Public and police-union opposition to body cameras reversed once it became clear the footage mostly protects officers by documenting suspects' own bad behavior.
Rahul notes that initial public and police-union resistance to body cams flipped once people realized the footage largely captures suspects' own misconduct, ultimately protecting officers. ✦ AI generated
Rahul · a16z Podcast · 2026-05-18 · original ↗
starts at this moment · 5:04
It's been amazing to see that the public sentiment shift over things like body cams. You know, at first people were very against body cams. Even some of the officer unions were against body cams and they realized, 'Wait a minute. You see all the dumb things that the criminals do.' So that's pretty good. It protects our officers.
verbatim transcript · starts at 5:04
5:04satisfaction. Absolutely. It's been amazing uh to see that the public sentiment shift over things like body cams. You know, at first people were very against body cams. Uh even some of the officer unions were against body cams and they realized, "Wait a minute. You see all the dumb things that uh that the criminals do." Uh so that's pretty good. It it protects our officers. Um but it
5:25also provides you game tape. Gives you footage. It could be coaching, mental health services, make sure that somebody uh who needs a break gets a break. And uh really incredible technology. I remember the same discussion happened with tasers. So we see this over and over again with technology that we sort of have to go through a hype cycle of of uh of reaction. Uh Uh, but it's great to
5:45see those things being being deployed. Do you want to talk a little bit real quickly, uh, about the intelligence gathering apparatus? I think that, uh, you know, you've mentioned it a couple times that we, you know, we shifted law enforcement to really making sure that we have all the information we need. Talk about it, the Department of Public Safety, uh, how you're how you're working to really make sure that
6:06officers have, uh, the best information available. Yeah, so one of the things that we're leaning into is well as is that we have the Arizona Counterterrorism and Center, the TIC. Um, so with fusion centers, the fusion centers around the the US are are collaborating and and working together in tandem to make sure that they're sharing information. Um, you have the, uh, TRX program which a lot of us are doing for FIFA right now
6:30because that's the that's the the big event that's coming up as well as the Olympics. Um, but one of the things in Arizona that I'm doing is I'm leaning heavily into be making sure that we're having sort of an international presence as well. So we have a lot of partnerships, um, with different groups, especially, you know, of course we are a border state, so we have the state of
6:47Sonora, Mexico that's right next to us. We're looking at being able to have the ability of having intelligence officers from, uh, Mexico, from the UAE, from Liberia, from different, uh, parts of the world because the world is getting a lot smaller. Uh, we all know that crime is happening everywhere. Being able to condense that down and distill it to where we can have good information sharing that's unclassified be able to