A Test of Police Body Cameras Defies Expectations

Post by abritinthebay » Sat, Oct 21, 2017, 3:20 PM UTC

linsomniac wrote: post #310

I'm curious how the new study involved 40x more officers than the Rialto study, but only collected 5x more hours of video. Were the Washington officers using the cameras a tenth as much? The article goes on to say that in Washington they collect about 1,000 hours of footage a day, but previously they say the study involves over 2,000 officers, so this sounds like fairly low usage. It says researchers checked to make…

Post by abalone » Sat, Oct 21, 2017, 3:56 PM UTC

will_brown wrote: post #60

I was recently the victim of an armed kidnapping, escaping only by jumping out of my own car from the driver seat while in gear with the gunman in the passenger seat. By the time the police arrived, my attacker escaped in my car and the first words out of the sergeants mouth was “cut the crap, quit jerking us around, what really happened?” Sure enough I was in a jurisdiction that only two months prior was equipped wi…

Post by HumbleGamer » Sat, Oct 21, 2017, 4:22 PM UTC

tw04 wrote: post #233

apsec112 wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seems to abolish the right to be "innocent until proven guilty". It's always possible to allege a crime that no one can prove didn't happen ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell%27s_teapot ), so without a presumption of innocence, the system essentially puts the accused at the mercy of the accuser.

Given there aren't a lot of citizens randomly stopping officers to accuse them of crimes... I don't see a problem. The ISSUE right now is exactly what you've described - officers accusing citizens of crimes they didn't commit without proof beyond "their word". As someone who has been falsely accused by an officer (fortunately a minor traffic violation that I was able to make go away by paying a small fine), I've lost…

Post by katastic » Sat, Oct 21, 2017, 4:28 PM UTC

fnabl wrote: post #298

katastic wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My local PD recently sent a guy home for 10 days WITHOUT pay for merely getting mad at his son's football game and throwing a helmet. It was unbecoming of their professional standards (even off-duty) and he's representing the community. It even made the news (how I heard about it). So remember, there are plenty of good cops and good forces out there. It's just the shit ones never get held accountable.

People and cops are not "good" or "bad". People who work in retail who grow to hate customers are not bad. Most probably want to yell at or strangle certain customers but they don't. Giving people power without accountability is the problem.

Post by Brybry » Sat, Oct 21, 2017, 4:48 PM UTC

taeric wrote: post #74

jMyles wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The underlying question here is: what does enforcement of the public ordinances have to do with medical aid? Why has our society conflated those? Why has our society conflated law enforcement with emergency response at all? What do these two things have to do with each other? That's the problem. The fact that we're talking seriously about affording public policing a sphere of secrecy is just a symptom of that problem…

And it is not like an officer is enforcing ordinances at all hours. Nor do we expect them to be. Outreach is a thing. An officer goes in to give a fun speech to a school. Suddenly, kids in the class are being broadcast. I get it. Most of us are programmers, so we think we can setup a pretty solid set of rules for when something applies. Maybe some of us can. And when that perfect ruleset is found, it will be awesome.…