Surveillance Footage is Not Enough
From Chicago Tribune:
This article is one of those obvious points that everyone acknowledges, but rarely is found in news coverage. Just because you have footage of a bad guy, doesn’t mean they will be caught and convicted. The article has a number of examples, but here are some good points:
“The bottom line is that videos are most helpful in cases where there is a relationship between the victim and the perpetrator,” said Eugene O’Donnell, a former police officer and prosecutor who teaches at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York. “When you get the stranger crimes where there is no discernible relationship, they are just by definition harder to solve.”
In a number of cases where the suspect picks his target at random, the images are little more than a way to identify him after he has been caught, O’Donnell said.
Bond said that most often it’s not police who identify the suspect from a photo, but witnesses or friends.
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