Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Lax oversight allows Chicago police to avoid turning on their body cams

storymaps.arcgis.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 178 posts

Re: Lax oversight allows Chicago police to avoid turning on their body cams

#21

Post by secondcoming »

ahoy wrote: post #3

The police in america generally have too much responsibility and consume too many of our resources. When you combine that with the privileged status that comes with law enforcement you get a real mess. The problem is, as in so many cases, fundamentally about power. Until police have less power (that is, less funding, fewer numbers, and a smaller scope of responsibilites), i fear these kinds of abuses are almost unavo…

That power doesn't just disappear though. It'll be taken by a mob / gang / warlord, take your pick. Good luck demanding bodycams then!

Re: Lax oversight allows Chicago police to avoid turning on their body cams

#22

Post by eplanit »

Chicago has one of the highest murder rates in the U.S.[0], and is rising rapidly[1]; but, invariably the criticism is focused solely on the police. By the weight of coverage and outrage, one would think that Chicago faces no issues other than bad police. Yes they should have their body cams on. Why so little attention to the reality in Chicago that the police are facing?

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_b... [1] https://abc7chicago.com/chicago-murders-2020-crime-fbi/64317...

Re: Lax oversight allows Chicago police to avoid turning on their body cams

#23

Post by shortstuffsushi »

crispyporkbites wrote: post #7

Is there a way to remove articles about the American police force from HN? Yes we know they’re bad/unethical and a problem for Americans. But is this really something that “gratifies one’s intellectual curiosity”? Isn’t it just flamebait now?

You are probably right that Hacker News isn't the best forum for policing discussion. In fact, the "off-topic" region of the guidelines would indicate this as well imo. But people have upvoted it to the front page, so there must be some interest at least. Best bet is probably to flag and move on.

Re: Lax oversight allows Chicago police to avoid turning on their body cams

#24

Post by bird_monster »

pydry wrote: post #14
wombatpm wrote: post #5

If we really want body cameras to work, there needs to be penalties for nonuse. For example lack of body camera removes qualified immunity protections for the officer(s) in question. My personal philosophy is that if called to be on a criminal jury, if the case relies on the officer's testimony and there is no camera, I will return a verdict of not guilty under the justification that the state has failed to prove its…

America desperately needs a national internal affairs department with an entirely separate reporting line whose boss answers directly to the president (or at least state governors). They could purchase, maintain the body cameras, collect and handle the footage and be trusted. If Biden is looking to score some points this would be a good way.

> If Biden is looking to score some points this would be a good way.

If only a significant % of america didn't refuse to acknowledge police abuse of power was a big deal (or even happening)

Re: Lax oversight allows Chicago police to avoid turning on their body cams

#25

Post by triceratops »

msla wrote: post #17
pydry wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

America desperately needs a national internal affairs department with an entirely separate reporting line whose boss answers directly to the president (or at least state governors). They could purchase, maintain the body cameras, collect and handle the footage and be trusted. If Biden is looking to score some points this would be a good way.

That would be contrary to the whole spirit of Federalism. It would be like every EU country having a separate department of internal affairs which reports directly to Brussels, except, perhaps, even more politically inflammatory. I'm not saying I necessarily disagree with you, just noting that there's a big wall in the path of implementing the concept.

GP said internal affairs could report to state governors.

Re: Lax oversight allows Chicago police to avoid turning on their body cams

#26

Post by varispeed »

ahoy wrote: post #3

The police in america generally have too much responsibility and consume too many of our resources. When you combine that with the privileged status that comes with law enforcement you get a real mess. The problem is, as in so many cases, fundamentally about power. Until police have less power (that is, less funding, fewer numbers, and a smaller scope of responsibilites), i fear these kinds of abuses are almost unavo…

Even if police has less power, they still can lie to you or give you misleading advice and then turn it against you and you will have no way to prove malice. I witnessed this couple of times and I was shocked that something like this is possible. I think to build the trust of the public, governments should invest in creating technology allowing recording all incidents in full. If there is no accountability all bad apples get free reign and you will have no recourse.

Re: Lax oversight allows Chicago police to avoid turning on their body cams

#27

Post by thescriptkiddie »

yardie wrote: post #4

With all the smart sensors available today it should be possible to start recording automatically. You unholster or unbuckle your weapon, camera goes live. It's become far too easy to say you forgot to do activate it in the heat of the moment. Even a 20yo car knows when a passenger is or isn't sitting in the seat.

You can buy dash cams now with a 24 hour circular buffer and an onboard battery that lasts just as long. It would not be hard to just record everything for an entire shift, then copy the video to a server while the body camera is recharging.

Re: Lax oversight allows Chicago police to avoid turning on their body cams

#28

Post by stevesearer »

sneak wrote: post #6
wombatpm wrote: post #5

If we really want body cameras to work, there needs to be penalties for nonuse. For example lack of body camera removes qualified immunity protections for the officer(s) in question. My personal philosophy is that if called to be on a criminal jury, if the case relies on the officer's testimony and there is no camera, I will return a verdict of not guilty under the justification that the state has failed to prove its…

Juries, historically, uncritically accept unsubstantiated cop testimony at face value. It’s a huge problem.

I was on a jury a number of years ago on a suspected DUI case where the police officer for the case failed to complete the proper paperwork and record of events at the time of arrest.

As a jury we ended up deciding that the defendant was Not Guilty because without that filed paperwork, it was just two people's recollection of the events and we didn't feel the officer was more trustworthy.

I wouldn't have thought much about it after the fact, except that the prosecution was visibly upset at the decision which made me realize that that was likely not what normally would have happened.

Re: Lax oversight allows Chicago police to avoid turning on their body cams

#29

Post by bigbubba »

pydry wrote: post #20
bigbubba wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't that one of the roles the FBI has?

As far as i know it's more or less handled by police forces themselves with predictable results.

It's my understanding that the FBI is meant to handle matters of state or local government corruption, which I would think includes police departments that circle their wagons and protecting criminal cops. Probably they need to be doing a better job of it, but I believe they're meant to be (among other things) the organization you describe above.

I'm not really familiar with the details, but it's my understanding the Seattle PD are under some sort of probation system with the DOJ, which I'm guessing the FBI was involved with. So I think this sort of thing does happen, though I guess not enough.

Re: Lax oversight allows Chicago police to avoid turning on their body cams

#30

Post by davidf560 »

wombatmobile wrote: post #9

> The cameras are relatively simple to operate. They constantly record everything in front of them, but only save 30 seconds of video at a time. To record an entire incident, the officer must double press the “event” button in the center of the camera. So non-compliance is the default. And compliance failure is as easy as an incorrect double-press that fails to start recording. Is there even any feedback that the dou…

> Why not buffer 5 hours by default?

Because then you end up with recordings of things that you shouldn't have, like the officer using the restroom or a victim who has asked not to be recorded. Also, several minutes of buffer fits nicely in RAM. 5 hours would require a lot more RAM (making devices more expensive and thus harder to get deployed) or would require it to be written to flash disk which introduces new technical and legal issues.

Additionally, recording 5 hours for each incident has one significant problem: every video that gets recorded has to be stored on device during the shift (not a big problem), but it also has to be offloaded and stored somewhere for archival. Do the math sometime on what kind of bandwidth and storage capacity a large agency like NYPD, LAPD, Chicago PD, etc. would need to upload several hours worth of officer-recorded video each day. I've done that math and the numbers are staggering.

Post reply on HN