Arizona lawmakers are considering a proposal protecting police officers’ rights when they’re involved in a violent confrontation. A Senate bill would require when officers are recorded by body cams they are informed the video is not always accurate.
Jim Mann with the Fraternal Order of Police said in many cases, video can appear to move twice as fast as what actually happened. He used an example of a car appearing to be traveling at 60 miles per hour, but software analysis later showed it was traveling at half that speed.
"If you view a video and then you're going to have to try and explain something that isn't what you remember,” Mann explained that officers need to know it is a function of the video, “It's not a function of you missed something or you didn't understand, or it happened differently than you thought it did.”
Mann went on to say he still favors police wearing body cameras. But, defense and civil rights attorneys called the proposal effectively “witness tampering.”
"It's going to impact the integrity of investigations involving police misconduct or potential police misconduct,” warned Heather Hamel with the Arizona Justice That Works. “It's going to feed officers potential excuses to explain away their behavior."
