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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

#81

Post by CobrastanJorji »

oh_sigh wrote: post #64
ddlatham wrote: post #2

Besides the overall result, another fact that surprised me: The devices vary in price, but the biggest expense is the data-storage cost. In Washington, M.P.D. officers collect about a thousand hours of footage a day. About 40 percent of it is deleted within 90 days, while the rest is to be kept for months, years or decades, depending on the statute of limitations for the charges connected to the footage.

This sounds like a good use case for cold storage like AWS glacier. If you assume 1000 hours of footage would be ~600GB, 1 day of footage would cost ~2.4 cents per month on glacier until you go to retrieve it. Or, 75 cents per month for each month of footage. Most footage would never be watched and eventually purged. I'm not sure how chain of custody would work...perhaps digitally signing the uploads and keeping thos…

It does sound like a good use case for that, and it is, but you're thinking like a Silicon Valley engineer type, not like a company that sells products to the government: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-06-16/taser-is-...

Taser probably just puts the videos in AWS or something, but the markup is obscene.

Re: A Test of Police Body Cameras Defies Expectations

#82

Post by grasshopperpurp »

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 . . .

This statement requires justification.

>Research suggests that family violence is two to four times higher in the law-enforcement community than in the general population.

>As the National Center for Women and Policing noted in a heavily footnoted information sheet, "Two studies have found that at least 40 percent of police officer families experience domestic violence, in contrast to 10 percent of families in the general population. A third study of older and more experienced officers found a rate of 24 percent, indicating that domestic violence is two to four times more common among police families than American families in general." Cops "typically handle cases of police family violence informally, often without an official report, investigation, or even check of the victim's safety," the summary continues. "This 'informal' method is often in direct contradiction to legislative mandates and departmental policies regarding the appropriate response to domestic violence crimes." Finally, "even officers who are found guilty of domestic violence are unlikely to be fired, arrested, or referred for prosecution."

https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2014/09/police-...

Re: A Test of Police Body Cameras Defies Expectations

#83

Post by avn2109 »

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.

There are many other possible interpretations of the data, besides the one you provide above.

E.g. the cops can do lots of shady stuff that isn't a "use of force incident."

Re: A Test of Police Body Cameras Defies Expectations

#84

Post by JamesBarney »

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.…

An enormous amount of evil that has occurred in this world has involved peer pressure. And all evil has extenuating circumstances. I understand that to prevent evil we should understand the reasoning behind why people do bad things. But this doesn't make the people or acts less evil.

Peer pressure or not, protesting accountability for your group after a member committed manslaughter is a bad act.

Re: A Test of Police Body Cameras Defies Expectations

#85

Post by donald123 »

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.

It's not trivial to find that in the data. The cops are not required to keep the camera on all the time, or at least there is no consequence not doing so. They got the number from "administrative data", basically just police reports and civilian complaints, etc. Nothing related to the camera data at all.

Re: A Test of Police Body Cameras Defies Expectations

#86

Post by dogma1138 »

grasshopperpurp wrote: post #82
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 . . . This statement requires justification. >Research suggests that family violence is two to four times higher in the law-enforcement community than in the general population. >As the National Center for Women and Policing noted in a heavily footnoted information sheet, "Two studies have found that at least 40 percent of police officer families experience domestic…

Family violence is also more common in first responders/EMTs and soldiers.

Take a wild guess on what those have in common with police officers.

People that are constantly exposed to highly stressful situations tend to develop psychological problems.

Re: A Test of Police Body Cameras Defies Expectations

#87

Post by cryptonector »

will_brown wrote: post #60

I was recently the victim of an armed kidnapping, escaping only by jumping out of my own car from the driver seat while in gear with the gunman in the passenger seat. By the time the police arrived, my attacker escaped in my car and the first words out of the sergeants mouth was “cut the crap, quit jerking us around, what really happened?” Sure enough I was in a jurisdiction that only two months prior was equipped wi…

Fixing this will have to be the next step. The first step was getting the body cams.

Also, you could probably file a suit to get the unredacted video, and you could make a big stink about this. That's how you get to the next step.

Re: A Test of Police Body Cameras Defies Expectations

#88

Post by TomMarius »

will_brown wrote: post #60

I was recently the victim of an armed kidnapping, escaping only by jumping out of my own car from the driver seat while in gear with the gunman in the passenger seat. By the time the police arrived, my attacker escaped in my car and the first words out of the sergeants mouth was “cut the crap, quit jerking us around, what really happened?” Sure enough I was in a jurisdiction that only two months prior was equipped wi…

(I'm not American) Smells like deception, can't you sue? You could in Europe.

Re: A Test of Police Body Cameras Defies Expectations

#89

Post by yarrel »

jMyles wrote: post #16
ookware wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Today my officers spent hours talking to a victim of rape, looking after her children and dealing with the aftermath. I'm sure she'd love that on YouTube for all to see.

I don't think this is a compelling argument. What is the connection between enforcement of statutory code and medical aid / emergency response? Why do these social services need to be delivered by LEOs? At my college, one of the best things my student government did was first response in cases of rape and sexual assault. We had a phone number that people were able to call and get a response from a peer who had been t…

Until you get the separation of concerns that you are arguing would make publishing surveillance footage a non-issue, it is an issue.

Not everyone has the same privilege as a college student here and now.

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