Sparked by recent events, a Change.org petition is asking for a method to keep surveillance on on-duty officers in hopes of ending police brutality.
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By Taylor Hatmaker.
A new petition on Change.org is calling for all uniformed police officers to wear uniforms embedded with a camera. The fledgling petition — it only had 12 signatures at the time of writing — was inspired by the events unfolding in Ferguson, Mo.following the death of Michael Brown, an unarmed 18-year-old shot to death by a local police officer. After some looting and arson broke out on the night following Brown’s death, Ferguson residents demonstrated peacefully and were met with what many viewed as an excessive, militarized police presence in the days to follow.
Brown’s death is currently under investigation by the FBI, and neither local nor federal law enforcement have released the name of the officer who shot Brown. From the petition:
Uniform cameras not only assist and protect honest officers from unfounded allegations, but the unbiased, real time accountability they produce provides a tempering effect on potentially abusive behaviors.
There is no reason any honest, law abiding police officer should oppose uniform cameras, yet police unions continue to do so. We request that the Department of Justice issue guidelines that mandate- in no uncertain terms- every police department in the United States that sends armed officers into our communities be fully accountable via the modern technology of wearable, tamper-proof body cameras. It is time to reconcille police accountability in the context of 21st Century technological capacities.
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About Taylor Hatmaker
Taylor Hatmaker is the Daily Dot’s technology editor. She was previously a contributor to ReadWrite and the senior editor of Tecca. She has a deep interest in the spaces where technology, culture and big ideas overlap. Taylor’s work appears regularly on Yahoo! News and has been featured on Mashable, MSNBC, Today.com and in the print edition of USA Today, among others. Taylor graduated from New York University and now lives in Portland, Oregon. When not writing about tech, she samples well-hopped local beers, thinks about science and advocates for social justice in the LGBT community. Follow her on twitter here.
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This article originally appeared on The Daily Dot.
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