Later today, Hillary Clinton is expected to give a speech where she comes out in favor of police being required to wear body cameras. I’m not necessarily opposed to the idea, except to say that I doubt it will prove to be the panacea for reining in law enforcement abuses that many of its advocates say it will be. I hope Clinton’s speech takes a broader and more serious look at the policies that contribute to police brutality and urban crime, but taken on its own the call for body cameras reeks of small-measure opportunistic Clintonian triangulation. (Remember when Bill Clinton called for school uniforms? It may have polled well and isn’t a terrible idea, but taken on its own it’s an almost comically inadequate solution to education reform.)
But there’s another obvious reason why Hillary Clinton’s call for police body cameras is… interesting. Later today, Hillary Clinton is going to stand up on national television and insist that the American people are entitled to an extensive record of evidence documenting the decisions of public officials who are charged with making life or death decisions. The hypocrisy here is too obvious to ignore:
