Prisoners Sue Alabama, Calling Prison Labor System a ‘Form of Slavery’

[David Lockmiller]

(12-14-2023 10:44 AM)David Lockmiller Wrote:  New York Times, December 14, 2023, The Morning: A disappointing policing change

In June 2022, 79 police killings were captured by police cameras nationwide. In the year and a half since, the police has released video in only 42 percent of those incidents.

Police departments can refuse to release videos for longer, if ever. Five years after an officer in Montgomery, Alabama, sicced his dog on a burglary suspect and killed him, the department still has not released the footage, citing the potential for “civil unrest.”

In 2013, a federal judge ordered New York officers to start piloting the use of cameras. Surveys indicated that the public supported the idea. But when the N.Y.P.D. established the policy, it decided that no video would automatically become public. To obtain footage, people would have to submit a request through an opaque and slow process. The N.Y.P.D. would decide what to release.

The Failed Promise of Police Body Cameras
by Eric Umansky New York Times December 13, 2023

n Memphis, where officers in a street-crimes unit regularly abused residents. They wore body cameras but faced no consequences until the case of Tyre Nichols, who was beaten to death this January by officers in the unit, attracted national attention. The footage showed that some of the officers took their cameras off. Others knew they were being recorded and pummeled Nichols anyway. It was only after public outcry that the department took the rare step of releasing footage, which contradicted initial police accounts and led to state and federal charges for five officers.

President Abraham Lincoln, November 10, 1864, in response to a serenade from supporters following the 1864 Presidential Election: “It has long been a grave question whether any government, not too strong for the liberties of its people, can be strong enough to maintain its own existence in great emergencies.”