Long time coming, but welcome now that the technology is here:
It seems insane that it’s taken this long to get here, but at long last, people are finally using the myriad tech at our disposal to hold cops accountable for their actions. Most recently, its a simple, relatively tiny chip being put to one massively important job—telling headquarters every time a police officer fires a weapon. And its for our protection just as much as their own.
Specifically, it’s the police departments in Santa Cruz, California and Carrollton, Texas that will be testing out a new type of networked gun from California company Yardarm, part of a solution to what’s become an alarmingly lax attitude towards tracking cops’ firearm usage. According to a recent article in the Washington Post, while no comprehensive database of police shootings exist, some police agencies do self-report—750 out of 17,000 total agencies, to be exact. And while the self-reported number of “justifiable homicides” is about 400, academics and other journalistic agencies claim that number to be over 1,000. (A problem which our sister site Deadspin is currently working to fix.)….
Via Networked Guns Are a Smarter Attempt to Keep Cops In Check @ Gizmodo.