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Notes -
One last thing about this, is that from what I understand, technology has made the state's job even harder even though you'd think not. Back in the day when I was clerking for a judge, the state might just call the two POs who made an arrest. One would say, "well we saw a car crash into a parked car, the driver then slurred when we talked to him, we administered 3 field sobriety tests, he failed, then refused to blow, we arrested, blah blah." And the judge would listen to that and convict. Now, from what I understand, judges demand to see the body cam footage at trial, which does little to nothing in making the case stronger/weaker in almost all cases. Its just another nuisance for the prosecutor who has to comb through it all for the relevant timestamps blah blah.
The biggest way that body cams keep police (and other involved people) honest is that since the body cam will show what actually happened, they won't lie, or bring a case that requires lying, in the first place.
So of course in all the cases that get to a judge, and for all the evidence that the judge gets given, the body cam takes time and doesn't show anything useful. The body cam had its effect before that step.
Perhaps. From my experiences (limited to larger jurisdictions) bodycams seem to be accepted by cops as personal protection devices because false accusations were orders of magnitude higher than real ones, and railroading is just a waste of their time, outside of "getting" a known murderer with a fake non-cop "eyeball" witness. Now, out in the burbs where the cops and DAs treat minor DUIs like they are a high felony, IDK.
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