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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

#131

Post by throwaway201103 »

shortstuffsushi wrote: post #23
crispyporkbites wrote: post #7

Is there a way to remove articles about the American police force from HN? Yes we know they’re bad/unethical and a problem for Americans. But is this really something that “gratifies one’s intellectual curiosity”? Isn’t it just flamebait now?

You are probably right that Hacker News isn't the best forum for policing discussion. In fact, the "off-topic" region of the guidelines would indicate this as well imo. But people have upvoted it to the front page, so there must be some interest at least. Best bet is probably to flag and move on.

The HN community is not magically immune to the flaws of online communities. There are always differing points of view, trolls, and warriors for a cause.

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

#132

Post by throwaway201103 »

wmeredith wrote: post #42
eplanit wrote: post #22

Chicago has one of the highest murder rates in the U.S.[0], and is rising rapidly[1]; but, invariably the criticism is focused solely on the police. By the weight of coverage and outrage, one would think that Chicago faces no issues other than bad police. Yes they should have their body cams on. Why so little attention to the reality in Chicago that the police are facing? [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Uni…

This is textbook whataboutism and the answer as always is that one problem's existence doesn't preclude the treatment of another. How about we address both problems? This article is talking about the police problem.

But nobody talks about the murder problem. Those who try to are called racists.

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

#133

Post by henryfjordan »

davidf560 wrote: post #101
Buttons840 wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Do the math sometime on what kind of bandwidth and storage capacity a large agency like NYPD 40,000 officers (rounded up) 8 hours of full HD video can be stored in 10 gigs of storage do this 365 days a year for every officer S3 standard costs less than 3 cents per gigabyte to store per month result: about 50 million dollars to store 8 hours of FHD video of every officer every day for a year The NYPD anual budget is…

Now calculate how big of a data pipe you need to AWS to upload 400 terabytes of video each day and how much does that cost?

AWS has hard drives that they can send you empty and you fill em up and send them back for upload to S3. They even have semi trucks full of hard drives that will drive to you: https://aws.amazon.com/snowmobile/

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

#134

Post by superfrank »

akira2501 wrote: post #92
davidf560 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why not buffer 5 hours by default? Because then you end up with recordings of things that you shouldn't have, like the officer using the restroom or a victim who has asked not to be recorded. Also, several minutes of buffer fits nicely in RAM. 5 hours would require a lot more RAM (making devices more expensive and thus harder to get deployed) or would require it to be written to flash disk which introduces new tech…

> Because then you end up with recordings of things that you shouldn't have, like the officer using the restroom or a victim who has asked not to be recorded. Then make the recordings encrypted, and ONLY let the DA have the key that decrypts them. This solves the lack of data problem, but it also prevents the police from using their own footage without authorization. > Do the math sometime on what kind of bandwidth a…

> Then make the recordings encrypted, and ONLY let the DA have the key that decrypts them. This solves the lack of data problem, but it also prevents the police from using their own footage without authorization.

Unfortunately, That doesn't work.

Police officers, supervisors, and internal affairs often need to refer back to recording when making or reviewing police reports. Body cam and dash cam videos often need to be shared internally or externally. Also, many precincts take random samples of body camera footage and do spot check reviews to make sure officers are behaving in line with policy.

There are tons of people who need access to body cam footage on a regular basis.

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

#135

Post by sokoloff »

msla wrote: post #17
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.

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.

That big wall being the tenth amendment to the Constitution.

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

#136

Post by yardie »

mereel wrote: post #117
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.

> You unholster or unbuckle your weapon, camera goes live. This has already been around for a few years https://www.axon.com/products/axon-signal-sidearm , not sure about adoption numbers though

"Capture vital footage without lifting a finger"

Exactly what is needed.

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

#137

Post by sokoloff »

throwaway201103 wrote: post #123
ridaj wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Leaving it up to local voters makes it sound like it's ok for a police dept to misbehave, eg harass minorities or evade accountability, as long as the majority voters in that city/county are ok with it. I think that's a problem and that going to a couple levels in governance (state or federal) makes total sense given the systematic nature of some of the problems.

If state and local law enforcement were subject to this level of federal oversight and control, we would not have legal marijuana anywhere.

We have quasi-legal marijuana in some jurisdictions right now. It's still federally illegal everywhere and that's just not being enforced (I think because the Feds know that if they squeeze that particular watermelon seed that it will fly out of their fingers everywhere).

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

#138

Post by hvdfhbj »

SoSoRoCoCo wrote: post #31
ahoy wrote: post #3

The police in america generally have too much responsibility and consume too many of our resources. When you combine that with the privileged status that comes with law enforcement you get a real mess. The problem is, as in so many cases, fundamentally about power. Until police have less power (that is, less funding, fewer numbers, and a smaller scope of responsibilites), i fear these kinds of abuses are almost unavo…

> The police in america generally have too much responsibility and consume too many of our resources. Part if this is because many other social services are cannibalized either due to drops in tax revenue, or in order to fund the constantly bloating police budgets. Part of the "defund" process (I know, very poorly named!) is to take both responsibility off police shoulders and $$$ out of police budgets and put those…

Better still, get mentally ill homeless people off the street and into institutions where they belong.

Building a camp out in the desert somewhere where people like this can get three square meals and a bed would both be an improvement on their present situation and a total money saver once you take into account all the problems and waste of police/ambulance time that they cause. Even better if you extend it to drug addicts.

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

#139

Post by hvdfhbj »

jussij wrote: post #124
gcc_programmer wrote: post #95

my 2 cents: anyone who even thinks of defunding the police should visit a country with no police (for example a favella in Rio at night) and report back their results. The experiment will likely not be very repeatable.

The concept of defunding the police is not an attempt to eliminating the police force. It is just a name that tries to capture the fact many US police forces look more like an army than a typical police force found in other parts of the world. That is what needs to change.

That is the "sanewashed" version of the slogan, yes.

Ultimately it's classic motte-and-bailey, a slogan that means entirely different things depending on whether you're playing attack or defence at any given time.

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

#140

Post by dragonwriter »

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.

> America desperately needs a national internal affairs department ith an entirely separate reporting line whose boss answers directly to the president (or at least state governors).

The closest thing (and its fairly close, though it doesn't answer to the states or the President directly) is the US Department of Justice, particularly the Special Litigation Section of the Civil Rights Division, which addresses "1) the rights of people in state or local institutions, including: jails, prisons, juvenile detention facilities, and health care facilities for persons with disabilities; 2) the rights of individuals with disabilities to receive services in their communities, rather than in institutions; 3) the rights of people who interact with state or local police or sheriffs' departments; 4) the rights of youth involved in the juvenile justice system; 5) the rights of people to have safe access to reproductive health care clinics; and 6) the rights of people to practice their religion while confined to state and local institutions." [0]

But weakening oversight of local law enforcement by DoJ was a major early priority of the current Administration, so it hasn't been particularly active in the particular role you are concerned with for the last few years.

> If Biden is looking to score some points this would be a good way.

I can't really imagine a Biden Administration not ramping activity regarding law enforcement oversight back up.

[0] https://www.justice.gov/crt/special-litigation-section

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