One officer is seen standing at her door and repeatedly telling her to “get out of the car”.
    “For what?” she responds twice, adding: “I’m not going to do that.”
    One officer seen in front of the car has his left hand on the hood, his gun drawn in the other hand.
    “Are you going to shoot me?” she says moments before a single shot is fired and the officer quickly moves out of the car’s path.

    The cop who killed her was in no danger, and has time to casually stroll out of the way of the vehicle.

    What he doesn’t have is a name or a face — as often happens, the police haven’t been named, and their faces have been blurred in the video.

    Why?

If they weren’t cops — if they were just a pair of random dudes killing a black pregnant woman, and there was video footage — would their names remain secret, their faces blurred?

  • phoenixz@lemmy.ca
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    10 months ago

    On the blurring and name thing; as a general rule all crime suspects should always be treated like that. Even convicted criminals.

    Think about it. If you publish “first name last name is suspected of molesting children” with a face, then that person’s life is destroyed, even if it turns out they’re innocent.

    In the other hand if they’re found guilty, you will want that person to serve their time, rehabilitate, and then come back into society and continue a normal life without causing more trouble. If you publish names and faces, that’s no longer possible.

    Even in cases like these.

    Then again, in countries where they do do this, these police officers would likely already have been arrested for homicide.

    Edit: exceptions to these criminal privacy laws exist, mostly for when there are extreme circumstances, for example when a suspected crazy killer is on the lose and people need to avoid and report them

    • ZzyzxRoad@lemm.ee
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      10 months ago

      There are still those mugshot websites that post all the booking photos from the sheriff’s departments daily. They always have the disclaimer “for entertainment purposes only, all suspects are innocent until blah blah” but you have to fight with them to get them taken down because it’s public information. You can go to your local jail or prison’s website and look up someone’s name to see if they’re in custody, regardless of whether they’ve had their day in court. Some of them have inmate rosters so you end up seeing everyone’s names alphabetically.

      It just makes it even more gross when they extend this privilege to cops but not the average person, especially innocent people whose cases go on to be dismissed, but they had their mug shots posted online. Yes, criminal privacy laws would make sense, but in the US everyone is guilty until proven otherwise.

      • phoenixz@lemmy.ca
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        10 months ago

        Yeah those sites should be illegal. Entertainment purposes my ass, these are humans, human lives you are destroying. Fuck all of that.