The video shows supposed first use of a gun mounted camera by an officer.

Think this will be the wave of the future in law enforcement? Especially in today’s political climate? Would you use one?

This is not a critique of the officers use of force or tactics.

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Life Is A Gift. Defend it!

As one who was forced to use my issued .38 more than once during my career (retired in ‘97) this is the future for LE. Would I want one? Yes, absolutely, and I’d want a dash & body camera too in hopes of avoiding prison when I’m right morally & legally.

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Old Cop
LEO (Ret.)

It's a good idea and I definitely could see it being adopted by Law Enforcement.
However, this will do absolutely nothing to prevent accusations of police brutality and hate crimes because unfortunately it seems as though the vast majority of the accusers care little for the circumstances of the shooting, arbitrarily labeling any police shooting as an instance of police brutality or a hate crime to fit their agenda.
The gun cam may help justify shootings in the courtroom, but out on the streets it seemingly makes no difference whether or not the shooting was justified because the guy who got shot will always be pushed as a pillar of the community who would never hurt a fly with all evidence to the contrary being written off as circumstantial or planted to fit their agenda, and obviously the many folks with persecution complexes will happily eat up such rhetoric because it supports their lifestyle.

If the current situation in Seattle has taught us anything it's that certain folks (namely those of the criminal element) would like nothing more than to see Law Enforcement completely abolished so that they can commit crimes with impunity and they take advantage of all the bleeding hearts as well as the folks with persecution complexes by spinning any lawful use of force as unjust, excessive, unnecessary, brutal, and motivated by discrimination where applicable.

In the end, people see/hear things however they want to, in whatever way supports their opinions and their lifestyle, so obviously dishonest people will choose to view police shootings in the most negative light possible because if they were to accept that sometimes police are in fact just keeping the peace and have to use force to do so, then they might also have to accept that some of the things they themselves have done are in fact wrong and have come at the expense of innocent people, ergo that Drunken Disorderly Conduct, D.U.I., or Domestic Disturbance charge they received was in fact justified. From there they'd have to face all sorts of difficult and potentially terrifying possibilities like their actions have consequences which would mean having to assume personal responsibility for said actions as opposed to simply writing them off, passing the buck, or making flimsy justifications like "Well, I've had it rough so It's okay to be a scumbag" for themselves.

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Shooting Comfort is bilateral.

Everyone in America should watch this. Shows the sheer terror of police work. Never seen anything more frightening and I hope the young officer is ok.

PS—Bob I had to look up the rest of the story. The shooter got 40 years and was hit 8 times by the officer. The officer was also shot with a shotgun—The shooter had a sawed off shotgun—and had 38 pellets in his shoulder.

MUST-SEE VIDEO: Man found guilty after first-ever gun cam footage of officer-involved shooting used in court

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Possum—The other white meat!

The rules are too complex. I like the unambiguous, simplier rules I grew up with...
1) if you actively, physically resist arrest, you’re going to get hurt.
2) if you draw a weapon against a cop, you’re going to get shot and possibly killed.

Body cams work fine. Those simple rules don’t require a frame by frame analysis of video. It’s abiguity around the current rules that creates the problem.

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Vegan by proxy.

A camera of ANY TYPE is a double edged sword! It all depends on "what the viewer wants to see"! No matter how good your training, good intentions, etc are, sometimes things to haywire. Prosecutors and jurors sitting in a chair in an air conditioned Court Room are NOT on the line in the heat of it and can misconstrue events sometimes.

That said, YES - sometimes it can help too! It can also be an intimidation to the Officer who might hesitate and wind up paying a heavy price. Being judged after the fact by someone who is untrained and wasn't there in the heat of the moment is sometimes a matter of luck!

Squad car cameras can be ok. I generally support them. Body cameras have flaws, which are likely to be repeated in gun cameras, and may bring their own.

The first is that the field of view is too narrow, so they do not show all of the surrounding circumstances that should be going into the assessment of uses of force. That is a major flaw and almost completely invalidates their use.

It also shifts the constitutional assessment of force decisions, which are not supposed to be based on things discovered later. I'd be concerned a gun camera could screw up functioning, too.

The last flaw is more of an interesting side issue: what has been learned is that contrary to popular perception, force of all types is rare. In fact, at least one study done by WSU found that the use of force was rare enough that they could not come to statistically valid generalizations! They also found that suspect conduct was the big variable, and generally, just as awful as LE has been saying.

Force is ugly, and effective force more so. Tough.

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NHI, 10-8.

Now that the use of BWCs is on the rise, and being used to vindicate cops in many cases, in certain jurisdictions there is a new game afoot.

They are now passing legislation to ban the use use of this camera footage for evidentiary purposes, only allowing it for "internal investigation" purposes.

Obviously the BWCs are clearing too many cops and not fitting the desired agenda.

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Tony

That position was advocated here and failed miserably. I'd sure like to see examples of where that actually was enacted. If there were a criminal case filed against an officer, the camera record would be potentially exculpatory and could not be kept out by statute due to the Constitutional issues with regard to Brady/Giglio evidence. Even arguing to do so would likely present a Bar poroblem.

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NHI, 10-8.

I watched the video. Confused at first because I could see the officer's pistol and shooting hand. Then I figured out that there were two recordings, one from the gun-camera and the other from the body-camera.

Interesting technology. Apparently the gun-camera activates only when the pistol is drawn and/or in firing position. I can see this as being valuable, both as a means of clearly showing the threat, but also as a means of validating the body-camera recording with simultaneous second source.

It seems obvious to me that the gun-camera recording relies heavily on the body-camera recording in order to provide context and document the reasons for deploying deadly force. The gun-camera recording alone would be of much more limited usefulness.

It’s split screen. Weapon camera is in upper left corner, body lower right.

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Possum—The other white meat!

Thank you. I figured that out and was editing my original post while you were entering your post.

It confused me at first too. I had to watch several times to figure it out. The gun camera does not start recording until it was drawn.

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Possum—The other white meat!

Oh, how I wish that I could have been born during a simpler time. Yeah, every era comes with its own specific challenges, but I think that I would rather deal with the real, legitimate problems of yesterday than continue having to deal with the highly exaggerated, overreacting, solutions-in-search-of-problems issues of today.

I swear, I'm honestly starting to think that people just want to be unhappy so no matter how much the world improves, no matter how easy life becomes, people will always come up with new reasons to be unhappy and accentuate the negativity of their lives.

I'm all for solving legitimate problems, but I'm fed up with extreme measures being employed as solutions which aren't nearly common enough to justify the necessary investments required.

Lastly, I'm getting tired of just how invasive surveillance has become. I feel sorry for honest policemen especially, they choose to put their lives on the line for the common good, yet they're honestly treated like criminals themselves who have to be kept under constant surveillance, having their every action judged by people who have never had to walk in their shoes, and should someone feel that the amount of force they used to subdue a threat was excessive, then they could be in serious trouble. It's absurd to think that in simplest terms, we are living in a society in which if a Police officer should fasten the handcuffs too tightly around the wrists of an absolute monster who is guilty of some of the most unthinkable atrocities, then that cop could be villified himself. Now more than ever, I feel that honest police officers are deserving of the utmost respect, because they have to deal with the absolute worst of humanity on a daily basis to protect a society of thankless bleeding hearts who place more value on the health of absolute scoundrels who prey on them than they do for those who protect them.

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Shooting Comfort is bilateral.

I agree. Human beings seems to have a built in drive to strive to accomplish things. Build the Roman Empire. Conquer the West. Go to the moon. Go to Mars. When life becomes too easy and people stop striving for big things, self destructive behavior seems to follow.

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Vegan by proxy.