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Police Officers Are Nostalgic For The Years Before Everyone Had Phone Cameras On Them At All Times
A recent interview with local police officers suggest that police are nostalgic for years prior to the proliferation of smartphones.
One police officer, Ralph Strippy, a 30-year veteran, was rather introspective:
“Policing has really changed over my career,” he said. “When I started, back in the early 90s, our rules were very relaxed. People didn’t have cameras on them all the time like they have now, so you could put your foot over the line of sadistic brutality a bit and get away with it. You could be out at night on a rural highway, find a car of a couple Black kids, and, uh, no one would ever find out what you did, you know what I’m saying? Nowadays, both those kids would be live-streaming the whole interaction onto Facebook from before you even walked up. And when the camera is on, you actually gotta go by the book. The police lawyers can’t help you out with he-said-she-said defenses if there’s publicly broadcast evidence. So if they’re taping, and you still have to do a brutality or two, you have to do it fast. And the less talking the better, because, if you get sued, it looks bad when the jury can see you were the one running your mouth and escalating things. Yep, things have changed quite a bit over the years. Assaulting an officer and resisting…
