http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/0..._n_882122.html

The story itself here is not important, I just use it as a jumping off point for the conversation as to what we can do to get police forces under control.

You can easily go and look for case after case of police officers doing shady things, whether it be unauthorised use of force, destruction of personal property, corruption, intimidation etc etc, and then generally cover each others asses and lying about it, this happens here in Ireland and the UK as well as in the states, particularly in the UK; the cases of Ian Tomlinson and Jean Charles de Menezes are good case studies as to how the system works. In both cases the police officials made statements about how the police officers involved were innocent of any wrong doing etc etc, in both cases these statements were later proven to be lies as the police knew the facts and errors made by their men on the ground. In both cases it was only when video evidence and testimonial from outside the police force came to light that the Met started to change the narrative of events. I can see why the police establishments do not want the public keeping records of their activities; even when it is perfectly legal like it is in New York.

Again the specifics of these particular incidents are not particularly important and aren't the real subject, the subject is what can we do to limit this type of behaviour.

I do not suggest that police officers are inherently bad people, or all people merely joining the force in order to play out their power trip fantasies, that may be the case for some, but that is not the important factor. The fact is that when you put anyone in a position of power, you will get abuse of that power, as shown in the Stanford Prison Experiment (Haney, C., Banks, W. C., & Zimbardo, P. G. (1973))

So it is quite difficult to eliminate this sort of thing through recruiting practices or even training (other studies that I will source later).

So we get to my suggestion; I do not propose it to be foolproof or a real solution, but certainly as an improvement; as technology continues to improve it is becoming more and more feasible to have a camera or two on every cop, small virtually unnoticeable wide angle lenses that can transmit to the station or some other central storage area.

While I am generally massively opposed to more technological surveillance, more cameras on the public, in this sort of facility I think it is much more a protection of the public than an intrusion. The police are public servants, or they are supposed to be, I have no problem with them being monitored while they are on the job.

As technology continues to advance, and become more reliable you can mandate that all arrests/searches/seizures and other actions undertaken by the police in service of the public be recorded to be legitimate and have bearing in a court of law.

I am really on at the stage of pondering this and I'm still unsure as to what the outcome of such a policy would be, so I am open to dissuasion on this issue.