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A Test of Police Body Cameras Defies Expectations

nytimes.com

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Re: A Test of Police Body Cameras Defies Expectations

#31

Post by occultist_throw »

NuSkooler wrote: post #13

Somehow I'm not surprised. Incidents are now caught on camera and spread around the news & social media. Yet, in a large portion of the cases where the cops are clearly in the wrong they get a slap on the wrist if that. There is no real incentive to change their behavior camera or not.

Indeed not. The prosecution is on the Cops' side. The prosecution decides how vigorously they go after people in Grand Jury and open court. The Judicial system is on the Cops' side, even if during a jury trial they give words that "cops are just like everyone else" - they aren't.

It isn't a thin blue line. It's a big fat highlighter blue bar. The people, vs the Judicial System. And they're the ones that make and enforce the rules.

Re: A Test of Police Body Cameras Defies Expectations

#32

Post by [deleted] »

jandrese wrote: post #3

It probably shouldn't be that big of a surprise. Police officers are almost entirely decent people that shouldn't feel the need to change their behavior just because they're being recorded. Regular citizens would already be on their best behavior around cops, the camera doesn't change much. I think people get a skewed perception of the police force from a relatively small number of highly publicized incidents. Counte…

[deleted]

Re: A Test of Police Body Cameras Defies Expectations

#33

Post by dsr_ »

gph wrote: post #23
losvedir wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Surprised to see this downvoted - it was my initial thought as well. If most cops are decent and doing what they think is right, then that wouldn't change just because they're wearing bodycams. That said, I still think bodycams are a great idea. I hadn't heard justification of them based on improving some aggregate statistics before. Instead, I've always thought they were good for those particularly difficult "he sai…

>Instead, I've always thought they were good for those particularly difficult "he said / she said" cases that capture public attention. I agree, but at what price point would you say it's worth it? In principle I want bodycams, but with this new study it's making me wonder if pragmatically it's really worth spending millions of dollars each year just for a handful of difficult 'he said / she said' cases to be better…

Only millions? No problem at all.

Let's revise that estimate, though.

765,000 sworn state-level personnel in 2008. We'll round up to a million.

At $1000 each for hardened, certified cameras, that's a billion dollars. But we should expect them to last about three years, so $333M each year.

Storage costs are cheap, but secure handling of storage is not. Let's say one full-time $100K employee per hundred camera-wearing officers. That's a billion dollars per year.

So I'll go with a cost estimate of 1.3 - 1.5 billion per year for cameras for all police officers.

Is that worth it? I think so.

Re: A Test of Police Body Cameras Defies Expectations

#34

Post by AnimalMuppet »

mistermann wrote: post #19
jandrese wrote: post #3

It probably shouldn't be that big of a surprise. Police officers are almost entirely decent people that shouldn't feel the need to change their behavior just because they're being recorded. Regular citizens would already be on their best behavior around cops, the camera doesn't change much. I think people get a skewed perception of the police force from a relatively small number of highly publicized incidents. Counte…

> Police officers are almost entirely decent people should perhaps be > Police officers are almost entirely almost decent people The fact that the "few" (so we're told) bad apples aren't rooted out by their fellow honest, law-abiding officers suggests they're not as squeaky clean as some might think.

I can't claim to be more than an almost decent person myself. If you require the police to be angels, well, those are in short supply down here...

Note well: I am not saying that we should lower the standard of behavior that we expect police to abide by. I am merely saying that, in the real world, almost decent is probably the best we can actually find.

Re: A Test of Police Body Cameras Defies Expectations

#35

Post by jandrese »

gph wrote: post #23
losvedir wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Surprised to see this downvoted - it was my initial thought as well. If most cops are decent and doing what they think is right, then that wouldn't change just because they're wearing bodycams. That said, I still think bodycams are a great idea. I hadn't heard justification of them based on improving some aggregate statistics before. Instead, I've always thought they were good for those particularly difficult "he sai…

>Instead, I've always thought they were good for those particularly difficult "he said / she said" cases that capture public attention. I agree, but at what price point would you say it's worth it? In principle I want bodycams, but with this new study it's making me wonder if pragmatically it's really worth spending millions of dollars each year just for a handful of difficult 'he said / she said' cases to be better…

Those he said/she said events can turn into multi-million dollar lawsuits really quickly. It only takes a couple of incidents for the cameras to pay for themselves.

The data storage issue is definitely a concern, but I think it is one that can be effectively managed.

Re: A Test of Police Body Cameras Defies Expectations

#36

Post by zzalpha »

whack wrote: post #6

Before people start wildly speculating, it's worth considering the many good explanations and interpretations suggested in the article: One hypothesis is that officers got used to the cameras and became desensitized to them. But the researchers saw no difference in behavior during the initial phase, when the cameras were new. (The researchers also checked the data to make sure officers were turning their cameras on w…

Funny, I noticed an absence of a far more cynical explanation that made me immediately doubt how balanced the article was: if cops know that the footage is difficult to obtain or can be easily suppressed, deleted, or otherwise buried, or if the legal system is already heavily biased in favour of law enforcement such that body cam footage rarely changes trial outcomes, then body cams don't actually contribute to additional accountability and therefore there's no reason to change behaviours.

tl;dr I see no reason to believe body cams have actually resulted in greater transparency or accountability due to offsetting institutional factors.

Re: A Test of Police Body Cameras Defies Expectations

#37

Post by vladislav »

1) The feedback loop is not just being filmed on the job, but the repercussions of being filmed while doing something illegal and being punished for it. It might take time for this to sink in, especially for the bad apples.

2) Having body cams on all police officers simply makes sense, regardless of the immediate effect. Knowing exactly (or more about) what happened when a citizen armed on behalf of the state interacts with regular citizens is an obvious priority. Even if enforcing body cams doesn't lead to a reduction of police crime, it will certainly lead to more legal action against police crime, which is typically stifled by police buddy tactics.

Re: A Test of Police Body Cameras Defies Expectations

#38

Post by djyaz1200 »

Run this study again and put a prominent blinking light on the camera and I bet the result is different. It's not the fact that you are being watched that changes behavior, it's being aware of the fact that you are being watched. This is why many stores show you the video of yourself as you walk in. The mere presence of cameras is not enough... people have to be reminded they are there.

Re: A Test of Police Body Cameras Defies Expectations

#39

Post by Consultant32452 »

jandrese wrote: post #3

It probably shouldn't be that big of a surprise. Police officers are almost entirely decent people that shouldn't feel the need to change their behavior just because they're being recorded. Regular citizens would already be on their best behavior around cops, the camera doesn't change much. I think people get a skewed perception of the police force from a relatively small number of highly publicized incidents. Counte…

Counter counter option: Not all districts are created equally. We know from history that some districts have become so corrupt that the feds had to step in and replace entire police forces.

I suspect police abuse is not as wide-spread as we've been led to believe by social justice marketing, but I'm open to evidence to the contrary. Let's put our engineers to work and get the costs of these camera systems way down, and then let's put them on every cop in the nation. It's not just the BLM folks talking about this, the MRAs also have claims about things like men who are physically abused by women, cop shows up, arrests the man anyways, and those sorts of stories. One way or the other we can put a number of social justice issues to rest.

Re: A Test of Police Body Cameras Defies Expectations

#40

Post by jandrese »

dsr_ wrote: post #33
gph wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Instead, I've always thought they were good for those particularly difficult "he said / she said" cases that capture public attention. I agree, but at what price point would you say it's worth it? In principle I want bodycams, but with this new study it's making me wonder if pragmatically it's really worth spending millions of dollars each year just for a handful of difficult 'he said / she said' cases to be better…

Only millions? No problem at all. Let's revise that estimate, though. 765,000 sworn state-level personnel in 2008. We'll round up to a million. At $1000 each for hardened, certified cameras, that's a billion dollars. But we should expect them to last about three years, so $333M each year. Storage costs are cheap, but secure handling of storage is not. Let's say one full-time $100K employee per hundred camera-wearing…

Why is the lifetime so short? Are the batteries non-replaceable? I'd definitely be looking into replacing worn out batteries on $1000 devices.
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