2024-08-12

Thank BLM for police body cameras

It is, of course, 10 years since Saint Michael Brown met his untimely end at the hands of a racist police officer, which kicked off the Black Lives Matter movement. Brown's situation was immortalized in the chant "Hands up, don't shoot!", at least until the court case revealed that this was not actually supported by the evidence, but at least BLM secured a few million dollar mansions for its Marxist organizers.

Still, people will believe what they want to believe, and court transcripts are notoriously hard to parse accurately. One frequently heard theme from officials coming out of these events is wanting actual body camera footage. This was pretty hard to argue with - it's not cheap to run a body cam recording services for a police department, but in terms of saving court time (one way or the other) it would be a clear win. So most police departments install both dashcams and body cams. The BLM folks celebrate, as it brings indisputable evidence of the police racism they claim. Right?

Try searching YouTube for police bodycam footage. You end up with an awful lot of footage where the perp / perps are a) black, b) violent, c) mouthy even when arrested, and d) arrested by police officers whose patience would have impressed Job himself. Ladies involved in shoplifting Walmart and Target are particularly egregious examples of this, by the way. I do particularly enjoy their almost universal use of "I can't breathe!" when being cuffed, along with Don't touch me!" when the officer tries to start the arrest process.

Certainly, there's selection bias - bodycams from fatal shootings with police liability don't make it onto these channels. However, they are still accessible elsewhere - and the bodycams make it very difficult for the police to escape accountability.

Conversely, there are at least as many horrible examples of police coming onto a scene, looking to aid injured parties, and being fatally shot themselves, so one would have to conclude that an awful lot of black receipients of police "violence" really brought it on themselves.

I wonder whether BLM fell into the trap of believing their own propaganda. Modern police bodycams generally suggest that an awful lot of black arrestees are very lucky not to have got the living crap beat out of them, and modern police tolerance for them is way too high, if anything.