A Christian, cop friend of mine posted this:

You may remember Rodney King. He was badly beaten by a few cops, whose trial was moved from LA and a jury of Rodney’s peers to Simi Valley, which is about 90% white. The jury found the cops not guilty, and that sparked the LA riots in 1992. Rodney’s beating was video taped from afar by a guy with a big VHS video camera. If it weren’t for that guy’s video, no one would have ever known about those evil cops.

Today, a lot of cops wear a body camera, and people have video cameras in their pockets, and carry them everywhere. It has led to hundreds of cops being exposed as evil, crooked, power-tripping, dirt bags. However, just as with Rodney King, prosecutors (who are on the same side as the cops) manage to get cops off for the crimes they commit, even when there is video.

For example, several cops have been caught planting drugs by their body cam.  Cop apologists say that is the 1% of bad cops they’re talking about. I have a couple of questions about that. Did the police departments in these cases volunteer this video to the defense or the media? Wouldn’t the real measure of the effectiveness of body cams be the rate at which the “good” cops voluntarily use the footage to pursue justice against cops who do bad things? How often, when a cop sees another cop doing something wrong has the good cop requested the footage or taken his own footage of the incident and sought justice for the wrongdoing, or even made an arrest? Are the relatively small proportion of body cams catching bad cops due to defendants, prosecutors or media requesting footage? How hard is it for people to get the footage of any given incident, and are we sure the footage isn’t doctored?

I have no doubt that cops love body cams when they’re falsely accused, and they spread the footage far and wide. I also have no doubt that people have often falsely accused them, and “good” cops ought to love body cams.

All of that is interesting, but the big question this meme raises is: By what standard do we measure “good”? Greg Bahnsen wrote books on that topic, one of which is titled “By What Standard?” I vehemently reject that the standard for what makes a good cop can be found in man’s law. A cop that goes through his career having never abused any citizens, but strictly enforcing unjust laws is not a good cop. The standard for goodness must come from Scripture. God owns the terms good, bad, evil, wicked, righteous and just. Those are terms only he can define.

So what is the biblical definition of a good cop? First of all, socialist-funded security services wouldn’t be permitted in Scripture. Second, individuals having executive power to arrest people on the spot is also biblically prohibited. Third, forgetting the first two issues, the definition for good government would come from Romans 13 (among other places). That chapter teaches that rulers are supposed to be God’s servants to carry out His wrath against evildoers. Every level of U.S. government is prohibited from seeking to be a servant of the God of the Bible. It is unconstitutional.

Did you catch that? It is unconstitutional for our government to be good by God’s definition. There are no good cops, judges, street sweepers, TSA agents, bureaucrats, etc., unless they are somehow sabotaging the system, disobeying orders or refusing to do the sinful things they may be asked to do.

So, body cams have shown that there are plenty of bad cops. And for a Christian to post this meme only goes to show the sad state of the American church.

Body cams are great, because even though they may not be effective all the time, and may be tampered with, they have exposed many dirty cops. I would also think that police would be less likely to abuse people with their body cams on. Ultimately, the only thing that will improve police behavior is if they’re prosecuted and treated under the same law as everyone else. Having cops commit a crime on body cam and then having the prosecutor not prosecute or throw the case is useless.