Steve Palmer [00:00:00]:

All right, here we are. Lawyer Talk podcast. Check us out@lawertalkpodcast.com where we're taking on questions and comments. This one generated more than I would ever have thought. But, you know, I think we should chop it up. We did some content. We did a video on police body cam footage. Yeah, yeah.

Steve Palmer [00:00:20]:

And this got lots of interest on TikTok. So let's take on some of the comments.

Troy Hendrickson [00:00:26]:

Yeah, so one of them was, well, the video was about us, like, cops turning off body cameras, like, middle of investigation. It just looks suspicious. That's how, like, we were wording it. I think a bunch of cops came on here. They commented. So we have user 209000 for a lot more numbers. 99% of time is to make fun of someone. That was his comment.

Steve Palmer [00:00:49]:

Yeah, fair enough.

Troy Hendrickson [00:00:50]:

Yeah. And I think I was kicking around at maybe that is what they're doing.

Steve Palmer [00:00:56]:

I got two comments to that. Okay, 1. 99% of the time, you probably shouldn't be making fun of somebody. And I get it that you do, but you probably shouldn't. And I'm worried about the 1% of the time. And look, we should start this by saying I appreciate what police do out there, because I think one of these comments says these slimy defense lawyers. Call me a slimy defense lawyer. I don't care.

Steve Palmer [00:01:23]:

But I'm the best friend of lots of police officers. I've gotten along with them. We butted heads in courtrooms over the years. Fair enough. But what I do is I look at this stuff, and sometimes when police turn off the body cam and say they see you laughing or say you see a comment or whatever it is, it's just the appearance of that looks bad. And then we've had cases, I think we talked about one where some of the officers turned off their body cams and the others didn't. And there was actually stuff on there that was quite helpful to the case. So say what you want about body cam footage.

Steve Palmer [00:01:56]:

It exists, it's there. And when police turn it off or it's not on for certain things and it's on for other things, it starts to look funky.

Troy Hendrickson [00:02:07]:

I will sympathize with them, though, because they have a stressful job, like, it's a cop. They got a lot going on. And I kind of view it as like, the military, almost like there's a lot of humor going on, sometimes even dark humor, unfortunately, for sure.

Steve Palmer [00:02:19]:

Look, as you brought up, we were talking about this off the air, and you brought up, like, we do it too. You know, we joke and we make some off color remarks and we're all human, we all do it. There's a couple of differences and maybe this is the. Let's get to the next. We'll get to the next comment or one of these other comments that says something about lawyers should wear body cams.

Troy Hendrickson [00:02:38]:

Yeah, yeah. So let's put body cams on lawyers and record their interactions with their clients. I'm sure it would be revealing. That was Apple user 4953. I don't have enough numbers in my username. I've come to conclusion. Like all these people have so many. But he's saying we should put them on the lawyers.

Steve Palmer [00:02:52]:

Yeah. I mean, we have this attorney client privilege problem.

Troy Hendrickson [00:02:55]:

Yeah.

Steve Palmer [00:02:56]:

So, yeah, you could get all sorts of great information and trust me, clients have told me some crazy stuff over the years, some very incriminating stuff over the years. Some other not so incredible. Like whatever it is, I've heard that. I've heard it all. I don't work for the government. I work for my client. The police work for the government. And that means you're a public employee.

Steve Palmer [00:03:17]:

You get to wear the body cams. I don't have to wear the body cam. And even if I did, it would be privileged.

Troy Hendrickson [00:03:22]:

So then we got waffles here with no numbers. Thank you, waffles. He was talking about how his agency has a certain policy and he uses this analogy comparing it to NFL game where the refs, they huddle up beforehand, talk about the call and they come out and give the call. And he's like, we don't, like, we don't want to turn our body cams on for the huddle. We don't want, we don't want to, like, we don't want to show them our plays or tactics or whatever. And that was insane.

Steve Palmer [00:03:47]:

That's why we have body kicks. That's what we want to see.

Troy Hendrickson [00:03:50]:

So let's.

Steve Palmer [00:03:51]:

I love this analogy though. It's great. How many people want to hear the huddle? Yeah, we all on the NFL game. So there's a couple differences that are obvious. One, the NFL is not a public employment. So those refs don't work for the public. We're not paying their salaries and they're not investigating crimes that are against the public. Right.

Troy Hendrickson [00:04:10]:

Can you imagine if they're mic'd up actually in the huddle and going around the stadium?

Steve Palmer [00:04:13]:

Stadium would be screaming, no.

Troy Hendrickson [00:04:16]:

They'd be like, that's why they don't do it.

Steve Palmer [00:04:21]:

But this is the purpose of body cam footage so we can understand the motivations of what happened. You want to record in real time what happens. And I get it. There's some pros and cons to this. You might say it squelches or discourages police from certain things. And I get it. There are pros and cons to this. On the other hand, it creates transparency that people can see.

Steve Palmer [00:04:48]:

And when you do, now that we have it, now that it exists, as I often say, we operate in the real world, not the should world, but now that it exists and we have it, it looks funky. We. When the police turn it off. And it may be that there's nothing going on. I agree most of the time that's probably true. But we operate in a system that requires us to look at all the time, not most of the time. And the motivations, the discussions, what's going on may well inform the defense of a case or the prosecution of the case. And so look at it this way, let's take it into a courtroom.

Steve Palmer [00:05:23]:

And you've seen me do this. I get police who turn off their body cams look right or wrong, good or bad. My job is to defend my client. I can make that look really bad. I can make it look really bad. What did you not want these folks to hear? What didn't you want the jury to hear?

Troy Hendrickson [00:05:40]:

It just stinks.

Steve Palmer [00:05:42]:

It does. It creates the. In law, we always talk about the appearance of impropriety. It just doesn't look good. And you're almost better off. If I'm the prosecutor, I'd almost rather hear the cop's off color banter than have nothing there when there's a gap in the evidence.

Troy Hendrickson [00:06:00]:

There was one here where somebody was saying they should have the body cams on the entire shift, which we just actually had. Changed the law in Ohio about body cams you actually have to pay to get.

Steve Palmer [00:06:10]:

Which there is a whole new. There is a big downside of body cam foot. So when I started practicing law 30 years ago, we didn't have body cam footage. We barely had dash camera footage. And we would get them on videotapes when it first came out. And we always thought, man, it would be great to have body cam footage on everything. Except now we have it. And we get hours of footage that requires hours of time to review it.

Steve Palmer [00:06:38]:

And then on the other side, the government or the police agencies, they have to store that stuff somehow. And it gets expensive. It gets really expensive. And if they're going to transfer it, if we make a request for it outside a Normal case. And then think YouTubers and TikTokers, they would love this stuff because they get to create content from it. And it just creates hours of time for the public or the police office or the police departments to disseminate it as public record requests. So I don't have any problem with charging a fee for that because I know firsthand what it takes to go through that stuff. And I know firsthand what it takes even to store the.

Steve Palmer [00:07:16]:

The stuff that I'm on, the cases I'm working on. I just bought a NAS server, like my own private server to dump that stuff onto because there's so much. It's so voluminous.

Troy Hendrickson [00:07:28]:

No, but. And then also another user here, it's to make jokes about how stupid the situation is.

Steve Palmer [00:07:33]:

Understood. Fair enough.

Troy Hendrickson [00:07:34]:

We've already kicked that around, like, the joking about it. But it's very interesting, these comments, because it's a lot of it. There's a comment and then there's like 10 comments going back and forth on it. It's really weird how there's like two.

Steve Palmer [00:07:45]:

Sides, everybody going, yeah, two sides. And look, I guess that's okay. I love the debate. I love the public debate about this stuff. And I get it. Look, we are not unsympathetic to the police. I'm certainly not. As I said, I have total respect for what they do.

Steve Palmer [00:07:59]:

My job is to make sure I defend my client. And what happens to my client is fair and happens within the bounds of the law. There was a comment in there about daring me going to a courtroom or whatever with the cops. Fair enough. Look, I love it, you know, if my. I don't. I represent people.

Troy Hendrickson [00:08:15]:

That was on a different video.

Steve Palmer [00:08:16]:

That was on a different video, if.

Troy Hendrickson [00:08:17]:

You want to get into that.

Steve Palmer [00:08:17]:

Yeah, we'll get into that one. Anyway, look, it's a great debate to have. The fact is, we do have body cam footage. The fact is it exists. And the fact is I don't care what you say. I do care what you say. But irrespective of the arguments to the contrary, there's a certain look that is created when you turn it off in the middle of investigation. At least that's my experience.

Troy Hendrickson [00:08:37]:

Just save your jokes for the station. Just hold it together for like two hours and then go back to station.

Steve Palmer [00:08:44]:

Hold it together. All right, so you heard it here on Lawyer Talk podcast Q and A style. You got your own question, your own comment, leave it in the socials or go to LawyerTalkPodcast.com.