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How to Safely and Ethically Film Police Misconduct

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Re: How to Safely and Ethically Film Police Misconduct

#91

Post by rayiner »

rsynnott wrote: post #41
michaelt wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> inescapable structural pressure I agree it's a severe problem, but I don't agree it's inescapable. It's a job that attracts brutal people only because it's a job that lets them get away with brutality. If the cycle of allowing brutality and attracting brutes could be broken, there's a good chance it'd stay broken. The police fraternity knows all about getting other cops to fall into line - just look at the "blue wa…

I wonder if part of why it seems particularly bad (for a developed country) in the US is the local police force system. In countries with national police forces, misconduct investigations are often conducted by specialist staff who may be from the other side of the country, who likely aren't really in the same org chart, and so on. It seems intuitively less likely to produce a fair result if the people investigating…

The reason why it’s particularly bad in the US is that we’ve got insanely high levels of violent and organized crime. Baltimore, where I used to live, the homicide rate per 100,000 people is 30-50 times higher than in say Berlin, Madrid, London, etc. It’s almost double the rate of Bogota. That creates a police force that treats policing like its war, and public systems that give wide latitude to errors or misconduct, just as we would give soldiers in war.

Re: How to Safely and Ethically Film Police Misconduct

#92

Post by jbeam »

tmsh wrote: post #2

Can I just say - the sources for good, actionable news are sometimes the strangest of places these days. I've started just reading: http://reddit.com/r/news instead of newspaper websites and it's nice - some affiliate tv news stations (the Minneapolis newspapers...not so much) or student newspapers (I see you Crimson reporting on the anthropology department) are getting it done and sometimes more consistently than ma…

I like Memeorandum: https://www.memeorandum.com/m/

It gives you exposure to whatever people happen to be talking about at the time, but also other takes on the issue. Completely automated.

Re: How to Safely and Ethically Film Police Misconduct

#93

Post by [deleted] »

ramadan_steve wrote: post #82
Minor49er wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a clear curfew order to stay inside. The police come by and see five young adults sitting on a porch. The police order them inside. The group responds by sitting there and continuing to film. So the police fire a single non-lethal shot to get them to go inside. I dont have any sympathy for this group or their pair of greened jeans that they lost in this altercation.

Go fuck your self

[deleted]

Re: How to Safely and Ethically Film Police Misconduct

#94

Post by rayiner »

Broken_Hippo wrote: post #83
vixen99 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That does not seem to be the case. The US spends more on education than any other country. $16,268 a year per student vs global average of $10,759". It's evident that money does not translate into better results. "According to the Washington thinktank the National Center on Education and the Economy (NCEE), the average student in Singapore is 3.5 years ahead of her US counterpart in maths, 1.5 years ahead in reading…

The problem with these sorts of averages is that it doesn't paint an accurate picture. There are schools with buildings in disrepair and schools without the same resources as other schools. And some have waaay more resources and spending per student than most schools. This is, in part, because a lot of states don't fund their schools by redistributing money across all schools. Instead, they rely on the school distric…

This is false. State and federal funding makes up the discrepancy between more well funded and less well funded school districts in nearly every state. There is obviously differences between states, but states have vastly different costs of living. But even then: Mississippi spends as much on education as France. Overall, the US spends more not just in dollar terms, but as a percentage of GDP than most big European countries: https://cdn.statcdn.com/Infographic/images/normal/15434.jpeg

Some of the worst cities have the beat funded schools. Minneapolis spends as much per student as Switzerland. Baltimore spends more, and spends as much of more than the rich suburban schools around it. The US also has relatively low rates or private K-12 compared to the Scandinavian countries, the Netherlands, Belgium, etc.

Re: How to Safely and Ethically Film Police Misconduct

#95

Post by aendruk »

kenneth wrote: post #9
lordnacho wrote: post #5

Why do I not see more drones in the protest videos? You'd think that would be a safe way to film things, plus it's a little harder to confiscate than your phone.

I was wondering the same thing myself today. It'd be interesting to come up with a drone that's ideal for this purpose… that can quickly fly and relocate somewhere, but can land on any flat surface and record remotely. You could perch it on nearby buildings or even things like traffic lights

A fun variation on the idea is to cling to rough vertical surfaces like an insect:

https://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/drones/stanford...

Re: How to Safely and Ethically Film Police Misconduct

#96

Post by jasonv »

I’ve wondered for years whether there has been an effort within police forces to congregate at a national level and work out improvements in their own processes, standards and relationship to issues seen with police practices. Arresting people for filming police, for instance — is there a national body that exists to align things across police forces? Are they all really acting independently and without any coordination wrt improvements?

Re: How to Safely and Ethically Film Police Misconduct

#97

Post by leetcrew »

anigbrowl wrote: post #70
leetcrew wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

for one thing, it's almost certainly illegal to fly a drone in this circumstance. it's over a large crowd of people and could also be construed as "interfering with emergency services". knowing what can happen to people who are making legal recordings, I'd hate to be the odd one out who's actually recording illegally.

This answer baffles me. The illegality is moot in a political confrontation like this. And how are they going to know who's flying it? You do so from cover and give the footage to a journalist you trust. Your main problem is the risk of losing the drone.

most people at a protest (in the US) are not actually doing anything illegal. by attending you are certainly risking arrest and/or getting roughed up, but the police can't put any real charges on you unless they're willing to completely make them up. you're more likely to get harassed as a person with a smartphone camera, but the consequences could be a lot worse if you get caught operating the drone.

also, I think you are underestimating the odds of getting caught flying a drone in a city. an off-the-shelf consumer drone is probably only going to have about 15-20 minutes of fly time, but you need to give yourself a good buffer to fly to/from the location. if you just want to record a single ten minute video and call it a day, you'll probably get away with it. but if you want to record a meaningful amount of footage, you need to keep recovering the drone, swapping out batteries, and relaunching. this creates a lot of opportunities for someone to see you with the drone. if you crash the drone and the police recover it, there could be enough metadata on it to identify the operator.

Re: How to Safely and Ethically Film Police Misconduct

#98

Post by microcolonel »

xphilter wrote: post #58
crispyambulance wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a chaotic situation. They (the police/nat-guard) likely wanted people inside their homes to prevent further chaos and confrontations. It all becomes more volatile if everyone's on their porch, outraged, as the police "parade" comes through. I know folks on HN like strict interpretations and reasoning of what's legal or illegal, but all of that gets very blurred during a riot when the situation at any given time…

But again, that’s not the law (the executive order here). They can’t go enforce things not the law. It’s not like there are armed folks running around that street making exigent circumstances. Why do you feel the need to defend something obviously indefensible? Edit: just to be clear, given all the huff and puff by police of needing riot gear, armored trucks, giant guns, I haven’t seen any report in Minneapolis of an…

Dude, last night a federal officer was executed from a van. It wasn't in Minneapolis, but there's no reason to believe it couldn't be there.

They gave an order: go inside while we're passing. It is a reasonable order for the few seconds or minutes it takes for the crowd to pass the neighbourhood. Remarkably, reasonable police orders apply to you, even if you are middle class and young.

Re: How to Safely and Ethically Film Police Misconduct

#99

Post by leetcrew »

gruez wrote: post #85
tonyarkles wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a warning for people who might try to do this with existing off-the-shelf drones, be warned that trying to do this is likely going to result in you losing your drone. Not that you'll have a crash, but my experience with a wide range of drones (from little $30 whoops to $40k commercial cinematography units) is that they often do not like to takeoff again after landing and sitting for any length of time. Best I can…

That doesn't make any sense. How is the drone supposed to take off during normal operation?

GP is saying the sensors get into a bad state if the drone is powered on but not flying for a while. "normal operation" is powering on the drone and taking off almost immediately, then landing after 15-20 minutes. it's not inconceivable that most testing would follow this "happy path". the battery life of an idling drone might exceed the length of most test cases.

Re: How to Safely and Ethically Film Police Misconduct

#100

Post by justinclift »

bearcobra wrote: post #88
Minor49er wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a clear curfew order to stay inside. The police come by and see five young adults sitting on a porch. The police order them inside. The group responds by sitting there and continuing to film. So the police fire a single non-lethal shot to get them to go inside. I dont have any sympathy for this group or their pair of greened jeans that they lost in this altercation.

> There's a clear curfew order to stay inside The curfew order clearly says that people do NOT need to stay inside. https://dps.mn.gov/macc/Pages/faq.aspx

Specifically:

  Can I be outside my house (on my property) after 8 p.m. and before 6 a.m.?

  Yes.
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