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

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

#11

Post by Pfhreak »

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.

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

#12

Post by stuntcoder »

it's a common sort of outcome for most attempts at police reform in the USA - buying the police bodycams are one of many "obvious" fixes that somehow don't work

This is educational if you are interested in leveling up your thinking on it https://static1.squarespace.com/static/59ead8f9692ebee25b72f...

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

#13

Post by noodlesUK »

I don’t know why we accept this. It would be easy to make it so if an officer failed to turn on their body cam, and a complaint was filed (which should buffer an entire shift, or at least an hour or so), the presumption is there was misconduct and the officer should be fired, and possibly tried for criminal charges. If I failed to take appropriate records of my job, or fulfil my duties (esp if my job were safety critical), and a complaint was lodged, I’d be out the door.

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

#14

Post by pydry »

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…

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.

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

#15

Post by tylerfontaine »

sneak wrote: post #6
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…

Juries, historically, uncritically accept unsubstantiated cop testimony at face value. It’s a huge problem.

I sat as a juror in a murder trial several years ago. My peers accepted nearly every piece of prosecutorial testimony without question, not just cops. It was really eye-opening. Because even if that hadn't happened, the whole concept of lesser included charges meant the man on trial was almost certain to be guilty of something. If it wasn't Murder 1, it was murder 2, or manslaughter, or wreckless endangerment.

In my case the guy was (as best I could conclude) legitimately guilty of one of the lesser included charges, but there was some dodgy testimony, and I was the only one, in my group, to question it, and suggest that it might have some bearing on which of the many charges that might actually make him guilty of. It took quite some convincing to get anyone else to drop to anything lower than the top charge.

While I realize that this sample size of 1 is statistically insignificant, it really seems like if you wind up in court on criminal charges, odds seem to be you're screwed. "Innocent until proven guilty" felt, to me, like a pipedream.

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

#16

Post by bigbubba »

pydry wrote: post #14
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…

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.

Isn't that one of the roles the FBI has?

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

#17

Post by msla »

pydry wrote: post #14
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…

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.

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

#18

Post by throwaway894345 »

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…

Agreed. I assumed they buffered the whole work day such that following an incident, the investigating officers (and not the officer under investigation) would initiate the persistence of a particular incident.

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

#19

Post by Cancan82 »

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…

Because that would work actually work? We don’t actually want to have recordings, just say that we have them.

But seriously, I would imagine the storage costs aren’t that terrible relative to the costs it would save in lawsuits for the police departments ?

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

#20

Post by pydry »

bigbubba wrote: post #16
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.

Isn't that one of the roles the FBI has?

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