Lax oversight allows Chicago police to avoid turning on their body cams • Hacker News Board

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

#51

Post by pessimizer » Mon, Nov 16, 2020, 10:14 PM UTC

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…

> A couple of hung juries and the powers that be may get the message

A couple of hung juries and prosecutors will be sure to start asking this specific question in order to strike you from the jury. They already do this for the death penalty.

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

#52

Post by gruez » Mon, Nov 16, 2020, 10:14 PM UTC

davidf560 wrote: post #30

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 tech…

>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.

If you're concerned about writing potentially sensitive video to non-volatile storage, that can be solved via technical means. Just encrypt the video with an ephemeral key kept in memory, then store the encrypted video on non-volatile storage. You get best of both worlds.

>I've done that math and the numbers are staggering.

Mind showing your calculations? Keep in mind you don't have to store the videos in perpetuity. Limiting it to 180 days (with option to extend if the incident is being disputed) would suffice for most cases.

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

#53

Post by bigbubba » Mon, Nov 16, 2020, 10:15 PM UTC

pdonis wrote: post #41

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.

No. This is not a national government problem. This is a local government problem. The solution is for citizens of those cities and counties to hold their local governments accountable and vote them out of office if they don't fix the problem. The last thing we need is more big government, one-size-fits-none policies dictated from above. We need more local people solving their own local problems. It would also help i…

There have been apparent cases of police departments targeting local activists trying to bring about change through the local political process. When the local system is that thoroughly compromised, I don't see much alternative to bringing in a higher outside power (e.g. the feds, or maybe the state police if they aren't the dirty cops in question.)

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

#54

Post by ethbr0 » Mon, Nov 16, 2020, 10:15 PM UTC

kbenson wrote: post #37

pydry wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I'm pretty sure trying to pass something like that would very quickly devolve into an argument about states rights. Probably rightly so, as even though oversight would be good, a Federal agency to do so might be problematic for many reasons.

Pretty much every state has their own, state-level investigation bureau [0]. Automatically transferring footage to an internal affairs department there would distance it from the actual department, while preserving state control.

Aside from activating / deactivating the camera (with clear guidelines and penalties for doing / not doing so), and connecting it to a network at the end of a shift, it should be a black box. None of the IT functions should run out of the same police force.

Consequently, this also protects officers in the case of equipment failure: timestamp the activation / deactivation signals in a separate log file. If the footage isn't there, but they activated, then it's no longer their reputation on the line, because they had no involvement in the chain of custody.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_bureau_of_investigation

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

#55

Post by brainfish » Mon, Nov 16, 2020, 10:16 PM UTC

noodlesUK wrote: post #36

backtoyoujim wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What we need is for them to have to carry personally paid malpractice insurance that is tied to their access to qualified immunity. And if their camera is off they lose their insurance policy. Then no more access to qualified immunity. Being police is a luxury not a right.

We don’t need to create a private insurance market for yet another part of American life. Other countries have real oversight bodies with teeth that build public trust. It’s important that justice is done in these cases of abuse, and it also needs to be seen to be done by the public, which builds trust in the institutions of state.

Regulatory capture is extremely common in American life, and many of our current policing issues can arguably be attributed in some large part to overly powerful police unions. So to me this sounds like a lip-service-non-solution waiting to happen.

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

#56

Post by danso » Mon, Nov 16, 2020, 10:16 PM UTC

One of the larger data points is deep into this (very lengthy) story: an estimated 10% of stops that are mandated to be recorded (e.g. not conducted by officers in specialized teams that don't operate with cameras) were marked by officers as not having body camera footage. That doesn't include incidents – such as the story's main anecdote – in which officers claim there is footage even when there isn't, or much of it is missing.

> CBS 2 obtained data on more than 340,000 of those stops between the start of 2018 — the first full year all patrol officers had body cameras — and June 30, 2020.

> More than 62,000 stops during that period didn't have body camera video, the data showed.

> About half of the interactions that weren’t recorded involved police officers who are not required by policy to wear body cameras, including those on specialized teams.

> In order to find out how many stops were potential policy violations, CBS 2 isolated stops made by cops who would normally wear body cameras. It shows about 34,000 stops — roughly 10 percent — were made by officers not assigned to gang, gun or saturation teams.

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

#57

Post by yongjik » Mon, Nov 16, 2020, 10:16 PM UTC

pdonis wrote: post #41

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.

No. This is not a national government problem. This is a local government problem. The solution is for citizens of those cities and counties to hold their local governments accountable and vote them out of office if they don't fix the problem. The last thing we need is more big government, one-size-fits-none policies dictated from above. We need more local people solving their own local problems. It would also help i…

Buying instruments for public high school bands is a local problem. Cops killing citizens in broad daylight and not facing consequences is not a local problem, not any more than 9/11 was a local terrorism problem for residents of New York and Washington DC.

"Let local residents handle it" was how America went through Jim Crow laws.

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

#58

Post by pjc50 » Mon, Nov 16, 2020, 10:16 PM UTC

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.

The US is a single country with a single military.

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

#59

Post by pydry » Mon, Nov 16, 2020, 10:18 PM UTC

eigenman wrote: post #47

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.

Most police departments have internal affairs departments, but these are largely toothless. I would not expect a national organization to perform much better. The incentives simply are not aligned: it is easy to see a politician leaning on the department saying "this will make me look bad, make it go away." I think what would be more powerful would be to empower citizens to bring criminal cases against police offers…

Local internal affairs departments don't work because your career is dependent upon this corrupt judge, DA, cop in your area with whom you will work again. You're incentivized not to look too closely because your career is on the line. Plenty of good cops who have uncovered corruption have been personally targeted this way.

In a national department? You get to the top by putting dirty cops in jail. Your boss's boss does not need to maintain an good relationship with a judge in Georgia. They win in their career by putting more dirty cops in jail.

The more national and centralized and separate from the rest of the police a department like this is the more ruthless it can be.

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

#60

Post by davidf560 » Mon, Nov 16, 2020, 10:18 PM UTC

Pfhreak wrote: post #11

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.

Not only that, but the device could have ten minutes rolling before that in a circular buffer. But the problem here isn't one that we can solve with tech alone. It's cultural to the institution of policing.

> It's cultural to the institution of policing.

It's not just culture, it's the police unions as well. Any new tech (like auto-recording when the weapon is drawn) generally has to have union approval. Unions are frequently resistant to these kinds of changes.

That, and also police agencies in general are pretty much the exact opposite of high-tech. The younger officers probably embrace technology having grown up on it, but a lot of the more senior people are wary of anything technological and see it as just another hindrance to their job. These are not people who sit in front of computers all day like we do.