I have read it. And as long as "escalation" can mean "abusive" behavior like mouthing off to a cop and "forcing" him to resort to physical violence, then ya. I concede. The study makes no attempt at deciding whether that particular path is a problem or not, and doesn't make any claims as to what the "escalation" is. People trying to claim it's stopping people from physically assaulting a cop out of nowhere are basing this claim on ludicrous apologist delusions, supported by exactly no evidence.

Having read your entire post, I'll say that I would have boiled down your post to what Free Censorship did. Well, I wouldn't mention North Korea.

"An attack on their dignity" - Mentioning the color blue is an attack on my dignity, you must never do that. Tying a noose is a reference to lynchings, even when you're a young boy from the north without a clue to that bit in history. Mentioning infidelity is an attack on the dignity of a politician.

Your dignity is a bit like the US 'right to seek happiness'. It doesn't mean that you can't be insulted.

I screwed up, working from memory.

Same here! Made the headline very difficult to parse. I was all like "Ooh! Google Motion! Must be a Kinect competitor! Just fire up Buckethead's Aquabot, your Google Motion and start dancing!

So what's the motive then? Plain ol' extortion, or are they trying to distract the media from the CIA torture story that came out about the same time? If it's the latter, it did a good job -- the media and public seem to have the attention span of a two-year-old.

Apple are assholes, not cowards. They probably didn't approve the movie because something is the wrong color, or because it competes with their own movie, or because it has product-placement ads but Sony hasn't yet agreed to give Apple 30% of the ad revenue.

If that doesn't get them, we can suggest that they included "Twerking" in a future Olympics! Sooner or later I'm gonna see those guys' heads explode!

Well, as they say, the tree of liberty needs to occasionally be watered with the blood of tyrants and patriots. It appears that their tree is in need of some watering.

Besides that, top gear's Stephen Fry:
“It's now very common to hear people say, 'I'm rather offended by that.' As if that gives them certain rights. It's actually nothing more... than a whine. 'I find that offensive.' It has no meaning; it has no purpose; it has no reason to be respected as a phrase. 'I am offended by that.' Well, so fucking what."

And from Salman Rushdie:
“Nobody has the right to not be offended. That right doesn't exist in any declaration I have ever read.

If you are offended it is your problem, and frankly lots of things offend lots of people.

I can walk into a bookshop and point out a number of books that I find very unattractive in what they say. But it doesn't occur to me to burn the bookshop down. If you don't like a book, read another book. If you start reading a book and you decide you don't like it, nobody is telling you to finish it.

To read a 600-page novel and then say that it has deeply offended you: well, you have done a lot of work to be offended.”

This is not insightful, this is stupid.
A camera is not going to deter someone from violence against a police officer. I'll tell you what it deters them from- it deters them from calling the cop an asshole.
What you refuse to accept, (or perhaps condone) is that mouthing off to an officer is casus belli for a police officer to kick the teeth in- i mean detain the citizen, i mean perp.
That is wrong and fucked up.

The only case where I'll accept that it was necessary to be violent with a citizen of this country with free agency and civil rights, is where he presented a clear and present danger to someone else (and maybe, arguably, himself). If you're arguing that cameras lower the incidence of that occurring, you're a fucking moron.
If you're arguing that it lowers the incidence of people calling cops assholes and the resulting getting their teeth kicked in, I'll buy that. But that still leaves the original problem in place, the cop shouldn't be a cop.

This is legit.

Totally. Violent criminals usually think twice about attacking an officer because he's wearing a camera. That makes so much sense, I can't believe I didn't think about it.

Yes, those criminals who wanted to violently assault a police officer thought twice because they were being watched. By a camera. Cough.
I will buy that it reduced false reports, though.

"Sir", or "Ma'am" work if addressing directly. "The gentleman", or "The lady" if not? I can think of a dozen different terms to use when referring to or addressing a non-LEO, that aren't pejoratives used by the military, which the police now seem to fancy themselves as. Police used to the civilians. Constabulary officers who kept peace and enforced laws. Not this crazy fucking gestapo trend where they increasingly consider themselves a branch of the government/armed forces.

You're dead-on. My military friends are fond of using "civilian" as a pejorative, and now several friends of mine who are police. Those friends are also former-military. I think that may be part of a trend, or at least it seems to be from my perspective. A lot of people are getting out of the military and going into law enforcement. I'm not sure those people have the right mind-set to be civil servants in a lot of cases. One of those friends recently made his first heroin user bust, and was bragging about ripping the guy out of his car and how hard the take-down was. This was just a dude shooting up in a car. Non-violent, breaking a law, sure- but did he deserve that?
My friend sounded like he was bragging about taking down a terrorist.

After an entire page of your posts, I've come to the conclusion that you're a totalitarian apologist, and a shitbag. I truly hope some day that you don't "comply" enough for an officer and get your dignity, self respect, and maybe even a little of your physical integrity adjusted by one of these ego-driven assholes.