Sign of the times

There was a joke going around soon after the release of the famous Rodney King beating video that the cop unions next big political push was to impose a background check and a 15-day waiting period on the purchasers of all video recording devices. (Heh! Although sadly, that actually is starting to happen, albeit in a slow boiling-frog sort of way.) And now, to keep current, Detroit Mayor Dave Bing has instituted a ban on news crew cameramen accompanying police on raids. Given that an A&E channel film crew for the TV show The Next 48 (a cop based reality show) was alongside police when one of the DPD's raiders accidentally blew the head off of a seven year girl and the video from that raid is being used in a lawsuit against the city, the mayor now wants to be sure that this kind of thing never happens again. And so it won't; the next time DPD accidentally kills someone there won't be any video of it. That's what passes for progress in Detroit in these times.