Lianachan wrote:Of course, this only came about because a 16 year old girl filmed the incident on her phone. Makes you wonder how many other “resisting arrest” people are in jail, or a grave yard, where this sort of thing has gone on undocumented.
Well, in other contexts, United Airlines initially claimed that passenger David Dao was being "disruptive" and "belligerent" before they had Chicago airport police beat the living crap out of him. They changed their tune somewhat when video of the incident supported other passengers' story that he was neither disruptive nor belligerent.
Related to the above, many have said the David Dao incident is an example of racism. I'm not so sure about that. I'm as white as they come, and if you think United Airlines wouldn't beat the living crap out of me, I do not share your confidence. That's most of the reason that the last time I was on a United Airlines aeroplane was 2016, despite the fact that I am a million mile flier in their programme with lifetime gold status.
But, back to the original incident, yes, video is keeping the world more honest. I can't find the reference, because a Google search returns so many results I can't find the one I want. But, there was an incident where an American military officer in Vietnam reported numerous civilian deaths. He later saw the report filed higher in the command chain, which reported no civilian deaths and 100% combatant deaths. No video. Oh well.
Anecdotes, so take them for what they're worth. But, someone on the news the other day was commenting that in major US cities, if you look at complaints about police brutality, they are very typically concentrated on a very small subset of the police force. Now, if you are a police officer involved in a situation where you legitimately had to draw your weapon and fire it, injuring or killing someone, to protect yourself or someone else, would you like for there to be a video record of what happened, or would you prefer that there be none?
In a somewhat different context, TSA (US airport security) seems to have quite a track record for "losing" videos of incidents where complaints of mistreatment were made. How unfortunate for them that the video that would have supported their story and shown that their actions were totally appropriate, somehow was lost. You would thing an organisation that gets such bad press would welcome video vindication of their actions, which were totally appropriate. I would think an organisation so frequently falsely accused of bad behaviour would figure out a more reliable way to store the videos that would vindicate them!
But anyway, it's after midnight, I'll put on a few episodes of
Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt before going to sleep, and then riding the bicycle to Jurong Bird Bark tomorrow (well, actually, later today).