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You are here: Home / Civil Rights / Criminal Justice / Shitty Cops / Can You Put A Guillotine Inside A Tumbrel?

Can You Put A Guillotine Inside A Tumbrel?

by Zandar|  April 14, 201512:34 pm| 130 Comments

This post is in: Shitty Cops, I Smell a Pulitzer!

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I mean, it would have to be a pretty large tumbrel to fit the guillotine inside, and you would need a lot of pulling power to drag the thing through the streets and still retain the cutting force necessary, but I’m sure we could be motivated to get to at least the proof-of-concept build phase based on Bobo’s latest crime against reality over body cameras on police.

Putting a camera on someone is a sign that you don’t trust him, or he doesn’t trust you. When a police officer is wearing a camera, the contact between an officer and a civilian is less likely to be like intimate friendship and more likely to be oppositional and transactional. Putting a camera on an officer means she is less likely to cut you some slack, less likely to not write that ticket, or to bend the regulations a little as a sign of mutual care.

Putting a camera on the police officer means that authority resides less in the wisdom and integrity of the officer and more in the videotape. During a trial, if a crime isn’t captured on the tape, it will be presumed to never have happened.

Cop-cams will insult families. It’s worth pointing out that less than 20 percent of police calls involve felonies, and less than 1 percent of police-citizen contacts involve police use of force. Most of the time cops are mediating disputes, helping those in distress, dealing with the mentally ill or going into some home where someone is having a meltdown. When a police officer comes into your home wearing a camera, he’s trampling on the privacy that makes a home a home. He’s recording people on what could be the worst day of their lives, and inhibiting their ability to lean on the officer for care and support.

Cop-cams insult individual dignity because the embarrassing things recorded by them will inevitably get swapped around. The videos of the naked crime victim, the berserk drunk, the screaming maniac will inevitably get posted online — as they are already. With each leak, culture gets a little coarser. The rules designed to keep the videos out of public view will inevitably be eroded and bent.

So, yes, on balance, cop-cams are a good idea. But, as a journalist, I can tell you that when I put a notebook or a camera between me and my subjects, I am creating distance between me and them. Cop-cams strike a blow for truth, but they strike a blow against relationships. Society will be more open and transparent, but less humane and trusting.

The obvious response is “there’s nothing humane and trusting about shooting a guy 8 times in the back, then planting a taser on the ground next to his dead, handcuffed body” but this bulging sack of tepid mammoth crap in glasses here probably wouldn’t get it anyway.  It’s difficult to argue that your right to not feel embarrassed by a body camera recording your drunken rendition of Kanye’s “Flashing Lights” somehow trumps your right not to be shot and killed, but our sacky protagonist, well he goes there, boldly leaving a trail of Santorum behind him.

Anyhoo it’ll be a challenge for the build team, I know.  Let’s get to work.

 

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Previous Post: « Down with the Kidz
Next Post: How Not To Get Killed By the Police, Part I: Don’t Be Black »

Reader Interactions

130Comments

  1. 1.

    chrisH

    April 14, 2015 at 12:39 pm

    Either body cameras or billy clubs. I’ll let the cops choose. Somehow I bet they choose the one that lets them keep their guns.

  2. 2.

    Brachiator

    April 14, 2015 at 12:39 pm

    So, yes, on balance, cop-cams are a good idea. But, as a journalist, I can tell you that when I put a notebook or a camera between me and my subjects, I am creating distance between me and them.

    Did everyone catch the error here?

    Bobo ain’t no journalist.

  3. 3.

    schrodinger's cat

    April 14, 2015 at 12:39 pm

    Bobo should leave the moralizing to Chunky Bobo. He should stick to what he does the best, sell conservative economic and foreign policy insanity to totebaggers by articulating it in a nice soothing voice with big words.

  4. 4.

    MattF

    April 14, 2015 at 12:40 pm

    ‘Justice’ is such a complicated thing. You can’t expect the plebs to actually understand it, or want it, or get it… so why bother?

  5. 5.

    shell

    April 14, 2015 at 12:41 pm

    or a camera between me and my subjects, I am creating distance between me and them.

    And when was the last time you shot down one of your subjects.

    He complains that it would ruin ‘relationships.’ That’s exactly why they’re needed…cause the relationship between the police and the public has become so royally fucked up.

  6. 6.

    schrodinger's cat

    April 14, 2015 at 12:43 pm

    One of the reasons that cops have such a hair trigger reaction is the proliferation and the ubiquity of guns. Thanks NRA.

  7. 7.

    CONGRATULATIONS!

    April 14, 2015 at 12:43 pm

    Putting a camera on an officer means she is less likely to cut you some slack, less likely to not write that ticket, or to bend the regulations a little as a sign of mutual care.

    In other words, no more special treatment because you’re white.

    Seriously, that’s why he’s upset.

  8. 8.

    bcw

    April 14, 2015 at 12:44 pm

    Stereotypical Brooks concern trolling. He tepidly says he supports police cameras to cover his butt but devotes the entire column to saying how terrible police cameras are – he is trying harder to get readers to oppose cameras than support them. The privacy issue is nonsense; citizens lose privacy when “Cops” carries around a video crew for television not when the policeman is wearing a body camera. There is no reason anyone should ever see any of that footage unless there is a criminal case.

  9. 9.

    Chris

    April 14, 2015 at 12:46 pm

    “If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to hear.”

    Cops and security state sycophants have been telling us that one for fucking decades. Now sleep in the bed you made, cocksuckers.

  10. 10.

    Mike in NC

    April 14, 2015 at 12:47 pm

    I can verify that every time a cop handed me a speeding ticket, the feeling of ‘intimate friendship’ was just overwhelming.

  11. 11.

    sparrow

    April 14, 2015 at 12:47 pm

    So basically he’s worried that as a rich white guy (who is unlikely to be shot by police), body cameras might interfere with him weasling his way out of a ticket. Is that about right?

  12. 12.

    Zandar

    April 14, 2015 at 12:48 pm

    @CONGRATULATIONS!: Oh gawd almighty yes, that’s his *real* complaint.

  13. 13.

    Villago Delenda Est

    April 14, 2015 at 12:48 pm

    “Trust” is something that is difficult to earn, and very easy to lose.

    The police in this country have lost it. Bobo doesn’t have it, either.

    These motherfuckers need to be watched at all times. “Trust, but verify”.

  14. 14.

    Bobby Thomson

    April 14, 2015 at 12:49 pm

    Shorter Bobo: cop cameras are bad because they will document white privilege.

  15. 15.

    Bobby Thomson

    April 14, 2015 at 12:50 pm

    @sparrow: correct

  16. 16.

    Belafon

    April 14, 2015 at 12:51 pm

    I’m pretty sure in neighborhoods where the cops work to build a relationship with residents, there aren’t as many shootings. It’s the fact that cops aren’t building relationships that its requiring cameras.

  17. 17.

    pete

    April 14, 2015 at 12:52 pm

    @Zandar: Keith Richards once complained that the English police wouldn’t stay bought — they’d take your bribe and then fail to lose the evidence. In those good old days, American police kept their side of such bargains. Not sure I’d trust them now …

  18. 18.

    Bobby Thomson

    April 14, 2015 at 12:52 pm

    @CONGRATULATIONS!: yup

  19. 19.

    boatboy_srq

    April 14, 2015 at 12:52 pm

    Putting a camera on someone is a sign that you don’t trust him, or he doesn’t trust you. When a police officer is wearing a camera, the contact between an officer and a civilian is less likely to be like intimate friendship and more likely to be oppositional and transactional. Putting a camera on an officer means she is less likely to cut you some slack, less likely to not write that ticket, or to bend the regulations a little as a sign of mutual care.

    This is perhaps the most male caucasian thing Brooks has ever written.

    During a trial, if a crime isn’t captured on the tape, it will be presumed to never have happened.

    As if that doesn’t happen already – just to people Brooks doesn’t understand because they’re not white/male/wealthy/all-of-the-above.

  20. 20.

    MattF

    April 14, 2015 at 12:53 pm

    I realize it’s belaboring the point to complain about Brooks’ argument in detail– but I have to note that any actual political philosopher (going back to the Greeks) starts out by making a distinction between public and private spheres. I don’t know whether Brooks is deliberately conflating the two or whether he’s just ignorant, and I don’t actually want to know.

  21. 21.

    Villago Delenda Est

    April 14, 2015 at 12:56 pm

    @CONGRATULATIONS!: DING DING DING DING DING

    Fuck Bobo. Over and over again. With a rusty chainsaw.

  22. 22.

    Judge Crater

    April 14, 2015 at 12:56 pm

    Maybe Bobo will have a run in with the Cops in DC. You know, something trivial that residents of Cleveland Park are not usually subjected to. Something that pits citizen Brooks against the word of an angry Cop.

    Then the bullshit about “friendship” and “trust” will disappear like tears in the rain. Brooks lives in a bubble with the one percent. They can’t imagine that life for most Americans is not experienced like the pampered elitists of their demographic. All the “surveillance” cameras in their homes and workplaces make them feel safe. God forbid a poor schlub behind in his child support should feel equally secure.

    What an ass!

  23. 23.

    Villago Delenda Est

    April 14, 2015 at 12:57 pm

    @Bobby Thomson: Also true.

  24. 24.

    Josie

    April 14, 2015 at 12:57 pm

    All these years, I must have misinterpreted my interactions with policemen, because I have never experienced this “intimate friendship” and “mutual care” of which he speaks.

  25. 25.

    Laertes

    April 14, 2015 at 12:59 pm

    FUDB

  26. 26.

    Amir Khalid

    April 14, 2015 at 12:59 pm

    @pete:
    Keef might be able to trust them, if they were Stones fans.

  27. 27.

    mtiffany

    April 14, 2015 at 12:59 pm

    Yes, Bobo, let us not hinder the police with cameras, hell let us not even hinder the police with things like juries, or judges, or trials even, as such things are an affront to the diginity and respect to which the police are automatically entitled. Let us trust the police to do what they must, and leave them free to kill who they must in the name of a free and just society.

  28. 28.

    Booger

    April 14, 2015 at 1:02 pm

    Brooks was interviewed yesterday on NicePoliteRepublicans re his new book. He went on at length about how much he as to be humble for, and for once I agreed with him.

  29. 29.

    chopper

    April 14, 2015 at 1:03 pm

    When a police officer is wearing a camera, the contact between an officer and a civilian is less likely to be like intimate friendship and more likely to be oppositional and transactional.

    that sounds like a wholesale change from current reality all right.

  30. 30.

    eric

    April 14, 2015 at 1:04 pm

    Brooks is as anti-revolutionary as one can get. He speaks for the “now, now, everything is fine” club. If people are allowed to see the ugly, then their empiricist selves will know of the ugly and demand change, i.e., revolution (even if in small doses). And this will not do!

  31. 31.

    Betty Cracker

    April 14, 2015 at 1:04 pm

    When a police officer comes into your home wearing a camera, he’s trampling on the privacy that makes a home a home.

    But without a camera, a cop enhances the homeyness of your home! Like an armed lace doily or gun-toting needlepoint art!

  32. 32.

    Bobby B.

    April 14, 2015 at 1:06 pm

    @Villago Delenda Est: He’ll keep running strong as long as NBC conserva-bosses like to put him on TV with Hugh Hewitt as “pundits”.

  33. 33.

    Cacti

    April 14, 2015 at 1:08 pm

    Why must we bother with things like due process, jury trials, and presumption of innocence for peasants accused of crimes?

    Should it not be enough that the noble police officer gives us his word as a gentleman?

  34. 34.

    kc

    April 14, 2015 at 1:12 pm

    Never mind, carry on with your regularly scheduled apoplexy.

  35. 35.

    Keith G

    April 14, 2015 at 1:13 pm

    I seldom agree with Brooks these days, but I thought I some of his ideas were valid. Cop cams are needed and the good that they do will outweigh the bad. We know that there are unprofessional police officers who will be restrained, or if not that, found out, by digital surveillance.

    There are also many community-minded officers of all backgrounds in most precincts who understand that not every violation deserves an official response. Hopefully, they will not feel compelled to “follow the book” on every encounter. In my highly diverse, central urban haunts, I know folks of from all creeds and colors who have benefited from an officer’s judgment call.

    Edit

    @kc: Heh. Once the line is crossed, it is crossed. The well is poisoned. Nothing else out of it can ever be good.

  36. 36.

    boatboy_srq

    April 14, 2015 at 1:13 pm

    @Booger:

    NicePoliteRepublicans

    It really has become that, hasn’t it?

  37. 37.

    Chris

    April 14, 2015 at 1:15 pm

    @Cacti:

    This actually seems to have been pretty much how the public had come to see cops – in far too many cases, how the public still sees them. Internal Affairs, investigative journalists, politicians in city hall – all spineless bureaucrats tying up our heroes in red tape by alleging that “people” have “rights.” Don’t they know that cops are our saviors, that deep down in places we don’t talk about at dinner parties, we want them on that wall, we need them on that wall? “Walk a mile in their shoes,” is the old chestnut – we’re not qualified to judge them because we don’t know what they’ve been through.

  38. 38.

    Amir Khalid

    April 14, 2015 at 1:15 pm

    Having a record of any official encounter — business negotiation, court proceeding, cop-citizen interaction — helps keep everyone honest and provides an incontrovertible record of its outcome. I’ve never heard of anyone in these encounters complaining that having an audio or video record implied they were not to be trusted. Until now, that is.

  39. 39.

    Sad_Dem

    April 14, 2015 at 1:17 pm

    Would it be wrong to wonder how Bobo would feel if a cop put on blue latex gloves, balled his fists before Bobo’s frightened eyes, and said, “See these fists? They’re going to f*** you up,” and then proceeded to beat Bobo to death, all on camera, with sound, and was acquitted of murder? What if cops shot Bobo dead on his doorstep for not putting down a little screwdriver instantly? What if Bobo declined to participate in being arrested and got choked to death on camera? If Bobo were a 12-year-old boy playing pew pew pew with a toy gun in a park, but then put it in his waistband, and the cops rolled up next to him and gave him about one whole second to put the gun down before opening fire, would it bother Bobo how a camera changed the dynamic?

  40. 40.

    ruemara

    April 14, 2015 at 1:19 pm

    Shut the fuck up, Bobo.

  41. 41.

    scav

    April 14, 2015 at 1:20 pm

    Transparency and surveillance only work one way in Boboworld. Consultations with industry and higher ups benefit from Executive privilege, not your grubby little doings, especially post 9/11, remember? Still, you know all things decided behind doors is done for the best and those sensitive sensitive power brokers will only “tell the truth” behind closed doors and “off the record”. The evidentiary benefits of having things documented, recorded and overt are unnecessary! This benefit has just been expanded you silly polloi to include Police and the Law. Shut up and Trust.

  42. 42.

    patrick II

    April 14, 2015 at 1:22 pm

    In the sense that a camera will change interactions between people and place them in a more artificial, less natural state, or as Brooks describes an “intimate”, state he is right. But seeing as the natural state between American police and its citizens, particularly citizens of color, is — fuck you, do as I command or die, — I would like to see the current natural relationship become the somewhat more artificial state of police restrained by law and held to account.
    Two asides:
    1. I was more disgusted by the “officer”, with his knee in the back of Eric Harris who told him “fuck your breath” as the dying man struggled to take is last breaths than the old fool who shot him. Can he be prosecuted for “depraved indifference” or something?
    2. Something that has been lost in the spate of recent police videos — a few years ago Illinois legislature reacted to the recorded police beating of a citizen, by passing a law forbidding the video recording of police officers on duty. The law had some pretty stiff jail sentences too. It seems that without public pressure Illinois politicians at least want to put blinders on about police criminality. Is that law still around? Is it constitutional? Do any other states have a similar law?

  43. 43.

    Matt McIrvin

    April 14, 2015 at 1:22 pm

    You know, I used to think I was about as white as a white man could get, but obviously there’s a whole universe of additional whiteness that I was actually unaware of.

  44. 44.

    NotMax

    April 14, 2015 at 1:24 pm

    Videotape.

    Sheesh, what a maroon.

  45. 45.

    boatboy_srq

    April 14, 2015 at 1:24 pm

    @Keith G: The thing Brooks misses is that an article that becomes a routine part of the uniform falls below the radar rather quickly. Brooks takes out the camera/notebook only when he’s actually documenting the interview/event/conversation. When it’s over, he puts all that away. That behavior is as distorting as full-time recording in its own way, because it makes the interviewer acutely aware of the recording being done as much as it does the interviewed. If he were recording 24/7, sooner or later he would relegate the “I’m recording this” awareness to just short of subconscious. This is what will happen with LEOs over time, as the camera becomes part of the uniform. Folks encountering LEOs are already at the ends of the best/worst behavior spectrum already: either they’re being good citizens so they won’t get cited/arrested, or they’re too angry/belligerent/intoxicated/whatever to practice restraint; there’s very little change to either extreme that a camera will make. Initially, a cam-wearing LEO might behave differently, but sooner or later that cam will be just as incidental as the badge.

  46. 46.

    Cervantes

    April 14, 2015 at 1:24 pm

    Can You Put A Guillotine Inside A Tumbrel?

    In the French Revolution, they did have a number of guillotines on wheels, which worked fine if sometimes a little too slowly to, um, meet demand.

    When there was a back-log, sprays of bullets were used to speed things up.

  47. 47.

    boatboy_srq

    April 14, 2015 at 1:25 pm

    @NotMax: Brooks never claimed to be part of the 21st century (nor the 20th century, come to think of it).

  48. 48.

    Hawes

    April 14, 2015 at 1:32 pm

    Once they started using cameras to keep track of balls and strikes in baseball, the umpires became more consistent both with the rules and with each other.

  49. 49.

    Patrick

    April 14, 2015 at 1:33 pm

    So, yes, on balance, cop-cams are a good idea. But, as a journalist, I can tell you that when I put a notebook or a camera between me and my subjects, I am creating distance between me and them. Cop-cams strike a blow for truth, but they strike a blow against relationships. Society will be more open and transparent, but less humane and trusting.

    So fricking out of touch. I take it Mr Brooks has never ever met an African-American.

  50. 50.

    Steeplejack

    April 14, 2015 at 1:33 pm

    When I read stuff like this from Bobo, after I black out momentarily from rage, I imagine a Twilight Zone episode in which he is transformed into a blue-collar African-American driving a beater who gets pulled over late one night by a couple of cops in a bad mood. See how that goes, Bobo, then get back to me on the cop cams and the “intimate friendship” thing.

  51. 51.

    Tree With Water

    April 14, 2015 at 1:34 pm

    Brooks sounds a lot like I once did arguing against replay challenges in baseball. Or much like my equally vehement protests about the introduction of baseball’s playoff system, that replaced a system that had been in place for nearly seventy years. Why? Because where baseball is concerned, I am a rock ribbed reactionary. It took five or six years for me to admit that the playoffs are very cool. Even then, decades later I reflexively opposed the introduction of wildcard teams (that also proved a good move). I’m equally OK now with baseball replays. It’s being utilized judiciously, and reviewing close calls didn’t result in either the sky falling or the final debasement of a once great game.

    In the early 1970’s, city officials in San Francisco installed cameras on Market Street. People then proceeded to shimmy up the poles and spray paint over the lens. I remember applauding their dash, thinking it a blow against big brother. Times change.

    One of the genuine accomplishments (of which I’m aware) of then state senator Obama was reasoning with Chicago’s PD about videotaped confessions. They stood opposed, but were convinced otherwise by the future president. It was a real accomplishment, albeit one which now seems so self evidently reasonable that it’s easy to overlook.

    As to Brooks himself, I think the guy is having a public nervous breakdown and his columns reflect it. But his odious arguments were bound to be raised, and that’s what he’s was hired to do, i.e., mouth off. The fact his thoughts aren’t confined to other barstools within earshot simply amounts to everyone’s tough luck.

  52. 52.

    Gravenstone

    April 14, 2015 at 1:40 pm

    This moron is conversant with the concept of cruiser cams, right? It’s not as if the idea of police interactions with the public being officially recorded is completely new and unheard of.

  53. 53.

    catclub

    April 14, 2015 at 1:40 pm

    @schrodinger’s cat:

    Bobo should leave the moralizing to Chunky Bobo.

    Bobo has a book that is essentially on the old virtues and vices, like humility and pride and egotism. Of course, the best way to practice those good ones is …. quietly.

    So I guess that his moralizing (the book, not this article) might be more useful than Douthat, but both of them shutting up would be better.

  54. 54.

    Steeplejack

    April 14, 2015 at 1:41 pm

    Someone please tell me that Brooks is getting reamed in the comments to his piece.

  55. 55.

    Cervantes

    April 14, 2015 at 1:42 pm

    @Steeplejack:

    You asked, I answered.

  56. 56.

    pluege

    April 14, 2015 at 1:42 pm

    I can tell you that when I put a notebook or a camera between me and my subjects, I am creating distance between me and them.

    that is exactly the point.
    what a moronic doofus brooks is.

  57. 57.

    Culture of Truth

    April 14, 2015 at 1:42 pm

    Freaking idiot. Hey, we don’t live in Bob’s imaginary fantasy world.

  58. 58.

    catclub

    April 14, 2015 at 1:44 pm

    The whole point of being a nation of laws is that the impersonal state treats everyone fairly – and impersonally.
    Justice and equal treatment is an advance over personal relationships determining quality of service.

  59. 59.

    Mike J

    April 14, 2015 at 1:45 pm

    @Gravenstone:

    This moron is conversant with the concept of cruiser cams, right? It’s not as if the idea of police interactions with the public being officially recorded is completely new and unheard of.

    But that was to protect the cops who were making traffic stops. Body cameras are to protect mere civilians.

  60. 60.

    Steeplejack

    April 14, 2015 at 1:47 pm

    @Cervantes:

    I saw it. Thanks.

  61. 61.

    Punchy

    April 14, 2015 at 1:54 pm

    Putting a camera on an officer means she is less likely to cut you some slack, less likely to not write that ticket, or to bend the regulations a little as a sign of mutual care.

    And no more planting evidence, making up fake statements, fake threats, and fake admissisons of guilt, claiming resisting arrest while beating the shit out of someone half-dead……

  62. 62.

    Peale

    April 14, 2015 at 1:55 pm

    @Amir Khalid: Especially since Brooks wouldn’t be against your employer monitoring your web use or putting a camera by the bathroom door to make certain you weren’t abusing those privileges.

  63. 63.

    Epicurus

    April 14, 2015 at 1:55 pm

    “…intimate friendship…” What the devil is Brooks smoking? And where can I get some?? While I’ve had a few minor exchanges with police officers, none of them ever felt like that. The mere fact that the Times is paying Brooks a handsome salary to peddle this transparent bullshit makes me sad. I’m a long-time reader of the paper (now, the web site), but I studiously avoid reading Brooks and the Cardinal. It was bad enough when they hired Bloody Bill Kristol, a mistake they soon corrected. I’ll leave the rest of the “fisking” to a Mr. Charles Pierce, he’s much better at it than I am. Brooks is either a stupid, stupid man, or he has naked pictures of “Pinch” Sulzberger hidden away somewhere.

  64. 64.

    scav

    April 14, 2015 at 1:55 pm

    For that matter, doesn’t handing the cop a gun alter the contact between an officer and a civilian and render it less likely to be like intimate friendship and more likely to be oppositional and transactional?

  65. 65.

    Citizen_X

    April 14, 2015 at 1:56 pm

    When a police officer comes into your home wearing a camera, he’s trampling on the privacy that makes a home a home.

    And when he and seven other screaming armored cops smash down the door at 3 AM, point assault rifles at you and your kids, shoot your dog, and leave with, “Sorry, asshole, wrong house, ha ha!” well that just adds to the ambience.

  66. 66.

    Don

    April 14, 2015 at 1:56 pm

    I see Betty Cracker seized on the same block that called out to me too.

    When a police officer comes into your home wearing a camera, he’s trampling on the privacy that makes a home a home. He’s recording people on what could be the worst day of their lives, and inhibiting their ability to lean on the officer for care and support.

    Putting aside the obvious “care and support” eye-rolling that files in the face of what most cop interactions are like for people in that circumstance, I call it a good thing to be drawing attention to the fact that an officer in your home is already a trampling of privacy. Nobody ever has a cop in their house and is glad of the circumstances. They may welcome the intervention but I’d wager a week’s pay every one of those people is wishing they hadn’t come to that state in the first place.

    And I’d also wager that the women who have reported being raped by officers who they’d called to protect them would have happily made the trade to having been taped instead.

  67. 67.

    Citizen_X

    April 14, 2015 at 2:00 pm

    When a police officer comes into your home wearing a camera, he’s trampling on the privacy that makes a home a home.

    And when he and seven other screaming armored cops smash down the door at 3 AM, point assault rifles at you and your kids, shoot your dog, and leave with, “Sorry, asshole, wrong house, ha ha!” well that just adds atmosphere.

    Edited to remove a word containing the name of a d2ug.

  68. 68.

    trollhattan

    April 14, 2015 at 2:08 pm

    O/T the responsible use of guns by Responsible Gun Owners continues, apace. Varmint escapes anyway.

    Authorities in the US state of Georgia say a woman was accidentally shot by her son-in-law as he was trying to kill an armadillo with a handgun.

    Police say the bullet ricocheted off the animal’s hard armour, entered the woman’s mobile home, and hit her in the back as she sat in a reclining chair.

    The 74-year-old woman was taken to the hospital where she is expected to recover, local police told US media.

    They said people should use a shotgun when shooting armadillos.

    Larry McElroy was about 100 yards (90 metres) away from the mobile home when he shot and killed the animal Sunday night.

    The 9mm bullet bounced off the hard shell, hit a fence, went through a backdoor and struck his seated mother-in-law.

    Investigator Bill Smith of the sheriff’s office told WALB-TV: “I really think if they’re going to shoot at ‘varmints’ and whatnot, maybe use a shotgun.”

    The South? check
    Mobile home? check
    Freedom Wand(tm) handy and loaded? check
    Amount of Bud Light consumed? unknown
    Armadillos tough? are they ever!

    Also, too, notice how the problem was not that a gun was used to “solve” a problem, it’s just that it was the wrong gun.

  69. 69.

    matt

    April 14, 2015 at 2:08 pm

    He’s right in the sense that a lot of relationships are built on lies. I don’t think we should have that kind of relationship with law enforcement.

  70. 70.

    Villago Delenda Est

    April 14, 2015 at 2:09 pm

    @eric: It’s like the stupid motherfucker WANTS to take a tumbrel ride to his just desserts.

  71. 71.

    scav

    April 14, 2015 at 2:10 pm

    Could he care to opine about the cops dragging along film crews on raids and arrests for da TeeVee shows — the privacy of those tender relationships are pure Hallmark-level schmaltz, tenderness and intimate. And, am I imagining that politicos have participated in raids as well, never at all in order to burnish their tough-on-crime credentials I am sure. It was all an outreach effort to bond in intimacy with constants, obviously.

  72. 72.

    Calouste

    April 14, 2015 at 2:11 pm

    @trollhattan: Are you suggesting people can get drunk on Bud Light before they die of water intoxication?

  73. 73.

    Couldn't Stand the Weather

    April 14, 2015 at 2:11 pm

    @Betty Cracker:

    But without a camera, a cop enhances the homeyness of your home! Like an armed lace doily or gun-toting needlepoint art!

    Thanks, I needed a chuckle.

  74. 74.

    RaflW

    April 14, 2015 at 2:11 pm

    I’ve been all too aware of Brooks’ elite, isolated view of the world. But this pretty much takes the cake. Cops haven’t been anyones friend for at least a generation. Hes not that old. So it all comes down to utterly unexamined, unseen wealthy white male privilege.
    And David has that by the portfolio-load.

  75. 75.

    pseudonymous in nc

    April 14, 2015 at 2:12 pm

    As someone said on the Twitters, you ought to read every Bobo column in his current “moral” period as if it’s about online dating.

    With each leak, culture gets a little coarser.

    Yes, because it was much better when those beatings and shootings were off-camera and hushed up, you wet-eared cracker.

  76. 76.

    trollhattan

    April 14, 2015 at 2:14 pm

    @Calouste:
    Somehow the combination of heat, humidity and chronic inbreeding makes Bud Light (in the handy 40-packs) an effective inhibition-eliminator. It’s almost magic.

  77. 77.

    Kay (not the front-pager)

    April 14, 2015 at 2:20 pm

    After reading only Bobo’s first quoted paragraph I just had to jump in to say that what he’s complaining about is that white people may no longer benefit from white privilege, but may suffer the same treatment as brown people. Which would mean brown people would receive better treatment and white people would receive worse (e.g. fair) treatment.

    OK, back to reading the whole post.

  78. 78.

    Paul in KY

    April 14, 2015 at 2:21 pm

    @MattF: I’m going to go with ignorant, or just doesn’t give a shit.

  79. 79.

    Paul in KY

    April 14, 2015 at 2:22 pm

    @Betty Cracker: A nice doily made of concertina wire!

  80. 80.

    Paul in KY

    April 14, 2015 at 2:24 pm

    @Matt McIrvin: Some are more white than others ;-)

  81. 81.

    Paul in KY

    April 14, 2015 at 2:24 pm

    @Cervantes: They also drowned a lot of people.

  82. 82.

    Timurid

    April 14, 2015 at 2:30 pm

    What he’s really worried about is bodycam footage of him or one of his peers in full “Do you know who I AM?!” mode during a traffic stop getting leaked and going viral….

  83. 83.

    elmo

    April 14, 2015 at 2:30 pm

    When I was ten years old, I was at a child’s birthday party that turned into a beerfest for the adults as the sun went down. Police were called because of the noise, and when the cops pulled up, one genius tossed a firecracker under the cop car.

    I was hiding in the kitchen from the drunk adults, waiting to be taken home. A young sheriff’s deputy burst in, gun drawn, and held me at gunpoint until the rest of the house was cleared. A ten-year-old girl already obviously upset at the turn the party had taken.

    I’m as white as Casper the Ghost, but this “intimate friendship” he supposes to exist between cops and their targets is as foreign to me as Urdu. I swear he’s the male, sober version of Peggy Noonan, complete with Magic Dolphins.

  84. 84.

    Tree With Water

    April 14, 2015 at 2:32 pm

    @trollhattan: A guy I knew told me this story the day after it happened. His family was asleep when everyone was jarred awake by a shotgun blast from the in-law apartment in the garage. His mother in-law had recently arrived from the deep South, and when they burst into the garage there she was, standing with a smoking shotgun in her hands with a dead raccoon splattered in a corner. With slacked jaws they asked her what she thought she was doing, she replied matter-of-factly, “That’s what you do with varmints”. She actually said “varmints”, which sounded cool to my young suburban ears. I think they ask her to never, ever do it again.

  85. 85.

    NorthLeft12

    April 14, 2015 at 2:33 pm

    If the law provides for some real punishment for the police department employees who release these “private” videos, and the police actually choose to enforce them, there should not be an issue regarding the release of these friendly and intimate interactions.

    You know, it is getting harder and harder to understand how blatantly stupid and obtuse a person can possibly be, after reading Mr. Brooks latest brainstorm.

    It is also harder and harder to understand why the New York Times still employs him. Really. Does anyone here know?

  86. 86.

    Barry

    April 14, 2015 at 2:35 pm

    @Matt McIrvin: “You know, I used to think I was about as white as a white man could get, but obviously there’s a whole universe of additional whiteness that I was actually unaware of.”

    Yes, there is. It’s called ‘being rich’ and ‘having the private phone numbers of important people’.

  87. 87.

    Mike in NC

    April 14, 2015 at 2:42 pm

    @Tree With Water: On the subject of varmints, tonight is — sadly — the series finale of “Justified”.

  88. 88.

    Paul in KY

    April 14, 2015 at 2:44 pm

    @NorthLeft12: Because he swills out what his management wants him to swill out.

  89. 89.

    Brachiator

    April 14, 2015 at 2:44 pm

    @NorthLeft12:

    It is also harder and harder to understand why the New York Times still employs him. Really. Does anyone here know?

    I think he has secret video of NYT executives.

  90. 90.

    trollhattan

    April 14, 2015 at 2:53 pm

    @Tree With Water:
    Hilarious. I could totally imagine my dear departed Iowa grannie doing something similar, except she’d have used a shovel then cleaned and began cooking said critter (until mom found out). She didn’t see the need for guns.

  91. 91.

    sharl

    April 14, 2015 at 2:54 pm

    @Booger: Oh, man, I listened to that. Yet another pathetic instance of a self-absorbed Villager going on about his personal Big Sad, and his Personal Lessons Learned.

    If the once-edgy SNL were still around, they would have a Bobo imitator on stage singing Feelings as his now ex-wife storms off in one direction, while a cop is shooting some unlucky Black guy in the back a dozen times on the other side of the stage. That’s pretty much often his shtick anyway, so it wouldn’t take too much effort to write a script for the bit.

    Shit like this drives me nuts. I mean, I’m glad Dubya found his Personal Jesus who delivered him from drug and (maybe) alcohol abuse, but I also can’t help wondering if his Personal Jesus also helped get us into Iraq. I’m guessing Cheney and his crew played Dubya’s faith thing like a fiddle in birthing that clusterfuck, but it was Dubya himself that saw it as a modern day Crusade. [Sure, he came to regret the use of that work when much of the Islamic world loudly criticized him for it – and legitimately so IMO – but I doubt he stopped believing in it, even though he didn’t use the word again IIRC.]

  92. 92.

    Seonachan

    April 14, 2015 at 2:55 pm

    @trollhattan: “Authorities in the US state of Georgia say a woman was accidentally shot by her son-in-law as he was trying to kill an armadillo with a handgun.”

    Just goes to show the only thing that can stop a bad armadillo with a gun is a good armadillo with a gun.

  93. 93.

    trollhattan

    April 14, 2015 at 2:57 pm

    @Mike in NC:
    Will so miss that show. Permanent spot in my top ten. For a lot of reasons but foremost, the dialogue.

    “It’s like the aligning of the planets, if those planets carried guns and hated my guts.”

    “You shot unprovoked. How am I supposed to take that?”
    “As me aiming to kill you.”

  94. 94.

    catclub

    April 14, 2015 at 3:01 pm

    @Kay (not the front-pager):

    Which would mean brown people would receive better treatment and white people would receive worse (e.g. fair) treatment.

    ooh, ooh, this.

  95. 95.

    catclub

    April 14, 2015 at 3:02 pm

    @elmo:

    one genius tossed a firecracker under the cop car.

    Any Palin relatives in that family tree?

  96. 96.

    boatboy_srq

    April 14, 2015 at 3:02 pm

    @sharl:

    I… can’t help wondering if his Personal Jesus also helped get us into Iraq

    Meet Gun-Totin’ Capitalist Jeebus.

  97. 97.

    Steeplejack

    April 14, 2015 at 3:02 pm

    @Mike in NC:

    Yes, looking forward to that. My (slight) complaint this season has been that Ava is getting a raw deal. Will be interesting to see how it all turns out.

  98. 98.

    catclub

    April 14, 2015 at 3:05 pm

    @Punchy:

    And no more planting evidence,

    I can imagine someone figuring out the field of view of the cameras.

  99. 99.

    trollhattan

    April 14, 2015 at 3:05 pm

    @boatboy_srq:
    Little known New Testament translation adds the wedding at Cana detail that Capitalist Jesus charged bigtime for that wine.

  100. 100.

    elmo

    April 14, 2015 at 3:07 pm

    @catclub:
    No, no, no members of the Elmo family – other than my poor self – were at the party. But you’ve got the right demographic, for sure. This was in a bedroom suburb of San Diego in the 1970’s, in an area colloquially known as “Klantee.”

  101. 101.

    Pee Cee

    April 14, 2015 at 3:28 pm

    Putting a camera on an officer means she is less likely to cut you some slack, less likely to not write that ticket, or to bend the regulations a little as a sign of mutual care.

    Also, the officer is less likely to shoot you in the back then try to plant a weapon or drugs on your corpse. I think I’ll take the speeding ticket.

  102. 102.

    JustRuss

    April 14, 2015 at 3:32 pm

    @Keith G

    Hopefully, they will not feel compelled to “follow the book” on every encounter.

    I got pulled over by a cop a couple weeks ago. First thing he said was “This interaction is being recorded on audio and video”. Then we discussed why he pulled me over, he ran my ID, and said “Next time be more careful”. No ticket. Bodycams are not the deathknell for police discretion, at least not yet.

  103. 103.

    ET

    April 14, 2015 at 3:32 pm

    Sometime Bobo just needs to not write something – just because he can doesn’t mean he should…. his is one of those cases.

    In the case of Officer Slagler Bobo was likely partly right- because the body cams were instituted after what happened possibly because the Chief realized he couldn’t trust his officers word.

    Of course cop cams both protect a cop and hang him. But that would also mess up Bobo’s narrative bemoaning how things are different and blah, blah, blah

  104. 104.

    Doug r

    April 14, 2015 at 3:39 pm

    @Mike J: I suppose Bobo is completely unaware that these cameras could save cops lives too

  105. 105.

    Calouste

    April 14, 2015 at 3:47 pm

    @JustRuss: There’s police discretion as you describe, and then there is the do-you-know-who-I-am “police discretion” that Bob is used to. Bodycams will make the latter more problematic.

  106. 106.

    boatboy_srq

    April 14, 2015 at 3:49 pm

    @trollhattan: … and what price for the loaves and fishes?

  107. 107.

    trollhattan

    April 14, 2015 at 3:50 pm

    @JustRuss:
    Am I right in presuming they’re basically on a loop of some finite length (e.g., a full shift) and simply record over the old file when full, like an airplane’s cockpit voice and flight data recorders? Or are all the videos actually uploaded and stored, and not just ones related to specific incidents?

    Am realizing I have no idea how in-car and on-cop video works.

  108. 108.

    trollhattan

    April 14, 2015 at 3:54 pm

    @boatboy_srq:
    Thus spake the Lord, “Okay, here’s what I can do for youse: if you buy all da fish I’ll knock off ten percent and throw in da bread for nuttin’. We got a deal here? Good, thanks for da bidnez. Now I gotta go talk to da mooks.”

  109. 109.

    andrew

    April 14, 2015 at 4:07 pm

    “All newspaper editorial writers ever do is come down from the hills after the battle is over and shoot the wounded.” — sounds like bobo…

  110. 110.

    LesGS

    April 14, 2015 at 4:13 pm

    @Doug r: What the cops in San Diego who are wearing body cams have found is that if the person they are talking to starts becoming a little heated, and they say, “I remind you, sir/ma’am, that this interaction is being recorded,” the situation cools down immediately. Good for the cop, good for the citizen.

  111. 111.

    Elizabelle

    April 14, 2015 at 4:19 pm

    @Steeplejack:

    Someone please tell me that Brooks is getting reamed in the comments to his piece.

    Bobo always gets reamed in the comments. His schtick is ream-worthy prose.

    Top comment, from “Hoise” in Amsterdam, Holland:

    Dear David,

    The problem here is with the police not with the people. Did you know US police officers killed 111 people in March alone. Now let’s compare that to some other Western countries:
    1. In the UK less than half that many people (52) in the past 115 years (!)
    2. In Germany in 2011 the entire police force fired just 85 bullets, that 1 bullet per 1 million people

    I could go on, but you get my drift. Other police forces just don’t go around shooting unarmed people in the back. It’s just that simple.

    Second comment, a pithy one by Steve Bolger, in response to another reader comment:

    No other country has a constitutional amendment misinterpreted to require gun anarchy.

  112. 112.

    Elizabelle

    April 14, 2015 at 4:20 pm

    @Steeplejack:

    An excerpt from NYTimes reader comment by gemli, one of my favorites there:

    … The police give up their right to privacy when they abuse, beat or kill those they’re supposed to protect. Only a few may commit the worst offenses, but the worst are protected by other cops who think it’s honorable to cover up for them. The shroud of privacy that gives us a chance to grow and develop is twisted into a veil of secrecy used to cover up murder. If we can’t trust the people who are supposed to protect us, then they can’t expect trust in return.

    Brooks worries that such video evidence will coarsen our culture, or entail a loss of dignity for the citizenry, or damage other airy Platonic ideals. The reality is that a police officer calmly pulled a gun, took aim, and shot a man in cold blood. His partner helped cook up a story to justify the crime. I think Platonic ideals have left the building.

    Cop-cams don’t damage relationships. Murdering citizens damages relationships.

  113. 113.

    Elizabelle

    April 14, 2015 at 4:28 pm

    I’ll just put up a few more NYTimes reader comments to the slow on the uptake David Brooks, and then stop.

    soxared in Crete, Illinois schools Mr. Brooks:

    “Cop cams strike a blow for truth but also strike a blow against relationships”? Mr. Brooks, what kind of relationship did Michael Brown, or Eric Garner, or Tamir Rice, or Walter Scott, or Eric Harris, or even Amidou Diallo, have with the police who took their lives?

    When you’re pulled over for DWB (that’s driving while black to you), or stopped on the street for BWB (that’s breathing while black, again to you), it’s got nothing to do with relationships or with the privacy you so cherish; a potential life-and-death dynamic has jumped out at you from nowhere. Cops own the power of the state.

    Your bullet-points of corny reasons that cop-cams will ruin the fabric of society by ripping up private moments presupposes that every cop in America is an avuncular, friendly Andy Griffith, a gentle hayseed with nothing to do but watch the day go by. Mr. Brooks, put on black. Try that for a day. Then decide if you’d trade a recorded assault on your life for the warm, cozy, intimate, shadowed, hidden virtues of privacy.

    Charlie in Alabama:

    … cops these days are scared. Our gun-loving culture and the ease with which anyone can obtain one has forced police to see every encounter as a potential gun battle. Other countries do not have a citizenry as excessively well-armed as this one. In the UK, there’s very little reason for a cop to pull a gun when he knows that he is the only one with a gun. I’m not trying to excuse the police but the blame lies not just with them but with a society that has allowed the gun lobby to inundate society with far too many guns.

    And another commenter suggests we put cameras on investment bankers too.

  114. 114.

    Elizabelle

    April 14, 2015 at 4:33 pm

    It will be interesting if police violence against the citizenry is what forces a smarter take on the Second Amendment.

    We are seeing poison fruit, and those who wrote the Constitution did not intend us to live in a land of paranoid anarchists running around with military-grade weapons (I speak of the citizens here).

    Nor did they intend we live in a police state.

  115. 115.

    gene108

    April 14, 2015 at 4:47 pm

    the contact between an officer and a civilian is less likely to be like intimate friendship and more likely to be oppositional and transactional. Putting a camera on an officer means she is less likely to cut you some slack,

    As gross as this may sound to some of you, it is clearly implied Brooks has “intimate friendships” with lady-cops, who bust him!!!

    No wonder he doesn’t want body cameras.

  116. 116.

    trollhattan

    April 14, 2015 at 4:51 pm

    @gene108:
    Tuesdays are “Lady Officer” days, Thursdays are “French Maid” days and Sundays are for ruminants. Oh, for the Life of Bobo.

  117. 117.

    chris9059

    April 14, 2015 at 5:03 pm

    Bobo knows that as a rich white guy he and the people he cares about won’t be shot by an out of control cop. But there is a distinct possibility they may get caught beating their wives or drunk and disorderly and he doesn’t want that on film. Of course preventing any embarrassment of the ruling class is far more important than keeping black men alive.

  118. 118.

    NotoriousJRT

    April 14, 2015 at 5:14 pm

    @Bobby Thomson:
    cop cameras are bad because they will document white privilege

    Boom! (goes the dynamite).

    I have never had an intimate, friendly, remotely helpful interaction with a police officer – even when called to my home due to a break-in and burglary.

  119. 119.

    sm*t cl*de

    April 14, 2015 at 5:18 pm

    The ultimate design of the Cliffotine was never finalised.

  120. 120.

    CONGRATULATIONS!

    April 14, 2015 at 5:29 pm

    Bobo knows that as a rich white guy he and the people he cares about won’t be shot by an out of control cop.

    @chris9059: He seems as though he does think that.

    He’s wrong.

  121. 121.

    Tree With Water

    April 14, 2015 at 5:39 pm

    @JustRuss: I saw film from a cop-cam on TV that exonerated an officer from a malicious complaint. The lead investigator gave a woman one last chance to own up to her false charge by asking, “Would you change your story if I told you the entire incident in question had been filmed”? It was the perfect question. She just slightly hesitated before answering “no”, and her goose was cooked- she was sentenced to hundreds of hours worth of community service. The really funny thing was that as she drove off cursing, the film showed the cop just standing there staring after her and pleasantly saying, “Have a nice day”.

  122. 122.

    Violet

    April 14, 2015 at 5:40 pm

    @Elizabelle:

    It will be interesting if police violence against the citizenry is what forces a smarter take on the Second Amendment.

    I’ve been thinking along those lines as well. Wondering if this angle will bring pressure on the gun issue in a different way.

  123. 123.

    Bill

    April 14, 2015 at 5:44 pm

    @gene108: Now I’ve got this stuck in my head:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kohfsnvLTCY

  124. 124.

    sm*t cl*de

    April 14, 2015 at 6:10 pm

    I can tell you that when I put a notebook or a camera between me and my subjects, I am creating distance between me and them.

    Perhaps Brooks is confessing more than he intended. Normal journalists actually document their interviews, to reduce their capacity to make crap up.

  125. 125.

    Snarki, child of Loki

    April 14, 2015 at 6:56 pm

    There is NO NEED for a “guillotine on a tumbrel” in this modern age.

    We have wood chippers

    Body cams? Good. Remote detonator? Better.

  126. 126.

    different-church-lady

    April 14, 2015 at 7:04 pm

    Putting a camera on someone is a sign that you don’t trust him, or he doesn’t trust you.

    Well, FUCKING DUH, BOBO!

  127. 127.

    Shakti

    April 14, 2015 at 7:34 pm

    When a police officer is wearing a camera, the contact between an officer and a civilian is less likely to be like intimate friendship and more likely to be oppositional and transactional. Putting a camera on an officer means she is less likely to cut you some slack, less likely to not write that ticket, or to bend the regulations a little as a sign of mutual care.
    “Intimate friendship?” What kind of person is he that getting stopped by a cop or talking with a cop under any circumstance is like an “intimate friendship?” I used to work for a business and had to call the cops several times because of burglaries attempts, accidents (cars had trouble making turns) or disorderly conduct. The best I can say is that they were cordial. I had a manager that would often call male customers, “boss” (he was from South Africa), and the cops were NEVER buddy-buddy. A body cam isn’t going to stop Officer Mayberry from saying “hiya pal” to David Brooks *rolleyes* “Intimate friendship” is a weird euphemism for some Rule 34 slash fiction between himself, cops and rich white supremacy.

    Cop-cams insult individual dignity because the embarrassing things recorded by them will inevitably get swapped around. The videos of the naked crime victim, the berserk drunk, the screaming maniac will inevitably get posted online — as they are already. With each leak, culture gets a little coarser. The rules designed to keep the videos out of public view will inevitably be eroded and bent.
    When I was a child, a very popular program COPS, broadcast videos of exactly the same things he’s complaining about, and this was pre-widespread internet. Hell, I can go online right now and pick out arrest photos. In my state I can look up every single traffic violation in a person. This isn’t new.

  128. 128.

    SiubhanDuinne

    April 14, 2015 at 8:11 pm

    @Betty Cracker:

    “Antimacassars With Glocks” would be a good band name.

  129. 129.

    jl

    April 15, 2015 at 12:54 am

    I just glanced at the story earlier to day, and read the link. Didn’t look to see who wrote it.

    And I thought, how could anyone smart enough to report on anything write something so butt stupid and senseless.

    So, now I have time to look at it again. It’s Brooks. Makes sense.

  130. 130.

    Brutusettu

    April 15, 2015 at 11:07 am

    @gene108: What if Bobo thinks off-duty cops would need to wear body-cameras while getting intimate with Bobo?

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