Friday, June 15, 2012

John McNesby really, really hates accountability for Philadelphia police

Philadelphia Police are going to experiment with a new system that attaches cameras to cops and lets them record incidents from their point of view. John McNesby, president of the Fraternal Order of Police, is naturally outraged: ""We're 500 cops below where we should be, so I'd be totally against it until they hired those officers, repaired every police station and put decent cars on the street," McNesby said. "When they finished that, I'd be more than willing to discuss putting cameras on officers.""

In other words: Never. You can have your accountability never.

Now: We all want police to have the best possible working conditions. But "best possible working conditions" shouldn't be necessary to ask police for some accountability. In any case, it's pretty obvious that  even if City Hall met McNesby's named conditions, he'd just move the goalposts a bit. The goal here to let police act as they will without interference from the public they supposedly serve.

On the bright side, though, McNesby's response reminded me of this:

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