Some years ago, the news was filled with reports of Bad Cops doing Bad Things to innocent civilians. The cops f course claimed that they were Good Cops and that the innocent civilians were actually Violent Criminals…but the public mob wasn’t in the mood to listen to such nonsense. Only the stories of the poor innocents were be believed. Because if you didn’t automatically believe them, you were a (fill-in-the-blank… racist, sexist, transphobist, fascist, whatever). So more and more cops started wearing body cameras and recording their interactions with their “customers.” And so far a lot of the results are pretty interesting. Such as:

Shaun King slammed for pushing woman’s now-discredited claim trooper sexually assaulted her

And…

Video disputes SC NAACP leader’s racial profiling charge. Now NAACP is investigating.

And…

Councilman backs off claims that he was racially profiled by McKinney PD

And…

Rainbow City PD refutes brutality claims by releasing body cam footage

And…

South Carolina woman’s claims of being harassed by ‘white cop’ are questioned as new footage emerges

And… … … …

There will always be claims of “racist cop” or “police brutality.” Some will be true. Some will be false. But before the advent of the body cams, *all* such claims were essentially believed automatically by a very large number of people. Now, there is video evidence that at least *some* of the claims are not just wrong, they are slanderously wrong, to the point of being criminally actionable.

Before, the viewpoint expressed by many activists was “all cops are bad, just look at all these examples of police brutality.” Now, these claims are in many instances *provably* false. Will that change the viewpoint of the extremists? Nope. Will it shift the viewpoint of the great mass of folks in the middle? Just might.