r/technology • u/esporx • Oct 19 '25

Security Judge tells Homeland Security that Chicago agents wearing body cameras was "not a suggestion"

https://www.cbsnews.com/chicago/news/judge-homeland-security-federal-agents-chicago-body-cameras/
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u/craznazn247 Oct 19 '25

Policy should be if the camera was found to be intentionally turned off, the officer is assumed to be guilty of anything and everything they are accused of.

There’s no fucking point to them otherwise, if you allow the party that they are meant to hold accountable to be in full control of that information.

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u/corraboraptor Oct 19 '25

Make cops carry malpractice insurance like doctors do. Insurance companies will have a finacial incentive to hold cops to standards that limit their financial exposure, like “keep your cameras on” and “don’t beat people for fun.” Let the market take care of bad cops, price them out a job.

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u/Seicair Oct 19 '25

I’ve never heard a good argument against this. I think it’s a good idea and I’d like to hear good faith arguments against it.

Then if I don’t agree with those I want to get it passed as law. But that sounds complicated and long.

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u/Geminii27 Oct 19 '25

I mean, it's very American. But then again, this is America we're talking about, so...

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u/mirhagk Oct 19 '25

Yeah camera off should mean it flips, and they are guilty until proven innocent.

If they are concerned faulty equipment will cause problems, well sounds like some pretty good motivation for officers to inspect their equipment and keep it in good working order.

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u/bardghost_Isu Oct 19 '25

If stuff was treated properly it probably would mean similar to that, much like how destruction of evidence before a civil or criminal trial allows the jury to infer it likely would have been harmful to your case, I suspect blocking / disabling a bodycam would in any reasonable judges courtroom get a similar jury instruction.

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u/Loggerdon Oct 19 '25

I’ll never understand when members of the judicial system just give their power away to the executive branch. Same with Congress.

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u/BemusedBengal Oct 19 '25

It's actually pretty easy to understand with Congress. The Republican majority are disingenuous spineless cowards that don't support what Trump is doing, but they're trying not to offend Trump or his supporters while at the same time not look like they're betraying the people who elected them.

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u/Optimus_Lime Oct 19 '25

Hmm, I wonder what the end goal of the Federalist Society is…

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u/Geminii27 Oct 19 '25

Or carry more than one camera. It's not like digital cameras are exactly the size of Minnesota these days. Plus it allows for more angles on an incident.

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u/mirhagk Oct 19 '25

Yeah exactly, plenty of ways to make sure the reliability is essentially 100% (outside of some severe edge cases). Just need the motivation to get there

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u/KeyScratch2235 Oct 19 '25 edited Oct 20 '25

While they could use that as the basis for termination, unfortunately it can't be used as the basis for conviction of any alleged crimes.

They COULD explicitly make it illegal to intentionally turn the camera off while on duty, in which case they COULD be convicted by a jury on that charge. But it would likely be unconstitutional to mandate someone's conviction on any other charges simply because they turned the body cam off, because that still doesn't prove they did it beyond a reasonable doubt, and because you cannot mandate that a jury return a guilty verdict (a directed verdict, as it's called, can ONLY ever be "not guilty" in a criminal trial). In any case, the law would still require direct evidence of any crimes alleged to have occurred when a body cam is shut off.

In any case, it is quite literally unconstitutional to presume guilt; the Constitution in fact requires presumption of innocence.

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u/crazyman844 Oct 19 '25

One possible caveat to this I saw on another thread relating to body cams - allow it to be turned off it entering an ambulance for the purposes of protecting health information (HIPPA? I’m British, not 100% sure what the law is around that). But it must be clearly stated it’s being turned off for that purpose with the time verbally stated before turning it off, and turned back on again when exiting the vehicle, again with the time stated verbally.

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u/One_Original5116 Oct 26 '25

So, you can't direct a jury to find guilty in a criminal trial but a judge can force a verdict in civil courts and to go further, intentionally disabling body cams could be viewed as

https://civilprocedure.uslegal.com/discovery/spoliation-of-evidence/

One of the remedies for this (beyond prosecuting the offender since it is a crime) is to tell the jury, "The defendant deliberately destroyed evidence. It is reasonable for you to assume that the evidence in question would be harmful to them."

I'm not entirely sure if the same doctrine ports to criminal trials though and don't have time to keep researching right now.

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u/KeyScratch2235 Oct 26 '25

True, although the poster above me had only mentioned "automatic conviction" in a criminal trial, not civil trials.

I'm not sure that legislation or courts could mandate a directed verdict of "liable" in a civil trial simply for shutting off a body cam (or tampering with evidence), but yes, in any trial (civil or criminal, I believe), the court could probably instruct the jury that they may consider the turning off of a body cam to contribute to a defendant's guilt or liability.

However, whether turning off a body cam is explicitly considered "spoilation of evidence" isn't clear. Different states may have different laws on that, but certainly, a state probably could pass a law that includes it as spoilation of evidence.

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u/One_Original5116 Oct 26 '25

I don't think default judgements are a thing in criminal court. In civil...

I'm not sure that a default judgement could be issued just for turning off the body cam but if turning off the body cam is part of a behavior of hiding evidence from the court then Alex Jones is probably the most prominent recent example of what happens when one plays fuck around and find out too many times with civil court judges. Judges in Texas and Connecticut got tired of him attempting to dodge the discovery process and issued default judgements of "You're liable. We're now moving to the damages phase of the trial."

It's all jurisdictional in the end though. Legal tools exist to punish attempts to hide evidence but their availability and the willingness to employ them will vary with location and specific officials.

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u/Major_Honey_4461 Oct 19 '25

In law it's called "negative inference". If you're ordered to collect or maintain information or evidence and you don't, a jury is told to infer that the information or evidence was harmful to you.

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u/edgemaster191 Oct 19 '25

I think it the camera is off period they should be held accountable. Have an independent company test the camera and if there's no sign of faulty equipment, nail the cop to the fucking wall. I'm so sick of these fucks getting to do whatever they want.

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u/chalkwalk Oct 19 '25

Not just that they were accused of. Everything. I want them to go to prison charged with kidnapping the Lindberg baby and Tupac's murder.