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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

#51

Post by makeitshine »

SamoyedFurFluff wrote: post #33
NickC25 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It can be tiered, where more training allows you to do more. On the lower end you have unarmed police giving parking tickets or having to be accompanied by a more highly trained cop who is performing less critical roles.

More training is more pay and benefits, and they have to keep it current by reapplying and showing they've done recent training, like teachers.

Re: Police have undermined the promise of body cameras

#53

Post by engineer_22 »

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.

-> Criminals are not smart.

Let's just agree to disagree

Re: Police have undermined the promise of body cameras

#54

Post by [deleted] »

Eumenes wrote: post #18
dcsommer wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Sounds like something a Corporation would say. You can have compromise and transparency, it doesn't have to be one or the other.

[deleted]

Re: Police have undermined the promise of body cameras

#55

Post by jdoss »

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.

The battery requirements for constant streaming on LTE/5G would most likely be a constraint here. I do think your point makes a lot of sense however.

Re: Police have undermined the promise of body cameras

#56

Post by koolba »

NickC25 wrote: post #32
saalweachter wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 quest…

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

Destroying evidence of a crime is already a felony.

Conceal is a tricky one though as depending on placement the camera could definitely be obscured by normal day to day action (like a tussle). But again, if it can shown the action was deliberate, it’d be an action in furtherance of a crime.

Re: Police have undermined the promise of body cameras

#58

Post by meepmorp »

aaomidi wrote: post #39
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.

> Why are we negotiating with police for this anyway?

Because if you don't, you get election ads with scary looking footage and a voice-over that says something like:

"Mayor/Governor/whatever Smith's anti-police crusade is putting you and your family in danger. This November, send a message by voting out the pro-crime politicians."

You could argue that politicians should make a principled stand against this and do the right thing anyway, and you're right in a moral sense. But there's good odds that those guys will get replaced with people who are more willing to give the police what they want.

Re: Police have undermined the promise of body cameras

#59

Post by waihtis »

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.

Are you also one of those people who think the SF approach of not prosecuting theft was a good idea?

Re: Police have undermined the promise of body cameras

#60

Post by PH95VuimJjqBqy »

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…

The problem is that most people don't consider how much of that footage has privacy implications.

They deal with people very single day, they need to be able to turn those cameras off in the case of, a nude minor, a detailing of psychiatric history of a minor, etc.

The problem is that giving them that ability also opens the door for them to abuse it. There is no easy/good answer here.

And I'm not making excuses for them, if they're abusing it go scorched earth on them please, their position in society means they require it.

But police MUST be able to turn their cameras off.

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