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There’s no evidence that body cam images like these have changed police behavior or inhibited their eruptions of violence. But I suspect they have changed people’s attitudes toward police. After watching so many incidents of cops shooting or assaulting people over minor incidents with little or no provocation, it has made most of us more fearful of cops, more compliant to their every command, more willing to give up basic rights and privileges. This is how police states take hold, bit by bit, through a kind of coerced consent of the governed.

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Jeffrey St. Clair is editor of CounterPunch. His most recent book is An Orgy of Thieves: Neoliberalism and Its Discontents (with Alexander Cockburn). He can be reached at: sitka@comcast.net or on Twitter @JeffreyStClair3