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Texas police want uvalde bodycam footage suppressed
- phnofive 4y agoI don't think the fifth amendment applies to videotape.
- woodruffw 4y agoEven if it did: the courts have repeatedly held (to my disdain) that the police are not required to enforce the law. My guess is that they're trying to hedge against the inevitable wave of civil suits against them, which will ultimately compel the release of the bodycam footage. But their hope is to run out the clock on public outrage.
- jmpman 4y agoI’ve wondered if someone could run for mayor of Uvalde on the simple platform of firing everyone in their police force, and eliminating pensions for any police officers deployed to the school.
- manquer 4y agoIn Texas ? Likely not. we are here in this debate over and over after columbine, sandy hook and countless others because there is strong minority who either don’t care or believe gun freedom is worth the cost. I don’t think uvalde is going to change that overnight
- Apocryphon 4y agoThey were talking about taking the police to task for cowardice or incompetence, not running for gun control.
- manquer 4y agoI misread that, the point is still the same though, Police reformation[1] is even more murky in terms of support than gun control, proposals for changing qualified immunity, national background check for officers, privatization, use of force , no knock warrants have gone nowhere for the most part. [1] What defund the police really is or should be about
- jmpman 4y agoA police force of cowards? Texans will vote to get rid of them.
- sokoloff 4y agoYou might win the election, but you won't manage to deliver on pulling the portion of their pension already credited.
- jmpman 4y agoI would run on bankrupting the entire city before paying one dime on the police officer’s pensions
- threatofrain 4y agoWill the bankruptcy court then seize the city's assets and prioritize creditors?
- Apocryphon 4y agoMaybe they would start with the PD, which consumed 40% of the city's budget.
- jmpman 4y agoA city sponsored whole hog BBQ in the town center until the town burns through all assets.
- moogly 4y agoGood luck surviving the election.
- pchristensen 4y agohttps://www.imdb.com/title/tt0351977/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0351977/
- clint 4y agoThere would be a very real chance the police would simply just murder you and your family. There is ample precedent, in the united states, in most of our lifetimes.
- sokoloff 4y agoThey're not wrong; I'm fairly sure that that bodycam footage would show nothing but weakness.
- 1024core 4y ago"weakness" of character, that is.
- Arrath 4y agoI think the 'weakness' of their response is plainly obvious. If criminals can find advantages in this footage, its an opportunity to overhaul training programs and response plans. The training and response was woefully inadequate for this crisis, after all. There should be no reasonable reality in which the release of this footage is suppressed. This is an undeniable tragedy, battening down the hatches and obstinately trying to weather the storm will do no favors for anyone.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- akira2501 4y agoThat leads to the most obvious question: "Are your training manuals and materials as closely guarded of a secret?" If not, then your implementation of them, however compromised, is not a secret either.
- kadoban 4y agoI've seen some of them passed around. They're not secret as far as I can tell. They pretty obviously are just embarassed by their failure.
- WaxProlix 4y agoThere's an outside chance it's even worse than what we know now - maybe they killed a kid or two, or did something otherwise more shameful than expected.
- TillE 4y agoThe language quoted looks like some absolutely generic form response that they probably give to every request. Pretty wild to send that garbage in a high-profile case like this.
- Eddy_Viscosity2 4y agoNo cover-up here, please go about your business.
- smm11 4y agoWill it show even more of them running away from the school?
- EricE 4y agoIt sort of blows up the whole pro gun control argument that citizens shouldn't be expected to have to protect themselves but instead rely on law enforcement :p
- johndevor 4y agoYes it does.
- threatofrain 4y agoPeople who want weaker and stronger gun control laws can find consensus for the idea that trained police are the most tactically equipped to deal with an ongoing crime, and that you should not interfere with professionals who are already on the scene. 40% of Uvalde's city budget is going to police. The police went in to save their own kids, but detained and chastised parents who went in to do the same. How many more trained experts with guns we do need to stop school shootings? Should townsfolk have enough guns and force on their side to subdue the police so that they can go into classrooms themselves as an impromptu tactical force?
- johndevor 4y agoAccountability is the issue. If they can tax you by force, they're not going to put themselves in harms way. They already got paid. (Generalization of course, but true in many life-and-death situations.)
- kube-system 4y agoMost people won't willingly die at work for any amount of money or accountability, and I don't blame them. These kinds of situations are outrageous because people want to believe in superheros, but they don't exist.
- falcolas 4y agoWhen a group sees themselves superheroes, are treated like superheroes, put superhero slogans on their vehicles, are given weapons and armor and hazard pay based on their imminent superhero behavior, only to run and cower at the first sign of danger... Perhaps it's not the rest of us who are the problem.
- encryptluks2 4y agoDid people expect them to incriminate themselves?
- kube-system 4y agoincriminate? What laws did the police break?
- AnimalMuppet 4y agoIn the court of law? Maybe none. In the court of public opinion? Maybe quite a bit.
- encryptluks2 4y agoI can think of a few crimes that they could be charged with, but without evidence it certainly makes it harder.
- aaaaaaaaata 4y agoWithout legal requirement to protect anyone, probably no actual liability, besides being accused of wrong job syndrome or cowardice
- encryptluks2 4y agoIf you block an ambulance and someone dies that can be considered manslaughter. Likewise, if a cop prevents people from trying to save others which they obviously aren't going to do, then that would be very similar.
- kube-system 4y agoLike what?
- encryptluks2 4y agoLike a lesser degree of manslaughter. If they prevented people from entering that could have saved lives.
- kingcharles 4y agoI'm a serial litigator of Freedom of Information requests. The reason I have to even litigate is because the public bodies believe every tiny thing they do is not disclosable. I'm about 6 years into one lawsuit to disclose the contents of a jail Policy and Procedures manual. The AG ruled that it was all subject to disclosure except the bits about locks and keys and where the weapons are stored. The jail is free to ignore the AG ruling and continues to maintain that even the sections on how the jail library books are top secret. It's absolutely impossible to know if the jail employees are doing their jobs as they are supposed to without the public knowing what those roles are and what the job requirements are. You can't keep these people honest without knowing if they are abusing their positions. Public disclosure should be the mandatory default for public bodies.
- hibern8 4y agoThank you for your work. How is the jail able to ignore the AG ruling?
- kingcharles 4y agoThe AG's legal team in Illinois can issue binding or non-binding rulings. So, even though they gave a detailed legal breakdown of their ruling and why it applied, and (bless them) having read through the entire 800 page manual, they still only issued a non-binding ruling which the Sheriff's office just laughed at. For some reason they only issue binding rulings in a tiny fraction of very contentious cases. It sucks. It doesn't make any sense to me. It can take two years to get a non-binding ruling on a case just for the public body to ignore it.
- orzig 4y agoThank you for your work
- kingcharles 4y agoNo problem. I wish what I didn't wasn't necessary. I'm helping others to try to make changes to the FOIA laws to fix the slew of problems. It's baby steps. It's like hacking - laws are written, the bugs are found, they are fixed, it's just that it takes decades to make the change, unlike coding where it takes 2 minutes to recompile.
- SrslyJosh 4y agoYeah, sure. The "weakness" they don't want exposed is them standing around in the hallway doing nothing while the murderer took his time in a classroom full of kids.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- rasz 4y agoSome went in for their own children https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/officers-rescued-own-children-texas/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/officers-rescued-own-child... at this point I assume cops shot those children
- rickeydidio 4y agoI don't want to be Conspiracy Guy here but I read that the officers on the scene fired 26-27 shots into the classroom where the shooter was. 26-27 sounds like a LOT of shots. I get it that this isn't some sniper rifle on Call of Duty but is this going to end up like a Pat Tillman situation where we find out later that one of these kids was hit by friendly fire? Where did those 26-27 shots end up? Sounds a bit reckless in those close confines without more details.
- throw0101a 4y agoMeh: > [the videos] just show the parking lot. how is that useful * https://twitter.com/darth/status/1536387368101416961 https://twitter.com/darth/status/1536387368101416961
- woodruffw 4y agoVideos establish a chronology, and precise locations for each officer. Even if it's an hour of them sitting on their hands, it's important (and rightfully public) evidence.
- jmyeet 4y agoAre we afraid won't actually do their job when it actually involves putting themselves in danger? I think the cat is out of the bag on that one. Quite famously, the police are much better at shooting children [1] than they are at shooting to protect children. The Uvalde PD consumes 40% of the town budget ($4m of $10m exclusive of a $500k grant they got from the state of Texas months earlier). 19 police officers were on scene and sat twiddling their thumbs for an hour despite repeated 911 calls from students inside. Oh actually not quite nothing: they threatened to violate the probation of a mother on scene [2]. There's an obvious upside to this particular shooter dying but it has one unfortunate side effect: Texas allows information to be suppressed when the suspect is deceased [3]. Had he lived it would've been inevitable this bodycam footage and other evidence would've come out. Now? We'll see. I've now lost count of the number of times to story has changed from the Uvalde PD. But nothing here will change. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Tamir_Rice https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Tamir_Rice [2]: https://sports.yahoo.com/uvalde-mom-ran-school-save-025748850.html https://sports.yahoo.com/uvalde-mom-ran-school-save-02574885... [3]: https://www.texastribune.org/2018/04/22/texas-law-allows-police-keep-details-about-deceased-suspects-confident/ https://www.texastribune.org/2018/04/22/texas-law-allows-pol...
- maybelsyrup 4y ago> But nothing here will change. It's hard but it's important to keep faith, and to keep working to change people's minds about police. Even your comment can make a difference: a place like HN is full of intelligent people who generally come here fairly open minded. Maybe your comment - the top one right now - can open someone's eyes to what cops really are. Stay in the fight!
- ncmncm 4y agoWhat would be a reasonable outcome? Firing all of the current PD staff seems like a great first step. Trick is, do you hire more in their place, and how do you pick them?
- QuadmasterXLII 4y ago
- doodlebugging 4y agoI thought body cam footage was public data, discoverable and releasable under the law. There is no one left to prosecute here since they killed the shooter so there is no reason to delay disclosure. That thin blue line looks more and more like a line for cowards to hide behind while they seek to escape accountability for actions they know would have them arrested if they had no badge. Simply holding their noses while a colleague escapes prosecution for criminal acts by hiding behind a badge or a brotherhood of LEO is about as chickenshit as it gets.
- pigtailgirl 4y ago-- bottom link in this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31729913 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31729913 :=) --
- calibas 4y agoSo if the person ends up dead, the police can hide the videos. That seems ripe for abuse...
- philistine 4y agoImagine a group of hired goons, in a medieval setting, who are paid in pillaged goods to maintain a certain group of people in power. Can you transpose those goons to modern police officers?
- Sohcahtoa82 4y ago> That thin blue line looks more and more like a line for cowards to hide behind while they seek to escape accountability for actions they know would have them arrested if they had no badge. Half the country has known this for a couple years now. It's a shame it took the deaths of children for the rest to start to figure it out.
- clint 4y agoHalf the country has known this for ~CENTURIES~
- Vladimof 4y agoWe all know that they were weak... the question is if they will be held accountable, somehow.
- lobocinza 4y ago"Security" through obscurity.
- PointyFluff 4y ago
- Sohcahtoa82 4y ago> Texas police want uvalde bodycam footage suppressed The only time this should ever be legal is if the footage is of the officer using the restroom. Otherwise, as far as I'm concerned, even requesting that body cam footage be suppressed is a blatant admission of guilt.
- susiecambria 4y agoKnowing a lot of police officers and having worked with them for years to address gangs/gang violence among other things, I have to say that painting all law enforcement with one brush is not helpful or useful.