Body cameras for members of the public entering public places, including courthouses, as a measure of public safety from the government

For me there is no question that public places are unsafe without people being able to videotape what is happening there, to prevent abuse by the government.

During several proceedings I have been a target of clear verbal abuse and harassment by male attorneys.  Those proceedings were held off record (even though in courts that are supposedly courts "of record" which requires record of proceedings to be kept - but it isn't), and it is just my word, a word of an immigrant female attorney, against the well-connected male attorneys and judges and judicial personnel favoring them.

Whenever I asked for copies of videotapes documenting judicial misconduct in a proceeding, such videotapes were never provided to me, either under the guise that such videotapes could only be shown to me when the courthouse was closed (meaning - never), or that the video equipment suddenly became broken on that particular day, while no records of its repairs existed, or that the records were "accidentally" taped over, even though they were not supposed to because I asked for copies of videotapes well within the period of time when the court administration claimed it stored such video records.

I know for a fact that if anything happens to me in the courtroom healthwise (and it already happened), nobody will render me help, there will be no evidence of wrongdoing or failure to give help, and nobody will answer, so if I feel unwell I prefer to have my illness documented and to stay home on an official medical leave.

Yet, what I am describing in how I was harassed or how people refused to give me help when I needed it in the courthouse, or how people refused to give me recordings of judicial misconduct that occurred on the premises of the courthouse (3 times) - that is still very mild, as compared to what happened recently to a female attorney in Philadelphia who was beaten up when 6 court officers were overpowering - unnecessarily - her mentally ill client a criminal defendant.

The result?

The female public defender was hospitalized, the officers are not charged, the officers claimed she "fell" to her own doom while she claims she was pummeled, everything occurred - surprise! - off the range of video surveillance in the courthouse, and the local district attorney - another surprise! - is not charging the court officers for their action.

The court officer who reportedly pummeled the female public defender - yet another surprise! - first refused to be identified and, when the officer was identified, threatened the public defender that he will get to "talk" to her if she keeps digging more.

And yet another "big surprise" is that the pummeled criminal defendant was black, and that he was not given any medical attention - obviously, because giving him medical attention will be the same as documenting his injuries immediately after they were inflicted, something that the "honorable" court employees did not want to do.  And, of course, the victim of court officers' brutality was charged with new crimes (same as they do in prisons in the state of New York - pummel inmates outside of the range of video cameras and then put them in solitary confinement for a couple of YEARS, claiming that it is the inmate who has beaten up the guards and not the other way around).

The public defender is lucky that she was not charged with something - to pack her away to jail and prevent her from documenting her own injuries inflicted by court personnel.

So, ladies and gentlemen, members of the public, you need to be VERY afraid when entering courthouses in this country.

You may be beaten up there, by court employees, to the point requiring hospitalization, and no records will be kept, court personnel will present a wall of silence and of denial, out of fear for their jobs, no video records will be available and it will be your word against many "trained witnesses", court employees who will be presumed credible by the court system.

And - given that court employees are given extended quasi-judicial immunity for their actions - they may be untouchable no matter what they do, and, in the absence of video evidence, you may be out of luck proving that what they did to you did not occur as part of a court proceeding. 

Members of the public are in danger if they are the target of an unlawful arrest, as well as they are filming that unlawful arrest.  While a police officer in South Carolina was charged with murder based on a citizen's cell phone video footage, while police officers in other parts of the U.S. are suspended or fired because of documented video evidence of beating suspects, the reaction of law enforcement is often not to conduct themselves as they are supposed to, but to destroy evidence of their misconduct.

As an example, recently there was a report of a U.S. Marshal who was so disgruntled that a witness videotaped on her cell phone law enforcement brutality during an arrest that he grabbed the witness's cell phone, smashed it on the ground and kicked it.

What do I suggest to start solving the problem of the government getting out of hand and preventing its victims from proving that wrongs were committed against them?

The same as I have been suggesting for a long time.

If a person, a member of the public, enters a "public place", a person must be able to carry on him or her a body camera that provides video-recording of what is going on in that public place, and a law ensuring such a right for body cameras must cover courthouses, too.

So, ladies and gentlemen - let's press our representatives in the legislatures to introduce laws prohibiting any restrictions on video cameras in all public places, including courthouses.