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Notes -
It’s both! Obviously my consumption of this content profoundly affects my perceptions of American policing, and that shines though in my posting about the topic (and about other topics, such as race) on this site, as well as my appearance on the Motte-adjacent podcast The Bailey.
Ultimately, though, it is a hobby which originated out of a genuine intellectual interest. I was in college when the Trayvon Martin shooting happened, and fresh out of college when the Black Lives Matter movement started gaining steam. I was a dutifully-committed progressive at the time, and I cared deeply about whether or not the conversations I was involved in were grounded in actual verifiable reality. That inspired me to start doing a bunch of research on policing, and to expose myself to the (at the time very limited) police bodycam footage I could get my hands on. Discovering just how wildly the narrative deviated from the reality I encountered was the single biggest contributing factor to my ideological evolution.
If officer Darren Wilson had been equipped with a bodycam at the time he shot Michael Brown in Ferguson, the public could have been exposed to footage of Brown attacking Wilson in his car and attempting to grab his holstered firearm, and subsequently charging at Wilson outside of the car. This could have smothered the nascent BLM abomination in its crib and saved this country ten years of racial fabulism and misery. The ubiquity of bodycams — sold to the public as a way to document widespread police misconduct — has demonstrated to curious Americans the sheer barbarity with which law enforcement deals on a daily basis, and has certainly helped to take the wind out of the sails of the police-abolitionist movement.
As for why I watch it nowadays? It’s mostly a nice way to blow off steam by indulging my schadenfreude toward criminals, but it also allows me to stay abreast of any notable policing incidents and to acquaint myself with the details before the story goes viral and the narrative begins to take over.
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