Seattle police ended body camera analysis after footage caught officer mocking woman’s death

https://openvallejo.org/2023/09/21/seattle-police-ended-body-camera-analysis-after-footage-caught-officer-mocking-womans-death/

Archived page, if you're paywalled or region-blocked

Two Seattle police union leaders are under scrutiny after body camera footage caught one of them joking over the death of a young woman killed by a police cruiser.

Now, records obtained by Open Vallejo show that days after the conversation was recorded, one of the union officials implicated in the scandal was involved in canceling a contract for a body camera analysis service that risked flagging the unprofessional comments to higher-ups.

The Vallejo and Seattle police departments are the only law enforcement agencies to have ever terminated their contracts with Truleo, the Chicago-based company behind the software. In both cases, union officials campaigned to stop their department from using the technology after it allegedly risked surfacing problematic officer behavior. …

66 points · 2 comments · view on lemmy.world

2 Comments

xBInsayn@lemmy.world · 14 pts · 2y (1 reply)

Seems like the cameras are working as intended. Isn't Seattle PD still under consent decree? Seems DOJ started winding down the oversight just a few months ago: Agreement on Sustained Compliance

DougHolland@lemmy.world · 9 pts · 2y

Yup, it's "winding down." It's probably obvious all over the country, that there's been no serious improvement. Seattle cops are as bad as cops anywhere, even Los Angeles. Even in this mess — the woman killed by a speeding cop without an emergency who then lied about the details, details that would've remained unquestioned if not for a tenacious local blog digging deep, and then the 'joke' between the union president and vice president, and then the cancellation of the bodycam oversight, all kept quiet.

I'm local, sorry.