that actually endangers both the photographer and the policeman, depending on who the suspect is and who the photographer is. The latter is completely unpredictable and one other interpretation of arrtown’s cop friend’s is not that “all civilians are seen as real perps/threats” but that they have real experience that informs them that any encounter in which a suspect is involved because of surprises coming from around them.
The telling fact that is missing from this thread is that police have a generally positive attitude (especially after actually using them) towards body cameras. So moving a citizen photographer a mere twenty (20!) feet away isn’t about hiding police behavior it’s about surviving the kinds of things that can happen to a cop without a moment’s notice.
(ya think?)