The tide is turning - Garda Body Cams

Do all guards have it yet? So many videos on social media of the usual suspects videoing their own harassment to others like guards and nothing done about it.

It's a step in the right direction so long as it's available to all gardaí.

They all should all have had body cams a long time ago. There's a pub in Cork where the staff wear them FFS.

would be lovely to see the standard taken up that an officers actions are presumptively unlawful if their body cam footage is not available for an arrest/encounter.

The problem with trust it is a 2 way street.

And as I have already referenced I don't actually think bodycams develop that trust, quite the opposite in fact as you just end up with everyone filming everyone else. That isn't trust, that is paranoia.

When investigations like this come out it erodes the trust even further.

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-66809642

Body cams are seen as some sort of panacea, the reality is they cause a wide range of problems.

TBH I can't see us here learning other jurisdictions and avoiding the same ones.

But the main question is what is the goal of these?

Keep the guards in check, keep the public in check?

Where these are already established as their been a significant decrease in crime, has there been a significant increase in convictions?

I don't actual think the main problem with Anto is convicting him as he already has 220 previous.

There is a real sense of we are just shoe horning these in because they have them elsewhere (e-voting)

I think at this the stage the money and time should be spent on fixing certain aspects of our criminal justice system and our police force and not introduce something that could make both worse.

That's thing isn't it Trust, I think the bodycams are a good idea but then you have to ask the questions

Are the body cams on all the time, do the come on automatically or can the garda control when they go and when they go off?

Who has access to the cam footage?

Where is the footage stored?

Is there an audit trail to who accessed the cam footage, when it was accessed and were there any changes made?

It is sad that these questions would need to be asked but the Gardai have not exactly proven themselves to be a trustworthy organisation and we seen that with what has gone on in Donegal with the McBreretty case and the even more so with one of their own Maurice McCabe, what was it the judge said of every "error" made in that case, not one favoured McCabe. They are just 2 I have highlighted, I am sure there are many more.

So yes body cams are a good thing but there are a lot of issues with Trust in the Gardai over this.