Principled advocacy of liberty is hard, we get it. Many of us find something so offensive or irksome that all live-and-let-live sentiments evaporate. For former criminal defense attorney Dana Bazelon, now policy director for reformist Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner and lecturer at the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School, that issue is guns and the violence she attributes to them. She's discarded concerns about government abuses to endorse a wide-reaching surveillance state.
"If the idea of more police cameras makes you queasy, I understand: I spent the first decade of my career as a criminal defense and civil rights lawyer and during that time, I would have treated a plan for more police-controlled cameras with suspicion and skepticism," Bazelon wrote last week for Slate. "But acting as the policy director for progressive prosecutor and Philadelphia DA Larry Krasner for six years changed my perspective. I saw, firsthand, the cost of unsolved shootings in Philadelphia, the misery of unwilling witnesses brought to court in handcuffs, and the way witnesses could emerge from trials feeling abused and angry."
