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Police have undermined the promise of body cameras

propublica.org

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Re: Police have undermined the promise of body cameras

#31

Post by some_random »

RecycledEle wrote: post #26

Information is power. I want information to be available to as many people as possible or available to nobody. Suggestion: When an altercation occurs, everyone with a recording of it should upload it to a public web site where all video is permanently available to the public. Anyone not uploading their video is assumed by the courts to be at fault for the altercation. Another suggestion: All recordings in public plac…

The purpose of a panopticon isn't so that the inmates can keep the guard in check.

Re: Police have undermined the promise of body cameras

#32

Post by NickC25 »

saalweachter wrote: post #8
WillAdams wrote: post #5

A police officer in performance of his duties should have zero expectation of privacy, and has a legal obligation to fill out an accurate duty log, which is such that it may be used as evidence in court. Body camera footage should be viewed as an extension of that, and when missing or unavailable, that absence should be viewed in the same light as a failure to properly document something in a duty log --- it is a der…

This is another example of "an untested backup doesn't exist", as well. Regardless of whether some of the time, a police department is full of bad apples and concealing or destroying body-cam footage, if you treat your body cams as a backup -- and only look at it when something goes wrong -- you're going to discover that your body cams weren't working all along and no one noticed. And then you're going to look hella…

>Regardless of whether some of the time, a police department is full of bad apples and concealing or destroying body-cam footage

Make it a felony to conceal or destroy body cam footage.

Also, make it so that if a cop is accused of violating rights or involved in foul play, and their body cam "suddenly malfunctioned or were turned off or was left in the car" , a default judgement is given against the officer in question.

Make it as ubiquitous to cops as a parachute is for someone who goes skydiving. This must be enforced as harshly as possible. Cops aren't operating on their own dime.

If I'm a cop and the choice is leave my camera on or lose my job, my union membership, my retirement, my pension, and also face serious jail time, I'm leaving my camera on every time.

The watchers MUST watch the watchmen, and the watchmen must have no expectations of privacy while on duty or being paid by the public.

Re: Police have undermined the promise of body cameras

#33

Post by SamoyedFurFluff »

NickC25 wrote: post #15
sixothree wrote: post #6

Without adversarial third party oversight police will continue to abuse the public.

This. So much this. The problem is that due to the underlying need for police cooperation in unrelated cases, no sane DA or judge would dare challenge a cop (or the police union) who can claim "oh it was a malfunction" or "oh uh the battery ran out" when it comes time for video footage to be reviewed and made public in the case of a police officer breaking the law. My proposal: make it someone's (or an anonymous boar…

I agree with this except I think that policing should also be a highly educated position matching the expectations. Social workers and teachers are generally required to have graduate degrees, for example. Police academies are a scant few weeks in America, and these are people who enforce complex law in the most crucial life-or-death circumstances. Cops should be the best of us.

Re: Police have undermined the promise of body cameras

#34

Post by Zigurd »

bell-cot wrote: post #2

Immediate Reaction: Um, yes? Only the naive, self-deluding, and techno-utopians would have expected otherwise. Vs. an experienced teller from a well-run 1950's podunk bank could tell you that no security technology is worth crap if the managers don't actually care, or are crooked themselves.

The companies selling this tech are explicitly techno-dystopians.

Re: Police have undermined the promise of body cameras

#35

Post by leetrout »

hindsightbias wrote: post #23
bell-cot wrote: post #2

Immediate Reaction: Um, yes? Only the naive, self-deluding, and techno-utopians would have expected otherwise. Vs. an experienced teller from a well-run 1950's podunk bank could tell you that no security technology is worth crap if the managers don't actually care, or are crooked themselves.

But you hav to admire the opportunities that other obvious players like GoPro seem to have missed out on: "Motorola Solutions Raises Spending on Body Cameras to Grab Market Share The equipment maker expects revenue in its video-security business to jump more than 20% this year after a 30.7% leap last year" https://www.wsj.com/articles/motorola-solutions-raises-spend...

We explored this space with an investor and did not get far before backing away in ~2017ish.

The makers of the TASER, Axon, gave away body cams to sell the services supporting them.

It worked well and was very expensive to try to enter the market against their brand loyalty and existing market penetration.

Re: Police have undermined the promise of body cameras

#36

Post by Zigurd »

engineer_22 wrote: post #24
RecycledEle wrote: post #13

Until it is a felony for a cop to turn off a camera, Until it is a felony to not upload all video within 1 hour of the end of the cops shift and make it publicly available on the web with geotagging left in place, I live under a tyranny.

I think this is an extreme view. I think we can all agree that body cam footage is an important tool to get justice, but in the interest of public safety I don't think providing bad actors real time information about police habits and location is a good idea.

You are taken in by TV cop show scenarios. Criminals are not smart. Cops are not warriors in danger of a guerrilla attack.

The real effect of knowing what cops do all day would be half as many cops, or fewer.

Re: Police have undermined the promise of body cameras

#37

Post by meepmorp »

NickC25 wrote: post #15
sixothree wrote: post #6

Without adversarial third party oversight police will continue to abuse the public.

This. So much this. The problem is that due to the underlying need for police cooperation in unrelated cases, no sane DA or judge would dare challenge a cop (or the police union) who can claim "oh it was a malfunction" or "oh uh the battery ran out" when it comes time for video footage to be reviewed and made public in the case of a police officer breaking the law. My proposal: make it someone's (or an anonymous boar…

> Make it federal law that every officer when on duty has no expectations of privacy, and their body cam must be on 100% of the time when on duty, no exceptions.

I'm not an expert, but I don't think that'd be possible at the federal level. Politics aside, local policing is controlled by states and federal control over those issues is largely limited to things like withholding funding for states that don't comply with federal program requirements.

Re: Police have undermined the promise of body cameras

#39

Post by aaomidi »

btbuildem wrote: post #22

> And so as policymakers rushed to equip the police with cameras, they often failed to grapple with a fundamental question: Who would control the footage? Instead, they defaulted to leaving police departments [..] with the power to decide what is recorded, who can see it and when. I think it's incredibly naive to portray this as a "defaulting" or "failing to grapple with a fundamental question". I am 100% certain "wh…

Why are we negotiating with police for this anyway?

And if the police union is threatening to strike, then who cares. Those cops are not the ones we want anyway. Rehire.

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