Body cams work for criminal cops. Not for the people.

Body cameras help cops, not the people. There are a multitude of reasons. Off the top of my head:

1. Cops (and their prosecutors) get to review them to build a case. Defendants never get to do that. This allows cops and prosecutors to redraft affidavits to justify illegal and corrupt policing.

2. In most places cops get to choose when to turn on and off their cameras. In many places they can do the same with dash cams. The drug planting Baltimore cop videos that have come out over the past week are just a tiny glimpse into the corruption of policing that body cameras have been used as a workaround for (the cops screwed up, but those body cams have been used to throw likely dozens or even hundreds of innocent people into prison).

3. The camera is looking at it from the perspective of the cop. Studies have shown that people are much more likely to judge the person being filmed than the person filmed. This is why the most progressive places have prohibited interrogation videos that film from behind the investigators.

4. Victims of police crimes do not get to see the videos. They need lawyers to be able to get them. FOIA rules allow cities to endlessly suppress video, especially if it is “part of an investigation” that they are dragging out.

5. Even when video shows the cops doing wrong, it doesn’t matter. Cops still get away with their crimes. But if it shows the people doing anything marginally questionable they get nailed to the wall. The only type of cameras we support are those in the hands of the people, pointing at the cops, with no ability for the police to “lose” or suppress the video.

6. There have been some great articles written by folks on the ground highlighting how body cameras are a way for cops to act like they’re being oppressed with constant surveillance when they’re just trying to “protect and serve,” while politicians can beat their chest and say that they’re doing something to rein in out of control cops. It is a way to make people think, “finally, something has been done — now I can stop paying attention to terrorist policing.”

EXCLUSIVE: Newly Released Video Show Cops Illegally Arresting Cop Watchers

On September 21, 2012, the Peaceful Streets Project came across a DWI stop on West 6th Street in Austin, TX, during a standard roving cop watch patrol. As you can see in both video that are embedded, the Peaceful Streets Project cop watchers (Antonio Buehler and Sarah Dickerson) quietly approach to film the interaction between the police officer and the suspect, while the police officer is still in the vehicle. That police officer is Patrick Oborski, the cop whose illegal arrest of Antonio Buehler on New Year’s Day 2012 helped spur the formation of the Peaceful Streets Project

By every measure of the law, none of the Peaceful Streets Project cop watchers were interfering with the stop. They were far enough from the stop that they were not impeding the investigation. Oborski calls out Antonio Buehler by name, and tells him to back up several times, to which Buehler responds by asking “how far” he has to move back. Oborski then said, “back up until I tell you to stop, back up.” Buehler backs up, then asks Oborski once again how far he needs to move back, but Oborski doesn’t respond.

SGT Adam Johnson then come on the scene. Johnson is Oborski’s supervisor who helped cover up the crimes of Oborski (and Officer Robert Snider) on January 1, 2012.

Johnson then begins to order Buehler and Dickerson to go in the opposite direction that Oborski ordered Buehler to go. Johnson told Buehler and Dickerson to go to the other end the block, on the other side of Oborski, which would have required them to approach Oborski, walk within feet of him in order to pass him and the suspect, and then continue on to the end of the block.

Buehler, recognizing the danger in walking toward the police officer who had previously illegally arrested him, and feeling that it was a trap, repeatedly asked Johnson why he was giving him such an absurd order, how far he needed to move back to not be “interfering,” and reminded Johnson how he could not be interfering at such a distance.

Despite constantly moving back while asking how much further he would have to move back, Buehler was ultimately illegally arrested by Johnson after Buehler asked Johnson why he was being a “bully.”

Johnson then arrested Dickerson who was further away from the stop than Buehler the entire time.

Despite having criminal charges hanging over their heads, the Austin Police Department and city attorneys prevented Buehler, Dickerson, or their lawyers from reviewing the video or retrieving the cameras the police confiscated from them for two years. The Austin Police Department and the city apparently didn’t want the world to see how their cops clearly targeted cop watchers and violated their civil rights by illegally arresting them for filming the police. It wasn’t until a judge ordered the City of Austin to turn over the cameras that Buehler and his legal team were able to see these video.

Johnson was never disciplined or charged for his violation of Buehler and Dickerson’s civil rights, or his crimes on January 1, 2012. Johnson was, however, celebrated for irresponsibly shooting and killing a mentally ill man with his service pistol on Thanksgiving of 2014, while holding horse reins in one hand, toward a major interstate from a distance of about 300′.

Oborski, likewise, was never disciplined or charged for his violation of Buehler and a San Antonio woman’s civil rights on January 1, 2012. Oborski was, however, awarded the department’s first ever Jaime Padron Hero Award after every cop in Austin found out that Oborski was caught on tape abusing a woman, assaulting Buehler, and then trying to frame him with a felony crime that he did not commit.

Austin Police Department won’t discipline, fire, or arrest cops who are caught on camera committing crimes, but they’ll celebrate cops when they irresponsibly kill people.