As long as the people doing the recording are non-threatening white hipsters, this policy works fine. But I guarantee some poor black or hispanic kid is going to get shot because a jumpy cop thinks the camera is a gun, and will likely get off with a minor suspension because the justice system views officers as above the law.
Latent racism (e.g. white cops being nervous around black teenagers) is a huge problem in police work. Combine that with the kind of outright racism, the good old boy networks you see in rural Texas and the sense of "respect mah authoritah" many cops give off and I can easily see how someone would get shot.
> the good old boy networks you see in rural Texas
Arlington, a city of 370k smack between Dallas and Fort Worth is rural?
So the cops will get jumpy and start shooting once a hispanic kid shows up (which, one of them was) because they're good old boys from rural Texas (which Arlington isn't) should we keep digging or would you like to admit that your suppositions don't really have a foundation here?
Arlington isn't exactly "rural", but most of the town is definitely not what most people would call "urban". Dallas has a lot of suburbs that are similar; they're basically subdivisions full of 5,000 sq ft houses built on cheap farm land. Also, being Texas, there's a pretty good chance that anyone you encounter is armed, which makes the cops a lot more cautious.
I'm not saying people shouldn't videotape the cops, but that they should continue to do so at their own risk.
