Cops wearing cameras

[enders-shadow.livejournal.com]

Position: Police officers should have to wear a camera, just like their badge.

Reason: it protects honest police officers from false accusations of abuse and it protects honest victims from dishonest police.

"THE Rialto study began in February 2012 and will run until this July. The results from the first 12 months are striking. Even with only half of the 54 uniformed patrol officers wearing cameras at any given time, the department over all had an 88 percent decline in the number of complaints filed against officers, compared with the 12 months before the study, to 3 from 24.

Rialto’s police officers also used force nearly 60 percent less often — in 25 instances, compared with 61. When force was used, it was twice as likely to have been applied by the officers who weren’t wearing cameras during that shift, the study found. And, lest skeptics think that the officers with cameras are selective about which encounters they record, Mr. Farrar noted that those officers who apply force while wearing a camera have always captured the incident on video." NYT


This seems like good way to keep misconduct from happening. I think that when even the ACLU gets behind this, you might be able to get bipartisan support; it's law-and-order based. Give the police evidence to use to prove their case in court and convict the bad guys! And so long as it's not always recording and saving in some big brother type manner (after all, that's the NSA's job, and not the local PD's job) it could get left-wing support too.

I am unsure of the big downside here. Does anyone want to argue against making police wear cameras, like badges, and record their stop-and-frisks, their arrests, and so on?

Comments

[htpcl.livejournal.com]

Reminds me of this new fashion, or rather, necessity, among Russian drivers to put cameras on their windscreens, so they could prevent cheaters from ramming their cars into theirs after having deliberately switched to back gear, and then demanding some money for the repairs. Even asshole pedestrians doing a similar thing (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BcGAKqANOzE). With all those cameras, there's now proof of misconduct, and on the upside, a vast number of amazing Russian Youtube footage vids (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sj_wxdM-MQ4) have emerged. And this phenomenon has already given birth to its first viral heroes (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JJALDN-3qG0), or whatever the hell they're called these days.

[enders-shadow.livejournal.com]

Ja, kinda like that. Jon Stewart did a segment on those, when that meteor hit. Why did all those Russians have cameras in their cars? Well ya see....*cut to someone walking themself into a stopped car and acting hurt*

But yes, like that. But for police, those public servants known for their even and steady hand...

[sophia-sadek.livejournal.com]

That is one of my most favorite Daily Show segments.

[wight1984.livejournal.com]

I've worked with police camera badges before. They're a nice tool.

I can see why some people are sceptical. Due to reasons of charge and memory space, they will only be on when police officers turn them on. Also, it would be very easy for the recordings to be deleted once back at the station. That being said, they're so good for collecting evidence that police officers won't want to turn them off, and the more they become standard procedure, the more police officers won't want to be caught without a recording if a complaint is made.

[mikeyxw.livejournal.com]

I don't really get this. My phone takes 5.7 GB per hour to record 1080i using standard compression. A 64 GB thumb drive, which stores memory on something about the size of the tip of my thumb and retails for about $30 would have enough to record about 11 hours, which should be enough to let a cop turn it on at the beginning of his shift and run it until they're done with work in most cases. If longer shifts are common, a lower resolution could be used (I'm not sure HD is necessary anyhow) or more memory could be added.

I'd assume that the cops, who are trusted to enforce our laws and use force when necessary, could be trusted not to lose them or turn them off. If this is too optimistic, I'm sure some kind of tether could be arranged, something like what was on my kid's gloves when they were toddlers.

My take is that the barriers are not really technological.

[wight1984.livejournal.com]

Similar response by two people, so I've made only one reply: link (http://talk-politics.livejournal.com/1748607.html?thread=139424895#t139424895)

[ginnyjake.livejournal.com]

But you'd still need server space for all those recordings somewhere or somebody to go through all those recordings and determine what shouldn't be kept. I know there are a lot of cities and counties that struggle with having memory space now.

[ginnyjake.livejournal.com]

That only works in communities where there's a lot of money being spent on investigating complaints. Maybe that works in a big city or an area with lots of money, but makes less sense in less urban communities with less resources and often less complaints.

(Not saying the cameras are a bad idea. But that money has to come from somewhere.)

[enders-shadow.livejournal.com]

the cost for a small police force is small, for a big police force big

but ya know, relative tax bases and all

[ironhawke.livejournal.com]

That's silly, a quick search online gives me a 4TB hard drive for around $150, and thats what 10 seconds of searching would do. At 64gb per day that equals 62.5 days of recording, or roughly 6 drives a year. Thats less than $1000 per officer per year, and with mass clusters the price point would drop dramatically.

In addition to this, it's likely that recordings would only be kept for say three or four months (enough time for a complaint to be filed at least) which would cut down on the end-all cost even more. At 20 officer police force would incur probably around $15,000 a year in operational costs or less per year. IMHO this is EASILY worth the benefits described in the OP.

[enders-shadow.livejournal.com]

I think the majority of uses of such video would be within a year.

The effects of the study were at the one year mark; it seems to have already been positive.

What's the average delay in officer-interaction and claim of abuse? Or a speedy trial? And if you know you're going to trial, you save more, but within one year you generally know if on Jan 23 the stop involving officer X and citizen Y is going to have legal implications, no?

I mean, aren't we supposed to have speedy trials?

[ironhawke.livejournal.com]

This was sort of my point, I'm sure that once the lawyers finished haggling over the details a delay time of deletion of around a year would be likely. Once you figure out the number of hours per shift, per officer over the course of a year, the initial cost would likely be fairly finite, the main issues are maintenance and potentially hiring someone to handle all the data. THATS where the long term costs come from.

[ginnyjake.livejournal.com]

In my state, the state has a 6 month clock for speedy trail, but any delay caused by the defense doesn't count against the state. So you'll have felony cases that are around for over a year before they ever get plead or go to trial.

But then, by statute, we're required to keep evidence around for a certain amount of time after the case in closed. Of course, it depends on the severity of the charge.

[ironhawke.livejournal.com]

The assumption is that if a complaint is filed, the relevant video footage would be held in reserve and not subject to deletion.

[ginnyjake.livejournal.com]

But that footage would also be considered evidence in whatever criminal investigation it may lead to. Of course, the actual retention lengths would be set by state legislature.

[mikeyxw.livejournal.com]

Google storage, once you've hit 4500 TB, costs about 4 cents per GB per month. I'd guess most shifts would not need to be kept long term and could be stored on a local drive, which costs just over $100 for a 1 TB drive, enough to store about 200 hours, or about a month's worth for an officer. This is pretty trivial compared with the millions that police departments pay out in lawsuits, so if the results of the Rialto study are anywhere close to what we'd see elsewhere, this would save a lot of money. I expect people would trust cops a lot more as well, they're mostly decent people after all.

[ginnyjake.livejournal.com]

There'd have to be some security issues addressed in that case, but something similar might possibly be an option.

[wight1984.livejournal.com]

"That's a total cop-out."

Striking out my explanation, that was how it worked when I worked with them. They weren't used as a constant surveillance measure on the police force, but rather turned on when needed. Footage that wasn't needed for evidence was deleted.

Kept things fairly simple from an admin point of view, but you may be right that constant recording may become a thing in the future (it just wasn't at the constabulary I worked in when I worked there).

[policraticus.livejournal.com]

I'd like to hear arguments, but I'm not automatically opposed to it in principle. Dashboard cameras have been a positive thing, I think. Funny, if nothing else. I think it might be good to have them work like a black box, only recording X amount of time and then dumping the boring stuff. That way you wouldn't have to worry about them running a whole shift's video through face recognition programs and algorithms that might make law enforcement too intrusive.

[policraticus.livejournal.com]

human beings walking around in police uniforms are constantly running pattern recognition programs and algorithms in their head

I'd never say that a computer is better than a given expert, like a cop on the beat. But a computer can do, with sheer bulk processing, what no person can do. As Uncle Joe said, quantity has its own quality.

they are not really intruding anywhere that the human mind, unaugmented by technology, does not already lawfully intrude.

I think that sounds intuitively right. As long as we have good rules for when they are on and how they can be used, I say it is a good idea.

[mahsox-mahsox.livejournal.com]

I think they'd have to get paid more, and be given a bit more time to deal with fallout following difficult incidents. It isn't like most jobs where camera surveillance is normal, for example cash handling jobs. It is a complicated job that has within it the absolute certainty of encountering situations where there is no perfect thing to do and the best that can be done is the least bad of a range of terrible options.

[fizzyland.livejournal.com]

Obviously this is a better way to protect both police officers from being charged erroneously and to the protect the public from those bad apples on the police force. Combined with strict policies ensuring the cameras are always on when the officer is interacting with the public, this would better serve the public trust.

[yes-justice.livejournal.com]

So, can you tune into various cops livefeeds?

[fizzyland.livejournal.com]

Not as implemented currently, mainly for officer safety.

[sophia-sadek.livejournal.com]

I could see the bad guys using it to keep track of where the cops are.

[ginnyjake.livejournal.com]

I work in law enforcement, and most of the time we'd love to get our hands on more and better cameras. We just can't get anyone to pay for them.

[enders-shadow.livejournal.com]

most of the time? and I understand how funding can be an issue; I think this is one issue we can rally both political sides on.

the law-and-order right and the bleeding-heart anti-abuse left; no one seems to be arguing against it, which is a great start

[ginnyjake.livejournal.com]

I can't think of a time we wouldn't, but I didn't want to completely generalize. The only time I think it'd bother me has to do with time that would have to be spent transferring videos from police to prosecutor to defense attorney. So not a content issue, just a feasibility issue.

[the-rukh.livejournal.com]

Seems to have pretty positive results all around. Should be made widespread. i don't think cameras are too expensive these days.

[rimpala.livejournal.com]

maybe in addition to a camera, a device that can measure motion, so one can tell if, say, said officer is really being beaten against the sidewalk as hard as they claimed.

[oportet.livejournal.com]

Arguing against this is as irrational as arguing against instant replay. Come to think of it, arguing against this kinda is arguing against instant replay...

I'm deep...

[enders-shadow.livejournal.com]

doesn't baseball not have instant replay? whatever the ref calls is the call.

it's the Socratic question in the euthyphro, do the gods make things just, or do they agree with what is just?

in the case of baseball, the ref does not agree with what is right; he makes it right by decreeing it so.

but in football they do have instant replay, yes? (asked as someone who doesnt know sports....)

[oportet.livejournal.com]

American Football has it. Basketball does too. Baseball and football(soccer) are slowly coming around, emphasis on slowly.

'Getting it right' should be top priority - whether we're talking about a call at home plate or a guy being tazed justifiably.

[anfalicious.livejournal.com]

The only problem with instant replay (or DRS as it's known in cricket) is when you have another muppet watching the screen. For example:



Watching that live it's obvious he doesn't hit it, how the third umpire with replay managed to see it as being hit is beyond me.

Which is all a meta comment about how if we have cameras on cops we need to make sure we have quality judges.

[oportet.livejournal.com]

I don't know much about cricket, but is there much corruption in the sport? (meaning, did this call make a difference in winner/loser, spread, over/under if they have that?)

[gunslnger.livejournal.com]

Every person could just have a camera on them at all times too. *cough*Google Glass*cough*

[sophia-sadek.livejournal.com]

That might just blow out the NSA's storage capacity.

[enders-shadow.livejournal.com]

How would that help with false accusations against cops?

[gunslnger.livejournal.com]

How does having a hammer help you saw a board?

[enders-shadow.livejournal.com]

Did you leave a comment for a reason? Or did you just want to type something?

If you left it for a reason, I assumed you proposed an alternative because you assume the alternative can work as well. I provided a reason that your alternative is insufficient.

Do you have any response?

[gunslnger.livejournal.com]

You asked why it didn't solve problem Y when my comment was about problem X. I don't care that it's insufficient to solve problem Y.

Besides, I didn't say not to have cops wear cameras, which is why I used the word "too" in my original comment. Since having only cops have the cameras doesn't help with false accusations against the people. Thus, why I was saying that more was needed.

[root-fu.livejournal.com]

They have dash cams.

Sometimes, they turn them off.

What good are cameras with on/off switches?

[peristaltor.livejournal.com]

I like it.

We started to have surveillance installed in transit buses, but stopped when the costs got too high during the recession. The installed cameras were then transferred to routes which encountered the most uses.

It was a neat system. The DVR is always on. When the driver hits a button, the system flags five minutes back from the button pushing and marks from there on. This way it's easy to see where the issue is on the DVR.

Of course, it can backfire. A driver claimed to have been assaulted years ago, but really maced herself. She forgot that the cameras were recording everything. (Sadly, the story has been scrubbed from the local paper archives for some reason, but it did get national attention.)

[telemann.livejournal.com]

Cameras, definitely don't lie: (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/07/quad-cities-police-office_n_3720974.html) A Quad Cities police officer brutally beats department-store shoplifter without apparent provocation, and it's caught on video. But officer escapes criminal charges – and keeps his job.

[enders-shadow.livejournal.com]

I'm unsure what this means about your personal view on the topic.

Surely you aren't suggesting because cameras arent a cure-all they are useless. So just what are you saying?