I'll jump in the fray with 2 pennies...I'd say it's all (or becoming all) about oversight, and trust.
With the bulk of media swinging more towards the capitalistic route of sensational vs investigative journalism, the historical "oversight" of our public agencies are disappearing. It is falling more and more into the common citizen/witness with cellphone cameras and/or scanner/live stream app. Nearly every community in the US now has a facebook group related to the crime/happenings/gossip of their community. So many citizens with scanners now that aren't "hobbyists" like us here. Heck, it's why The Database is so restrictive since it appeases the manufactures who want "zipcode scanning." Those facebook groups have some impressive day-to-day intel on what's happening in their community, driven by people listening to their zipcode-scanners, and people out in the community wondering why a siren is sounding, or seeing action and taking a pic of it. That's organic oversight. They don't realize it's oversight, but when they hear cops responding to a routine call, but the outcome a few minutes later is 5 people shot, the entire community starts to get inquisitive and demands more. They "know" the initial dispatch response level for that call normally shouldn't escalate into 5 shot. If nobody heard the initial call, the agency has a lot of leeway in building up a narrative that leads to the 5 shot. Nobody can question the narrative without FOIA (a lot of time and energy spent there), they have to trust the dept. That's asking a lot.
And now you have trust. It was hard to defend the idea of cops/agencies lying since we'd like to believe they are above reproach and trusting by their very nature and position. Think about how much our judicial system is built on that trust. A lot of court cases are made weighted primarily on an officer's statement. But just in the last 2 weeks we are seeing repeated instances where the agency's official statement of what occurred, doesn't match a video that suddenly became available. Now we have to ask how many times have they lied in the past? How many potential court cases does that involve? Trust is earned, and agencies need to work triple time in their public perception to regain trust, regardless if they have anything at fault.
Listened to San Francisco PD during recent protests, and their radio traffic was above par. Discussions on the radio regarding curfew, observed escalated violence, officers recognizing radio traffic provides them recorded official timestamps, "dispatch, note second notification of curfew time and warnings given over vehicle PA and bullhorn" "Dispatch copies, such and such given at time 2236 hours". I even heard right before they cut the protestors off to arrest them, a reminder for every officer to activate their body cams. All that, is oversight. If a protestor complains the arrest was illegal or heavy-handed, or a journalist reports differently, there were 5000 of us listening to SFPD stream that night that could have come out of the woodwork in defense of SFPD actually. If SFPD was left to themselves to defend that, they'd lose the public perception/trust at the speed of a tweet or social media post. Sure, in time radio traffic could be released etc but that's way too late, you lost the narrative.
I've addressed the problem with encryption in rural agencies here and further down that thread here. And that's just addressing officer safety/mutual aid, not hobbyists/oversight/media.
Good civil discussion and brain fodder happening - thanks!
With the bulk of media swinging more towards the capitalistic route of sensational vs investigative journalism, the historical "oversight" of our public agencies are disappearing. It is falling more and more into the common citizen/witness with cellphone cameras and/or scanner/live stream app. Nearly every community in the US now has a facebook group related to the crime/happenings/gossip of their community. So many citizens with scanners now that aren't "hobbyists" like us here. Heck, it's why The Database is so restrictive since it appeases the manufactures who want "zipcode scanning." Those facebook groups have some impressive day-to-day intel on what's happening in their community, driven by people listening to their zipcode-scanners, and people out in the community wondering why a siren is sounding, or seeing action and taking a pic of it. That's organic oversight. They don't realize it's oversight, but when they hear cops responding to a routine call, but the outcome a few minutes later is 5 people shot, the entire community starts to get inquisitive and demands more. They "know" the initial dispatch response level for that call normally shouldn't escalate into 5 shot. If nobody heard the initial call, the agency has a lot of leeway in building up a narrative that leads to the 5 shot. Nobody can question the narrative without FOIA (a lot of time and energy spent there), they have to trust the dept. That's asking a lot.
And now you have trust. It was hard to defend the idea of cops/agencies lying since we'd like to believe they are above reproach and trusting by their very nature and position. Think about how much our judicial system is built on that trust. A lot of court cases are made weighted primarily on an officer's statement. But just in the last 2 weeks we are seeing repeated instances where the agency's official statement of what occurred, doesn't match a video that suddenly became available. Now we have to ask how many times have they lied in the past? How many potential court cases does that involve? Trust is earned, and agencies need to work triple time in their public perception to regain trust, regardless if they have anything at fault.
Listened to San Francisco PD during recent protests, and their radio traffic was above par. Discussions on the radio regarding curfew, observed escalated violence, officers recognizing radio traffic provides them recorded official timestamps, "dispatch, note second notification of curfew time and warnings given over vehicle PA and bullhorn" "Dispatch copies, such and such given at time 2236 hours". I even heard right before they cut the protestors off to arrest them, a reminder for every officer to activate their body cams. All that, is oversight. If a protestor complains the arrest was illegal or heavy-handed, or a journalist reports differently, there were 5000 of us listening to SFPD stream that night that could have come out of the woodwork in defense of SFPD actually. If SFPD was left to themselves to defend that, they'd lose the public perception/trust at the speed of a tweet or social media post. Sure, in time radio traffic could be released etc but that's way too late, you lost the narrative.
I've addressed the problem with encryption in rural agencies here and further down that thread here. And that's just addressing officer safety/mutual aid, not hobbyists/oversight/media.
Good civil discussion and brain fodder happening - thanks!
