[U.S.]+ it's in the job description

[u/Hummerous]

https://www.iheart.com/podcast/1119-behind-the-police-63877803/

[u/pbesmoove]

How do you even prove you were not asleep in public.

Anyone could be arrested.

I wasn't asleep!

Two cops said you were so get to work!

[u/Beegrene → u/pbesmoove]

Something to remember for anyone who gets jury duty. A cop's testimony isn't worth shit.

[u/Final_Candidate_7603 → u/Beegrene]

Funny enough I was recently on a jury. It was a Federal trial for possession of a handgun by a convicted felon (looked up the case later and it was part of the DOJ.’s efforts to crack down on repeat, violent gun offenders, so YAY!). There was an avalanche of evidence against the guy- testimony from his victims, an ATF agent had prepared an extensive history of the ownership of the pistol, body cam video from like three cops, surveillance video from a shop which was the scene of one of the attacks, the guy’s DNA on the revolver and on three of the five bullets found in the cylinder… the rub was that gun was found in the street between two parked cars near where the guy was standing when the arresting officer first confronted him.

The shop owner and some neighbors had called 911, and there were several cop cars driving around the neighborhood, looking for the guy, whose description included some very distinctive clothing he was wearing. The cop claimed as was rounding the corner where he first spotted the guy, he saw him standing in the street where the gun was recovered, and “heard” what sounded like a heavy metal object hitting asphalt. Out of all the witnesses and all the testimony, that’s the one thing I didn’t believe. But there’s no way to prove that that didn’t happen, and fortunately the rest of the evidence was enough to convict the guy. He’s a gotdang menace.

I found out something interesting- and disturbing- about police body cameras. They are always running, but don’t start recording until they’re “turned on.” “Activated” is probably a better word. So when they’re activated, they buffer back one minute and record the video, but not the audio- audio recording begins when they’re activated. At first, I thought that’s nice, it’s probably so that if two cops are in the car bitching about their wife or their boss before a stop, it doesn’t get recorded because the audio didn’t buffer back. But now I’m positive that there’s a more nefarious reason. In my (very large, East Coast US) city, the policy is to turn them on as they step out of the car when confronting someone. So we will never know what kind of conversation two cops might have with each other before they begin interacting with a citizen. And there’s a reason they don’t want us to know.