# Is it possible for crooked cops to get away with crimes, if they have to wear cams?



## ironpony

Basically my story involves crooked cops as some of the villains getting away with crimes, but also the main protagonist cops, cause he has to break the rules himself in order to bring down the villains.

But some readers have brought it to my attention that it's pretty much impossible in this day and age for police to do anything unlawful like that while on duty, cause they are all forced to wear body cams now.  Is this true though, and the story will just not work in the modern surveillance technology age, do you think?


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## Olly Buckle

That is really an unanswerable question, if they are getting away with it, they are getting away with it and nobody knows about it. There are always more ways to kill a cat though, you wouldn't have to go far back for body cams not to be the norm; it wouldn't be hard to imagine the cam getting twisted, or muffled by clothing, or damaged by an assailant so the essential bit is lost; the essential bit only counts if someone actually checks the footage, and they can't possibly check it all; there could easily be collusion between police to make sure it is wiped and never looked at if it is incriminating. Of course in real life there may be safe guards built into the system to stop such things, but it is a story, and if you tell the readers that is what happened they are unlikely to go and research it in the middle of an exciting tale. Don't worry so much, use your imagination, ultimately the whole thing is a lie, that is the nature of fiction, it just has to pass the threshold of willing suspension of disbelief.


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## Bloggsworth

Yes - Particularly when police infiltrate political protest groups.


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## ironpony

Well I remember reading a real life story where a body cam camera was wiped, when it wasn't suppose to be so maybe wiping is possible.  However, over the course of the story, wouldn't this get suspicious and the police superiors, would raise eyebrows and say to the bad cops, "Seems funny how every time you kill someone in "Self defense", the footage is always ruined, everytime!".

Like wouldn't they have that suspicious reaction and just not buy it after after a few times, if it keep happening?


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## epimetheus

I'm sure they're prone to all manner of technical faults. Most glitches will be perfectly innocent, but a few might be a little more nefarious...


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## ironpony

Well I mean there are group of crooked cops committing a crime and killing someone and making it look like the guy had a gun, when he didn't have a gun.

So wouldn't it seem suspicious if a whole group had body cams, that all happen to fail at the same time?


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## Olly Buckle

A group of officers certainly makes it harder than a single bad apple, I am not sure that everyone would be wearing them though. There was a case here recently where a sergeant 'executed' a Taliban captive and then got his men together and said something along the lines of 'Nobody saw that right, it directly contravened the Geneva convention' not realising he was being recorded by a single helmet cam. The point is that, unbelievably, he was found not guilty, despite apparently confessing, and that was by a jury, not by his colleagues checking the footage. A lot of footage must never get checked, and I bet when it is there is some where the officer seeing it simply 'doesn't see' the transgression by his colleagues, heck, he has to work with them afterwards, and the other guy is just some toe-rag criminal who probably deserved it. Of course that is a bit uncertain, but you could probably set it up so the perp. knew the guy who would be checking it if it is relatively small town, again harder if there are more people involved in a big city. Then again, if the crim was killed in 'self defence' he is not going to argue.


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## ironpony

Okay thanks.  Well mine is set in a bigger city, and I wanted it to be a group of officers.  I could have it so that none of them are wearing body cams, but who makes that decision in the department for whether or not any of the officers would wear them, especially on a sting operation, since this scenario is a sting operation gone bad?


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## Arachne

Hi ironpony

Last night I started watching _The Frankenstein Chronicles_, a fictional drama set a short while after the publication of Mary Shelly's famous book. It includes real-life historical figures, such as Charles Dickens, William Blake and Mary Shelly herself, but is complete fiction. The reason I'm telling you this is that, even though I noticed more than a few errors in the program, such as incorrect facts about the historical figures and such, I really enjoyed 2 episodes and will be watching some more tonight, with a view to enjoying the whole thing. The point to note here is that I didn't care about the mistakes or inconsistencies because the plot, characterisation and script were good and made the viewing thoroughly enjoyable. I know it's a story and I make allowances for this, as I believe most readers of fiction must do.

I feel that you worry too much about the minor details in your work and perhaps listen to too much pointless criticism from whoever is reading your story for you. Just make sure you are writing an engrossing story and forget about the little inconsistencies. If the people who finally get to buy and read your novel are really entertained then I honestly don't think they will care about that technical stuff as much as you think.

Happy writing!


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## ironpony

Okay thanks!  If I worry to much about minor details though, then why is it that people are pointing out these minor details as if it's a problem in the story though?


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## Olly Buckle

because they think you have given them the story to comment on so they feel they must find something to comment on , maybe?


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## Dluuni

Well, right now there are cameras on police, and there are some sketchy things that are being caught that may or may not be being prosecuted. Issues include:
One, police are staging their dialog for the cameras. I had heard this strategy before, it seems to be common on the crooked footage, where police are giving a narrative of events on camera - stuff like "He's got a gun!" when they almost certainly do not, in order to back their later testimony. The usual focus here is to make it so reviewers will feel that the officer BELIEVED they were justified in their actions, for reasons not apparent to the camera. 
Two, outright collusion is common. It's hard to get police to disbelieve or turn on their coworkers. A good investigation would turn the issues up, but they don't take as much care when looking at Franklin, the guy who always makes sure there's a basket of sugar free candy on his desk because he knows your kid is diabetic and who everybody calls Hanky because of the incident with the handkerchief. And when the investigation goes through multiple levels, having just a bit of favoritism adds up fast.


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## ironpony

Okay thanks.  However, if it turns out the guy didn't have a gun for example, how are you going to plant one with a camera rolling.  Does the camera have a very wide field of view so you can't pull out a gun and plant it without it being caught or something like that?


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## Dluuni

Well, usually it's fine to just convince people that the officer THOUGHT they had a gun at the time. But yes, there's been a couple of cases of police being caught doing things outside of the field of view of the camera.


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## ironpony

Well in my story the police want to shoot a group of criminals out of revenge since that group murdered a cop and got away with it before, and the police have had enough and want to kill them before they kill other cops in the future.

So in that case, the police can't really say they thought they had a gun cause they would have to say they thought that every member of the group had a gun at the same time.


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## Euripides

Couple of points, camera's in certain jurisdictions are not always on, cops have the ability to turn them off, and most importantly....there is SO much data being generated by precincts that have 100% on all the time/recording, that unless there is a reason to review footage (like for a shooting, criminal investigation etc) that data does not get looked at.  Municipalities just don't have the manpower or the $$$$$ that would be required to have staff sit there and go through the majority of footage that would show cops in their cars eating doughnuts and having a sing along to the radio (mundane stuff). 

So even if your bad cops were committing crimes in a jurisdiction that had cameras on 100% of the time, as long as they didn't commit their crime while responding to a criminal call (or something that did turn sideways like a domestic) there is a very very very small chance that by reviewing any body camera footage they would be caught.

And in your example above me.....unless there was some reason to think that group of cops killed the criminals....or they could be tracked there by something like GPS in their car/person, there wouldn't be much reason why someone would look at the body cam footage. I could see a suspicious hero though wanting to see that footage, and the inability of them being able to see the footage through official channels could be a plot point


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## ironpony

Okay thanks, but the police are choosing to make it look like they had to gun them down during a sting operation.  So they still have to report that a the sting operation went terribly wrong in order to cover their tracks don't they?  If they report that a sting operation went wrong, resulting in about a couple of dozen deaths, wouldn't the other police who are investigating it, want to look at the body cam footage?


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## Dluuni

Maybe, but police back each other up.
You have a few ways to cover it here that would work. Really, it's pretty believable for them to say that people they are stinging would always be armed. There are plenty of layers that they can hide a big firefight in, and really if there's no public outcry, they will get away with it clean. There's ways to foil them, but the current system is made to make it easier for them to shoot down the people they want to shoot, barring huge foul ups like turning off the camera and immediately discussing their plan, not realizing that the camera records about 30 seconds after turning it off.


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## ironpony

Okay thanks.  I want the police to get away with it though, not caught.  So I don't want any 30 second loopholes or anything.  When you say police outcry, are you referring to the higher ups complaining about it gone wrong?


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## Dluuni

Nope, like offending the public or a VIP. As long as nobody puts any pressure on the police department politically, lots of things can slip through the cracks, and do.


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## ironpony

Yeah but wouldn't the police superiors not want to cover anything up?  I mean in my story, the superior commander is frustrated at his own officers taking the law into their own hands, so like any person dealing with employees that commit crimes, wouldn't he want to charge them as a consequence?

Plus if a police department covers it up, doesn't that just look worse for them politically, rather than actually dealing with the issue?


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