How the actual f does the county allow NO BODY CAMS, it’s wrong, it is evidence against Parnell and his wrongdoing.
Kenneth Allen McDuff just can’t believe Par’s gone this far to the dark side without Mike.
A Treatise on Body Cams
- Treatise on Body CamsSo, the Sheriff Department still does not have body-worn cameras?
- I’m shocked, shocked, I tell you.I never figured out why Jeff Aguirre never made body cams more of an issue in the campaign. Now don’t get me wrong, I respect Jeff for throwing his hat in the ring. He almost managed to unseat “America’s Sheriff.” Pretty fucking impressive if you ask me. Not that anyone ever will ask, but still. Jeff chose to focus on turnover and lack of leadership at the Sheriff Department. That was his choice as the man in the arena. However, I feel like he left some votes on the table by not focusing on body cams. Yeah, Cody went to the commissioners and said they were gonna give em a try, but anyone with half a brain could see that was just to deflect criticism. I mean, here we are a year later and still don’t have them. Yet Jeff pretty much let the issue drop after that.The average voter really doesn’t care how the sausage gets made, so focusing on the piss poor leadership that Parnell and his minions have demonstrated over the last decade, not really a winning argument. Body cams, however. Here’s the thing that a lot of non law enforcement don’t get about body cams, they aren’t just for catching cops fucking up. Unless your officers are corrupt, body cams help far more than they hurt. Now when someone like Joseph Ballew (still employed at the department, and currently holds the rank of Sergeant) gets into a pursuit and then lies about it when the car he was chasing flips over in the middle of MLK. He tells Waco PD, “I wasn’t chasing them. I dunno why they were running. Running from a ghost I guess.” Yeah, stuff like that gets picked up on body cams. Or when Deputy Shaw is walking up to a car that clearly has functional license plate lights, yeah, body cams would’ve caught that too.However, if you’re a dirty cop, you deserve to be caught in your lies. And I use the phrase dirty cop, not saying they’re being bought off, but if you’re knowingly violating someone’s civil rights, you’re a fucking disgrace to the badge and deserve to be not only fired, but also criminally charged.However, that’s not really the benefit of body cams. Yeah, fuck cops that can’t uphold the oath they took. But that’s not where body cams are worth their weight in gold. Body cams protect good cops. In the words of Ricky Armstrong “if you’re doing right, then video is your friend.”Here are a few examples of that. So without body cams, officers are left with their dash cams and a body worn microphone. That’s all well and good so long as everything they do is ten feet in front of their patrol cars. And the Sheriff Department seems to have issues with their body cams “not working” during certain calls. However, say a deputy moves away from the front of his car. Now at most, all we have is audio. Most likely not even that. Just the deputy’s word about what happened. Maybe 30 years ago that was enough. Maybe when Parnell was collecting the stolen valor stories he likes to tell, juries would rely entirely on the word of a cop. Those days are gone.Several years back, a deputy made a traffic stop and searched a car. While the stop and search were entirely legal and good police work, the driver of the vehicle had left his phone inside the vehicle recording. That driver then took that video, and dubbed over it making it looking like the deputy was using racial slurs and joking about planting evidence. The video was clearly fake, because the driver who dubbed it over, sounded absolutely nothing like the deputy. One facebook comment on the story even said “man, fuck the police, but this video is fake as hell.” That’s how bad it was. However, the video was posted on facebook by the driver and went viral. The local news even covered it. The Robinson officer who backed the deputy even posted a disclaimer that he was only the backup unit and didn’t hear what was said. Thankfully, the deputy had his body mic worn and turned on, so they could prove he didn’t say those things. But had the deputy not had his mic on, it’d be a lot harder to say. A body worn camera would have clearly put the whole thing to rest. Parnell could’ve released the body cam footage and proven the driver to be a liar. Instead they just had to get all the negative press from Facebook.Another area body cams would be hugely beneficial is to help prove a case. Imagine a deputy goes to a domestic disturbance. He goes into the house, finds the very drunk husband who just beat up his wife. He tells the deputy “yeah, I beat her ass, I pay the bills around here, I’ll hit her if I like.” That deputy makes the arrest and puts the confession into his report. But his body worn microphone doesn’t pick up that far away from the patrol car. So now the husband has sobered up, hired a lawyer, put on a suit, and is sitting there looking his best in the courtroom. The wife has changed her story and doesn’t want to testify. And all we are left with is the deputy and his word that the husband confessed. Maybe some pictures of her messed up face, but she’s saying she fell in the shower. Instead of putting a wife beater in jail, now we have reasonable doubt. Just turned a solid case into a maybe. All because the people who we pay with our tax dollars refuse to get body cams.Imagine the disservice that Parnell and his boys are doing to the tax paying citizens of this county by not having body cams. Criminals who can afford to hire attorneys go free due to lack of video evidence. Don’t take my word for it, file an open records request with the DA Office asking to see the conviction rates for the Sheriff Department vs the average for all other departments.Another area that body cams are insanely useful is citizen complaints. Some Karen gets offended about the officer hurting her feelings and decides to call the police department the next day. She tells them about how the deputy cussed at her, threatened her, and even insulted her lineage. The department can then just watch that deputy’s body cam and see that Karen is full of shit. They can then call Karen back, tell her she can write a sworn statement and if it’s proven to be lies, she can be charged with False Report. Versus having a dash cam that didn’t pick up what was said, so you can’t really tell Karen to fuck off cuz there’s no proof one way or another.If you’re doing right, video is your friend. If you’re doing wrong, fuck you, you don’t deserve to be a cop.
