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Police have undermined the promise of body cameras

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Re: Police have undermined the promise of body cameras

#191

Post by [deleted] »

stronglikedan wrote: post #175
crazygringo wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

They check their weapons before each shift. They should check their body cams just as thoroughly.

[deleted]

Re: Police have undermined the promise of body cameras

#192

Post by denton-scratch »

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.

You mean it's not a felony to destroy evidence?

Re: Police have undermined the promise of body cameras

#193

Post by denton-scratch »

babyshake wrote: post #145
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 simple answer is for there to be consequences. Turning off or camera or deleting the footage should be treated the same as not reading a suspect their Miranda rights.

> Turning off or camera or deleting the footage should be treated the same as not reading a suspect their Miranda rights.

It's your view that deliberately concealing evidence is no worse than not handling the administrivia of an arrest correctly?

As I recall, Miranda was introduced specifically to force police departments to tell arrestees their rights, which the law already required them to do. Miranda made it possible for courts to dismiss charges, if the suspect had been questioned without being told his rights. Trying to compel the police to obey the law just because it was the law simply failed. Th only way it could be enforced was to get several prominent prosecutions (of guilty people!) dismissed.

Re: Police have undermined the promise of body cameras

#194

Post by FireBeyond »

engineer_22 wrote: post #179
FireBeyond wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. However, in 35 states, and this blows my mind, an officer can have "consensual" sex with a detainee. Even if they are in handcuffs at the time. 35 states have decided that this is not improper from an "authority" p…

These are shocking claims, please provide sources.

> In February 2018, BuzzFeed News reported that laws in 35 states allowed police officers to claim that a person in their custody consented to sex, and that of at least 158 law enforcement officers charged with sexual assault, sexual battery, or unlawful sexual contact with somebody under their control from 2006 to 2018, at least 26 were acquitted or had charges dropped based on the consent defense.

Realize that being charged means that at some point, the person in custody objected enough that charges were filed by the DA/prosecutor.

Source: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/albertsamaha/congress-c...

Re: Police have undermined the promise of body cameras

#195

Post by denton-scratch »

FireBeyond wrote: post #96
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…

> 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. However, in 35 states, and this blows my mind, an officer can have "consensual" sex with a detainee. Even if they are in handcuffs at the time. 35 states have decided that this is not improper from an "authority" p…

> The officers claimed it was consensual and the courts agreed.

That's pretty nutty. I don't know the backstory, but even if it's "consensual" it's still statutory rape to have sex with a minor.

> I do not believe they even faced disciplinary action.

Not even that administrative process? How come the courts had anything to say about it, then? ...I guess that must have been the minor's court appearance, not the cops. Under the circumstances, I guess that minor might have been disinclined to give defence evidence that the arresting cops had raped her.

Re: Police have undermined the promise of body cameras

#196

Post by Aachen »

PH95VuimJjqBqy wrote: post #118
Aachen wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wasn't asking if the list is complete. I was asking why this is even an example at all because I don't understand the reasoning

I believe you do understand the implications of filming a 10 y/o nude girl.

I believe you don't, because there are none in a normal case, such as when it's as part of your legitimate job

Perhaps that's not common knowledge? It's not illegal to have pictures of nude children insofar as I know laws in various countries. What's illegal presumably everywhere is if there are sexual suggestions (or more than suggestions), which presumably would not be the case in your example

Also, police has to handle these sorts of pictures for prosecution anyway. They already have certain exemptions. Even if you had been right, that could have been extended to cover these cameras while on duty

Re: Police have undermined the promise of body cameras

#197

Post by denton-scratch »

PH95VuimJjqBqy wrote: post #60
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 t…

> they need to be able to turn those cameras off in the case of, a nude minor

Why? It's not a mobile phone, they can't "save the video to the cloud" - it gets downloaded when they return to the station, by the charger.

Re: Police have undermined the promise of body cameras

#198

Post by Aachen »

autoexec wrote: post #187
Aachen wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Are there exceptions [where it's truly accidental] > Are there many, many instances of that being bullshit? Sure. If you're trying to be fair by including the former sentence, then that should also include a "many, many" before "exceptions" unless you have the data I was asking after. As it stands, this adds no further information > You can google for 2 mins and find many examples of hardware mysteriously failing w…

> If you think the cops are so bad, what about the criminals? The criminals don't have the power of the state behind them. We're supposed to hold police to a higher standard than criminals. > but if it were knowable then the citizen would have brought it to court rather than to the media, Why would you think that? Do you think that courts and lawyers are free? Most people in the US have to work to survive and live pa…

> Evidence doesn't always mean much when the police can investigate themselves and find they did nothing wrong

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe you're mixing up two mechanisms of law here:

In criminal law, the police investigates and the public prosecutor brings the case to court. The police often has a discretion to not bring a case if they don't want to, or to indeed frame a case in their favor if they aren't granted that liberty by the lawmaker

In civil law, you can sue for damages (such as lost time off work) or for other things that are made illegal (such as an organisation not following warranty legislation). The police is not involved here and bringing such a case is at your discretion

The latter system is what I had in mind when I said you could bring the evidence to court. Though it might also apply in the former case, in a situation where evidence is inadmissible if obtained illegally (this is not always the case)

Re: Police have undermined the promise of body cameras

#199

Post by irq-1 »

brandonbloom wrote: post #144
kkielhofner wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 foo…

(disclaimer: I was a software engineer at Axon) It’s also worth noting that recording can be activated wirelessly by various triggers. The most obvious and common one being that a nearby officer’s camera was activated (either by physically pressing the button or via a chain reaction of wireless activations). Depending on the available hardware/accessories & configuration, other sources of activation can include unhol…

Publicly sharing hashes of video segments as they're created, would validate both the existence of, and unaltered nature of the video.

Re: Police have undermined the promise of body cameras

#200

Post by greedo »

waihtis wrote: post #154
greedo wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You do realize that this has been shown to be absolutely false? That losses due to shoplifting were used as BS justifications to shut down stores? https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/06/business/walgreens-shopli... https://www.reuters.com/business/retail-consumer/us-retail-l...

Neither of your articles says what you are claiming. Have you yourself read the articles you're linking?

So Target claiming their closing stores across the nation due to their lies about shoplifting etc doesn't connect in your mind to this?

https://www.cnn.com/2023/09/26/business/target-retail-theft-...

"Target is closing nine stores in major cities across four states, claiming theft and organized retail crime have made the environment unsafe for staff and customers – and unsustainable for business."

Yet the NYT article says:

"Target’s chief financial officer, Michael Fiddelke, said shrinkage had reduced the company’s profit margin by more than $400 million in 2022,"

as justification for closing stores. Yet their data was BS as shown in the NYT article.

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