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    325 days ago

    It’s not a crack. This is a grand canyon scale chasm. The decline of the opinion of the police closely follows the release, and reporting, of crimes, and other unethical behaviors, of police. When BWC first started, it was a boon to the reputation of police. However, as the general public has been more able to record police themselves, which strips the police’s control of the who, when, how, and editing, of the recordings the public sees, the opposite effect started to happen. Now the police are working, furiously, to prevent people from recording them, from publicly releasing recordings of police for various reasons, making it harder, if not impossible, to attain BWC footage, and straight-up stopping the use of BWC. A lot more than that is going on. There has been a deluge of leaks of internal communications, amongst authorities, across the country, that are clearly stating that the cops should continue using unconstitutional practices, and that the government, at least locally, would have their backs. Then there is the leaking of footage from some of the most popular training regimes, and conferences, for police that are way out of line, showing they are clearly being trained to view the entire public as the enemy, and that it is fine to kill people, because the cop going home at the end of the shift, is the most important thing there is. This is just the tip of the iceberg of reasons why the police are losing favor.

    The police, the courts, the legislature, are who is responsible for the public outcry against the police. Not Russia, not China, not any foreign power.