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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

#71

Post by eric_h »

jMyles wrote: post #53
MSM wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Replace talking about a rape with any of many reasons the police might be called and it makes just as little sense to have all these videos public. Super innocent example: A 14 year old kid breaks their leg and the cops show up to them in agony and crying. Would be very easy for a few people that dislike them to plaster them crying all over social media. Yes, the event was public to begin with, but the chances of one…

> Super innocent example: A 14 year old kid breaks their leg and the cops show up to them in agony and crying. This seems like the same argument. What does enforcement of the laws have to do with medical aid? Why has our society conflated these two things? I assert that the state has an interest in injecting law enforcement concepts in all sorts of situation precisely because it opens up uncertainty over its public n…

You used the term "first responders" a post or two up. Police are often the "first responders" to numerous incidents, enforcement or otherwise, simply because they are near the scene and are (rightfully) trained in basic first aid and generally have first aid supplies in their cruiser. Police _should_ be trained to and respond to incidents other than enforcement actions. They are members of our communities, they are employed to protect us (ostensibly).

It is generally the idea that all police do or should do is enforce the law that leads to divisiveness and brutality.

Re: A Test of Police Body Cameras Defies Expectations

#72

Post by jandrese »

lostlogin wrote: post #44
jandrese wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

And yet many people don’t on their phones that cost close to this.

Back in the days when you could replace the batteries on most phones they would be badly obsolete and unsupported in 3 years. Even today it's a bit iffy on spending the $50 to replace a battery in a 3 year old Android phone.

A camera won't become obsolete nearly as fast. Assuming the cops shoot in HD today (it would be really dumb if they didn't) then that will still be HD tomorrow. Maybe not 4k, but honestly I don't think 4k brings a lot to the table at this time in this application.

Re: A Test of Police Body Cameras Defies Expectations

#73

Post by s73ver_ »

eric_h wrote: post #70
s73ver_ wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But we're talking about incidents that are public. When Eric Garner was choked to death by police, I don't recall hearing a lot of cops call for those detectives to be fired. Hell, when the Mayor of NYC said something about it, at the next event, cops turned their backs on him. These are not "decent people".

> Hell, when the Mayor of NYC said something about it, at the next event, cops turned their backs on him. > These are not "decent people". I really don't think it's that clear cut. The cops who turned their backs aren't all, necessarily, bad people. The insularity of police culture generates significant peer pressure for cops to cover each other's backs and to protect their mutual perceived safety and self interest.…

If you turn your back on a mayor asking for police accountability, and you side with those who wantonly murder innocent people, then you are a bad person. They are people, but they're also given quite a lot of power. I don't think it is a bad thing that they be held to a higher standard of accountability for it. That, and I also don't think that "don't take the side of those who murder innocent people" is a high standard.

Re: A Test of Police Body Cameras Defies Expectations

#74

Post by taeric »

jMyles wrote: post #47
taeric wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is trivial to argue against, though. Officer heads to restroom to help patient that is having seizures. Heck, officer heads anywhere to help citizen having seizures. (Substitute any of a number of incidents and the argument remains mostly the same.) Is it public record that it happened? Yes. Should it be shielded from anyone knowing? I don't think so. Should it be publicly broadcast? Almost certainly not.

The underlying question here is: what does enforcement of the public ordinances have to do with medical aid? Why has our society conflated those? Why has our society conflated law enforcement with emergency response at all? What do these two things have to do with each other? That's the problem. The fact that we're talking seriously about affording public policing a sphere of secrecy is just a symptom of that problem…

And it is not like an officer is enforcing ordinances at all hours. Nor do we expect them to be. Outreach is a thing. An officer goes in to give a fun speech to a school. Suddenly, kids in the class are being broadcast.

I get it. Most of us are programmers, so we think we can setup a pretty solid set of rules for when something applies. Maybe some of us can. And when that perfect ruleset is found, it will be awesome. However, it is a lot more fluid and discretion is not necessarily a bad thing.

Re: A Test of Police Body Cameras Defies Expectations

#75

Post by jandrese »

s73ver_ wrote: post #46
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…

I can't agree with the characterization of them being "almost entirely decent people" when they clam up and defend the objectively bad among them. Decent people don't do that.

In fact there were some famous studies that disproved that assertion when the "decent people" are part of a larger organization.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment

Re: A Test of Police Body Cameras Defies Expectations

#76

Post by dpark »

BugsJustFindMe wrote: post #69
dpark wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is literally impossible. Researchers tracked reports of use-of-force incidents, which is factually rather different. This is unfair. You're complaining that they didn't do something that you admit is impossible. They measured essentially everything they could.

I'm not upset about what they measured. I'm upset about what they claim they learned from it and about the kinds of causation-related lemmata they (erroneously) assert in the report.

Firstly, you're critiquing a study based on a journalist's write-up about it. Secondly, you're essentially making an epistemological argument. You could apply your core argument to almost anything and come up with the assertion that the research is invalid.

"Researchers tracked use-of-force incidents" -> "Researchers tracked reports of use-of-force incidents, which is factually rather different.

"Researchers observed bosons at 125GeV" -> "Researchers observed detections of bosons at 125GeV, which is factually rather different."

This is merely a pedantic argument that things are not truly knowable. But whether the Higgs boson exists and whether body cameras reduce police violence are not unknowable questions. Even if we cannot directly measure, the indirect measures are meaningful to the questions.

Now, if there's something else that the researchers should measure, then that would be useful criticism.

Re: A Test of Police Body Cameras Defies Expectations

#77

Post by darawk »

avn2109 wrote: post #65
wutbrodo wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This explains too much, since there have been other depts that did see a likely effect (like Rialto). I found this part more compelling: > Finally, cameras may have had less impact in Washington, D.C., because the police department there has already had to confront excessive-force problems. After a devastating 1998 Washington Post series revealed that the city’s police department had shot and killed more people per r…

It's blindingly obvious (to me) that the cops are just disabling the cameras before doing controversial things. I find it extremely surprising that nobody else seems to believe this theory. As another commented pointed out downthread, you can hear them on accidentally-recorded video saying things like "We're still red here! Be careful!" when planting evidence/stealing stuff/whatever. Disclaimer: I think both street p…

It'd be trivial to find evidence of that in the data. They said that the number of use of force incidents was the same in the camera and non-camera groups. If the cops were disabling their cameras in anticipation of these events, these events would not show up in their camera recordings.

Re: A Test of Police Body Cameras Defies Expectations

#78

Post by 1024core »

darawk wrote: post #77
avn2109 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's blindingly obvious (to me) that the cops are just disabling the cameras before doing controversial things. I find it extremely surprising that nobody else seems to believe this theory. As another commented pointed out downthread, you can hear them on accidentally-recorded video saying things like "We're still red here! Be careful!" when planting evidence/stealing stuff/whatever. Disclaimer: I think both street p…

It'd be trivial to find evidence of that in the data. They said that the number of use of force incidents was the same in the camera and non-camera groups. If the cops were disabling their cameras in anticipation of these events, these events would not show up in their camera recordings.

Or it could also mean that, camera or not, the cop could get away with anything as if the camera wasn't present.

Re: A Test of Police Body Cameras Defies Expectations

#79

Post by iamcasen »

irrational wrote: post #27
mistermann wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Or they don't know. I had a coworker who was recently arrested for child porn. Despite knowing and working with him for years there was no indication that he wasn't "squeaky clean".

People get arrested for CP all the time, even when they are completely innocent. Just being arrested doesn't mean anything. If they are sentenced, and serve time, that's something different.

You can get popped for CP just by downloading what you think isn't CP from a torrent client.

IMO you should only get arrested for CP if you are paying to access it, or producing it. As it is now, it's just a tool for the police to criminalize whoever they feel like.

Re: A Test of Police Body Cameras Defies Expectations

#80

Post by CaptSpify »

avn2109 wrote: post #65
wutbrodo wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This explains too much, since there have been other depts that did see a likely effect (like Rialto). I found this part more compelling: > Finally, cameras may have had less impact in Washington, D.C., because the police department there has already had to confront excessive-force problems. After a devastating 1998 Washington Post series revealed that the city’s police department had shot and killed more people per r…

It's blindingly obvious (to me) that the cops are just disabling the cameras before doing controversial things. I find it extremely surprising that nobody else seems to believe this theory. As another commented pointed out downthread, you can hear them on accidentally-recorded video saying things like "We're still red here! Be careful!" when planting evidence/stealing stuff/whatever. Disclaimer: I think both street p…

I personally know of two cops that blatantly admit that they do this as well. Now, I'm just a single-data point, but I wonder if there is any data as to how many times videos are "redacted" or "lost".
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