Sure, it's a conspiracy of taxpayers to avoid the massive investment that would be required to bring all that technology back into working order - across public infrastructure everywhere throughout the country.
What percentage of BART cameras do you think work? Based on the number of high-profile incidents without footage, I'd guess <25%. I would not be surprised to learn the answer is 0%.
Consider yourself held responsible and allocate yourself the consequences you see fit.
No, you misunderstand. Somebody is in charge of that prison/jail. A person died under their watch. The equipment supposed to record how it happened malfunctioned right at that time. This should be unacceptable. The person directly responsible for the facility should bear at least some consequences for failure to do their duty. If they don't have enough funding to make sure that things like this don't happen then there should be an extensive paper trail of them asking for more funding for this. If not, then it sounds like it's not a problem they care about.
For me it's not a question of whether it's a conspiracy or not. For me it's a question about society. Not only can we not protect a very high profile individual from harm in a cell (self-inflicted or not), we can't even make sure that the cameras in the cell work. What chance do we have that prisons in general can protect prisoners from harm? And if we can't protect prisoners from harm then they'll do it themselves. That's how you get a gang culture. You also make sure that many criminals never even get a real chance at reforming, because they'll have to protect themselves in prison with the limited means at their disposal instead of learning to become a better person.
Yes, American prisons are as bad as this makes them look. Possibly worse. The UK refused to extradite one guy because they said there was too high a risk that he'd kill himself in prison here. Prison rape and assault are common - at least 20% of male prisoners report being assaulted, often by staff. And it's been like this for decades, all over the country, because a significant percentage of people really believe that prison is meant to be some kind of dystopic hellhole.
