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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

#41

Post by engineer_22 »

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…

Seems like a good idea from QC perspective. Large departments will need to hire additional staff to do the QC checks, but that's not a major hurdle.

Re: Police have undermined the promise of body cameras

#42

Post by engineer_22 »

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…

I think a jury would be very sympathetic to this argument.

Re: Police have undermined the promise of body cameras

#43

Post by kkielhofner »

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…

To my knowledge this is managed by the body cam vendors with the kinds of protections/assurances you would expect for something that will need to pass evidentiary chain of custody, etc for something to withstand scrutiny in court:

https://my.axon.com/s/article/Uploading-and-charging-with-th...

Almost kind of funny it uses the Axon-provided cloud at evidence.com. Not kidding.

What this boils down to: if the camera footage has been altered or is unavailable some shady cop/department went out of their way to do so. The workflow is extremely simple: hit the record button when you interact with the public, dock the camera (needs to charge anyway) at the end of your shift. There should be no wiggle room for excuses.

The vendors have packaged all of this up decently and something like "Oops we deleted that" should never be acceptable. Even the pre-record activation rolling buffer should eliminate nearly any "We missed that because I didn't have time to activate record" scenarios other than maybe "someone ran up on me out of nowhere and started shooting/attacking me".

Oh you "forgot" to press a button when you pulled someone over? You shouldn't be a cop, plain and simple.

Re: Police have undermined the promise of body cameras

#44

Post by paxys »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #25
paxys wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many hours of C-Span have you watched in your life? Detailed minutes of Congress proceedings from like 1800 are available for you to peruse if you'd like. Transparency isn't the problem – everything is happening fully out in the open.

There are literally closed door legislative sessions that are not transparent. Plus the adage “business is done on the golf course”.

So you want all elected officials to wear a camera 24x7? Because hey, they could be doing business while taking a shit? Better keep it on at night as well, because we want to see the face of whoever they're screwing.

Here's a better idea – elect people who can be trusted.

Re: Police have undermined the promise of body cameras

#45

Post by sschueller »

proee wrote: post #27

Police should wear two body cameras, maybe even one worn on the back to show the entire scene. Why not make them wireless as well and send back to central to ensure they are getting recorded.

360 camera on shoulder and synced to a 3rd party the departments have limited access too. They need to file paperwork to get footage they need.

3rd party can deal with warrents directly and office should be punished for turning off cameras.

This 3rd party however may not be connected or funded in anyway to cause a conflict of interest. No funding by the police!

Re: Police have undermined the promise of body cameras

#46

Post by master-lincoln »

dcsommer wrote: post #11
Eumenes wrote: post #9

I want elected officials to wear body cameras too

"Transparency" in Congress has lead to grandstanding and posturing to cameras, at the expense of the necessary compromises and deals that could otherwise happen.

If that is true, the issue is in the egos of people making deals

Re: Police have undermined the promise of body cameras

#47

Post by engineer_22 »

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…

If you don't believe Management Confidential down at the department is worthy of the public trust, you have a bigger problem on your hands.

In my locale those folks are elected or appointed, so if you cant trust them, yea, you've got a problem.

Re: Police have undermined the promise of body cameras

#48

Post by crazygringo »

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…

On the one hand, as a matter of principle -- absolutely.

On the other hand, bodycams run out of batteries or the electronics glitch or automated video downloads get skipped, in ways that simply don't happen with paper notebooks or data stored in central databases.

To assume that it's always a dereliction of duty is not going to be reasonable in practice.

Like, for whatever reason my cell phone doesn't automatically sync my photos to the cloud even though it's supposed to. And instead of updating my apps overnight, it starts to update them when I unplug my phone each morning. And automatic OS updates never work, I have to do them manually. Technology's great but technology sucks, too. And I have to assume bodycam software is less reliable than iOS/Android.

Re: Police have undermined the promise of body cameras

#49

Post by rpmisms »

Zigurd wrote: post #36
engineer_22 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This is not true. The criminals police deal with are not smart. There are very, very smart criminals, and they tend to gravitate towards specialties that will not get them caught, like Congress.

> Cops are not warriors in danger of a guerrilla attack.

I think some of them need to hear that.

Re: Police have undermined the promise of body cameras

#50

Post by lsy »

Body cams were always a band-aid solution on top of over-arming police and granting them almost total immunity from charges of misconduct. The resulting mentality of us-vs-them and mafioso, bullying behavior from police is all down to feeling a cut above “civilians” and being confident in their power to legally murder anyone who’s too resistant.

This behavior also discourages any thoughtful people with integrity from applying, and beats it out of them quickly when they do. The streets would be a lot safer with more citizens performing a genuine public safety role with fewer weapons and chips on their shoulders, but the police lobby essentially holds cities hostage by monopolizing the public safety role and strategically withdrawing from that role in protest whenever an insufficiently deferential policy is passed.

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