6 ms·

Phone video clears man charged with assaulting cop, even after phone disappears

105 points by QUFB 11y ago

jMyles 11y ago
Both official perjury and intentional destruction of recording equipment are vicious, anti-democratic acts. It's puzzling to me that these are not regarded as serious felonies, disqualifying offenders from public office for life and subjecting them to substantial criminal penalties.
- Implicated 11y ago
  For non law enforcement those are serious offenses that are sure to be met with jail time at the least.
- viraptor 11y ago
  "officers are now being investigated by the force’s Professional Standards division." - while we can ask easily imagine what happened to the phone and why, that's not a proof of anything. At least it's being investigated. All criminals deserve proper investigation.
  - jMyles 11y ago
    > not a proof of anything I think it's reasonable, from the video of the police officer slapping the phone away, to conclude that the police officer slapped the phone away. > All criminals deserve proper investigation. The point of "innocent until proven guilty" is that the burden of proof is on the state. It's reasonable to ask that conduct undertaken by state actors, on the other hand, be accompanied by proof that it was within the law.
    - viraptor 11y ago
      I meant the part where they "lost the phone" only. Not the policemen - I fully agree about their direct actions.
  - revelation 11y ago
    That is not a proper investigation, it's a HR thing. There need to be actual criminal charges.
  - Area12 11y ago
    Why is the "Professional Standards division" a division of the force? In New Zealand the equivalent organisation is very specifically NOT part of any police force. In fact, it's in their name: "Independent Police Conduct Authority". Maybe that's one reason why New Zealand is usually in the top five "least corrupt countries in the world". The USA isn't. This is one reason why.
- blazespin 11y ago
  I'm not going to excuse police for their actions, but I do know as a society we should value them much more. I say ramp up their salaries significantly but increase oversight (body cameras, more automation, etc).
  - jMyles 11y ago
    I surmise that this is precisely what will happen when we find a way to deploy police that does not involve the state (or state-like giant corporations).
  - ZanyProgrammer 11y ago
    "I say ramp up their salaries significantly"-how are you going to pay for this? Do you think cops are grossly underpaid now?
    - chillacy 11y ago
      It already seems pretty decent, a police sergeant can make over 100k (though officers start at 57k in LAPD as of today) http://www.glassdoor.com/Salary/LAPD-Salaries-E135741.htm http://www.glassdoor.com/Salary/LAPD-Salaries-E135741.htm
      - jMyles 11y ago
        It's not clear to me whether these figures include overtime, which often makes up a substantial part of the compensation for a police officer. I surmise that GP's comment is partly read to mean that overtime (ie, working 60+ hours a week sometimes!) is part of the way we don't treat police officers very well. It seems pretty clear to me that a police officer working a 24 hour shift is a liability.
        danso 11y ago
        Uh...I don't think there are too many instances of cops working 24-hour shifts. Firefighters have 72-hour shifts but that includes bunking at the department. If you go to publicpay.ca.gov, you'll find the state wide databases of city and state employees. Police officers make up nearly all of the top non-executive positions. Second, police officers want overtime. If you've watched The Wire, there are more than a few scenes/threads in which eliminating overtime is seen as punishment to officers. This is also chronicled in David Simon's non-fiction book, "Homicide", which The Wire is heavily based off of. This is not to say that we shouldn't staff departments in a way that overtime isn't excessive. But I doubt you'll find much political support from the officers or their leaders on that. In fact, the use of overtimes is one of the best way for police officers to ensure a huge pension...Pensions are often calculated on based on the last year of a retiring officer's salary. So an officer who makes $64K base salary in his career can retire with $82K in annual retirement, by working $120,000 worth of overtime in his final year: http://www.nola.com/crime/baton-rouge/index.ssf/2015/05/how_a_police_officer_can_make.html http://www.nola.com/crime/baton-rouge/index.ssf/2015/05/how_...
danso 11y ago
I've always wondered if at some law enforcement agencies, there are unofficial guides on how to make sure a memory card has been wiped. Back in the day of film cameras, taking the film or damaging the camera to ruin the film might have been enough. With digital cameras, even forcing the photographer to do a memory card format was not sure-proof, if the photographer knew how to run disk-recovery software. I remember at least one story where a police officer either confiscated a photojournalist's memory card or made the photographer erase it...but the photojournalist had a dual-card camera in which all the photos were auto-copied to. With all those subtleties and complexities about digital camera technology (SLR or smartphone cameras), it probably does make sense to a malicious cop to just take and "lose" the camera. But technology continues to be a step ahead...
- ZanyProgrammer 11y ago
  I've often thought of making a mobile app that securely uploads a video in real time to a secure server, out of the reach of law enforcement. That way, physical possession of the phone is irrelevant if law enforcement gets its hands on it. Alas, almost every online search brings up info for live streaming to an iOS device, not streaming from one (and I think it'd be quite a challenge). TLDR basically Periscope, but in a way that the uploaded video is encrypted and the cops can't access it.
  - ctoth 11y ago
    Luckily this already exists, check out the Police Tape app on iOS and Android from the ACLU.
    - jMyles 11y ago
      Last I checked, Police Tape did not actually upload video in real time, but stored it and waited until after the video to ask the user to upload it. Is this still the case?
  - lips 11y ago
    Such apps basically exist, in various permutations: - http://www.copblock.org/apps/ http://www.copblock.org/apps/ - https://www.aclu.org/feature/aclu-apps-record-police-conduct https://www.aclu.org/feature/aclu-apps-record-police-conduct
Gracana 11y ago
> Toronto police confirmed the officers are now being investigated by the force’s Professional Standards division. Of course, the "oversight" comes from within. How can we even begin to believe that they will act without bias?
cxseven 11y ago
It'll be nice when it becomes cheap and easy to live stream video from a cellphone to multiple viewers and secure storage.
- jsprogrammer 11y ago
  It's pretty close. You can setup a system yourself if you want.
rocky1138 11y ago
Is there a GoPro that auto-uploads to Youtube? Would be really handy for dashcams or bodycams or whatevercams.
- jMyles 11y ago
  I really want a handheld, in the form factor of a Canon SX50 or thereabouts, that can upload via wifi or GSM. Who is making this? edit: to clarify, I mean upload in real-time, like a live broadcast.
  - Zombieball 11y ago
    You could buy an SX50 + Eye-Fi card to accomplish this.
    - jMyles 11y ago
      As I understand it, this only saves after the video is stopped, right? I'm talking about real-time transmission, like bambuser.
      - Zombieball 11y ago
        Oooh gotcha. You might be right, and that would definitely be awesome! Although, living in Canada, I'd be afraid of any associated cellular data costs if uploaded over GSM.
        jMyles 11y ago
        Likewise. Presumably you'd use 320x240 (or maybe even lower) if you were doing GSM. Ideally, I'd like to see it work over a reasonably large wifi mesh network to create a local news station of sorts.
  - rocky1138 11y ago
    What's your use-case?
rokhayakebe 11y ago
We'll have to admit that some cops are just bullies who entered the system to have a legal way of being who they want to be. They need to tighten the psychological profile/test required to be and remain an officer of the law.
- IkmoIkmo 11y ago
  I've got no experience with psych tests but I can easily imagine most power abusers would easily pass one, and if not, they soon will because it's now a test and tests become gameable if they matter with takers knowing exactly what the desired answer is. I think the solution rather lies in two other places. One is obviously transparency. This man was acquitted due to video, so let's put video on every police officer. Toronto for example is playing with this, and it makes financial sense. They have about 5.000 police officers on a police department budget of $1.7 billion. We all know how cheap cameras (just look at the cameras on $50 smartphones) and storage have become in recent years, with a per officer budget of about $350k, spending a few thousand a year (much more than you'd need for a solid camera & storage system) on cameras would constitute a 1% cost increase, and you can probably offset that cost immediately due to cost savings in faster trials due to less ambiguous evidence, fewer complaints, less use of force etc (for example we've seen in recent months reports of 70% fewer citizen complaints, 30% drop in use of force incidents in Birmingham). Chicago for example spent $500m over 10 years on police abuse cases (obviously paid for by citizens, not the police officers in question themselves) Second is to stop the bs 'internal investigation'. Police officers aren't diplomats, they're citizens on duty as civil servants, when they're suspected of harming the civilians they're supposed to serve, why have them be investigated by their colleagues and close peers? I mean it's ridiculous. This is so terrible because we see the old 80/20 rule in police departments, too, I don't know the exact statistics from the top of my head but the notion that 80% of the complaints and incidents are caused by 20% of the police officers isn't far from the actual number. A ton of honest and awesome cops go their entire career without any abuse of power, you can't prevent the others from getting in, but you can make sure they get out once you catch them. Donald Sadowy for example has been accused of excessive force 10 times in 2 years in actual lawsuits, imagine how many times he must've used excessive force if he was taken to court 10 times, yet he's still on the force. If you actually run the same 3 strikes and you're permanently fired policy on abuse that you do on citizens smoking some harmless pot who go to jail for years, and have officers investigated by an independent court with bodycam evidence, you'd probably already cut out a lot of abuse from guys like these, let alone if you fire people after one incident and even send people to jail for abuse of power. Beyond that, getting fired should mean losing the ability to be a police officer, period, nationwide. A lawyer for example can lose his license nationwide in most countries, but police officers too often leave one department and simply join another.
dandare 11y ago
So that brings us to a question what app would you use to a) Secretly record a video on your phone. b) Stream the video to a cloud (youtube, dropbox, other) while you record, so that even if the phone is snatched from your hand and crashed by a heavy police boot, as much of the video as the network allows will be already uploaded.
- takee 11y ago
  If you just record a video with the default video/camera app on your phone, Google photos (assuming you have the app and have it set to auto backup at default quality) will back it up on the cloud.
  - theGimp 11y ago
    I don't think that's what dandare meant. They were asking for an app that uploads the video _as it's being recorded_. If you have to stop recording before having the video backed up, all a bad actor needs to do is physically destroy your device, and you'll lose your evidence. As it happens, such apps seem to already exist. Another comment in this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10284629 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10284629
- marvin 11y ago
  I've been looking for a similar app for iPhone, for either video or audio (preferably both). DropVox isn't too bad, but I'm not sure what happens if you break the phone before pressing "stop recording". Any suggestions?
- chrsstrm 11y ago
  I remember using Qik[0] way back in like 2008 or 2009 and back then you could stream video in real-time to your public profile and it also saved the video for playback later. Looks like they were bought by Skype and I don't know if it still has those features. [0] - https://www.skype.com/en/qik/ https://www.skype.com/en/qik/
- lips 11y ago
  Bringing to mind... all of these apps should have the ability to lock the screen when they detect a strong shock, i.e. being knocked to the ground.
wahsd 11y ago
There should be a public intelligence organization, a kind of wiki that crowd sources public records and profiles on police officers, their departments, and shootings so officers can't simply move around the country and they have a record of their own, which departments then can not claim having no knowledgeof.
- noonespecial 11y ago
  I think copwatch.com is/was trying for something like this.
  - jqm 11y ago
    They aren't doing a very good job. Their site is broken.
pascalmemories 11y ago
Ah, yes. Toronto police. The guys who gave us Officer Bubbles. And financed his defamation action against YouTube out the public purse. [0] I'm sure the Professional Standards division will be all over an assault by officers on a member of the public. [0]http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2010/10/16/officer_bubbles_sues_youtube_and_users_over_cartoons.html http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2010/10/16/officer_bubbles_s... plus many others.
jongraehl 11y ago
Police slapping phones/cameras out of someone's hands need to get control of their emotions and bear the "I will catch you slipping up" threat with confident professionalism. That said, the criminal-record stereo-blaster was probably lying about 'his uncle' and I don't think you get to 'you have no warrant we're done here' and shut the door on the police responding to a neighbor noise complaint. If they want to give you a talking-to or a ticket (depending on local law), they can. I do believe the guy about his phone being "lost", though (should be easy to corroborate if they have signatures/records of personal items), and we can expect real sanction for the phone-slapper if it's clear which cop did it.

105 points by QUFB 11y ago

Both official perjury and intentional destruction of recording equipment are vicious, anti-democratic acts. It's puzzling to me that these are not regarded as serious felonies, disqualifying offenders from public office for life and subjecting them to substantial criminal penalties.

Implicated 11y ago
For non law enforcement those are serious offenses that are sure to be met with jail time at the least.
viraptor 11y ago
"officers are now being investigated by the force’s Professional Standards division." - while we can ask easily imagine what happened to the phone and why, that's not a proof of anything. At least it's being investigated. All criminals deserve proper investigation.
- jMyles 11y ago
  > not a proof of anything I think it's reasonable, from the video of the police officer slapping the phone away, to conclude that the police officer slapped the phone away. > All criminals deserve proper investigation. The point of "innocent until proven guilty" is that the burden of proof is on the state. It's reasonable to ask that conduct undertaken by state actors, on the other hand, be accompanied by proof that it was within the law.
  - viraptor 11y ago
    I meant the part where they "lost the phone" only. Not the policemen - I fully agree about their direct actions.
- revelation 11y ago
  That is not a proper investigation, it's a HR thing. There need to be actual criminal charges.
- Area12 11y ago
  Why is the "Professional Standards division" a division of the force? In New Zealand the equivalent organisation is very specifically NOT part of any police force. In fact, it's in their name: "Independent Police Conduct Authority". Maybe that's one reason why New Zealand is usually in the top five "least corrupt countries in the world". The USA isn't. This is one reason why.
blazespin 11y ago
I'm not going to excuse police for their actions, but I do know as a society we should value them much more. I say ramp up their salaries significantly but increase oversight (body cameras, more automation, etc).
- jMyles 11y ago
  I surmise that this is precisely what will happen when we find a way to deploy police that does not involve the state (or state-like giant corporations).
- ZanyProgrammer 11y ago
  "I say ramp up their salaries significantly"-how are you going to pay for this? Do you think cops are grossly underpaid now?
  - chillacy 11y ago
    It already seems pretty decent, a police sergeant can make over 100k (though officers start at 57k in LAPD as of today) http://www.glassdoor.com/Salary/LAPD-Salaries-E135741.htm http://www.glassdoor.com/Salary/LAPD-Salaries-E135741.htm
    - jMyles 11y ago
      It's not clear to me whether these figures include overtime, which often makes up a substantial part of the compensation for a police officer. I surmise that GP's comment is partly read to mean that overtime (ie, working 60+ hours a week sometimes!) is part of the way we don't treat police officers very well. It seems pretty clear to me that a police officer working a 24 hour shift is a liability.
      - danso 11y ago
        Uh...I don't think there are too many instances of cops working 24-hour shifts. Firefighters have 72-hour shifts but that includes bunking at the department. If you go to publicpay.ca.gov, you'll find the state wide databases of city and state employees. Police officers make up nearly all of the top non-executive positions. Second, police officers want overtime. If you've watched The Wire, there are more than a few scenes/threads in which eliminating overtime is seen as punishment to officers. This is also chronicled in David Simon's non-fiction book, "Homicide", which The Wire is heavily based off of. This is not to say that we shouldn't staff departments in a way that overtime isn't excessive. But I doubt you'll find much political support from the officers or their leaders on that. In fact, the use of overtimes is one of the best way for police officers to ensure a huge pension...Pensions are often calculated on based on the last year of a retiring officer's salary. So an officer who makes $64K base salary in his career can retire with $82K in annual retirement, by working $120,000 worth of overtime in his final year: http://www.nola.com/crime/baton-rouge/index.ssf/2015/05/how_a_police_officer_can_make.html http://www.nola.com/crime/baton-rouge/index.ssf/2015/05/how_...

danso 11y ago

I've always wondered if at some law enforcement agencies, there are unofficial guides on how to make sure a memory card has been wiped. Back in the day of film cameras, taking the film or damaging the camera to ruin the film might have been enough. With digital cameras, even forcing the photographer to do a memory card format was not sure-proof, if the photographer knew how to run disk-recovery software. I remember at least one story where a police officer either confiscated a photojournalist's memory card or made the photographer erase it...but the photojournalist had a dual-card camera in which all the photos were auto-copied to. With all those subtleties and complexities about digital camera technology (SLR or smartphone cameras), it probably does make sense to a malicious cop to just take and "lose" the camera. But technology continues to be a step ahead...

ZanyProgrammer 11y ago
I've often thought of making a mobile app that securely uploads a video in real time to a secure server, out of the reach of law enforcement. That way, physical possession of the phone is irrelevant if law enforcement gets its hands on it. Alas, almost every online search brings up info for live streaming to an iOS device, not streaming from one (and I think it'd be quite a challenge). TLDR basically Periscope, but in a way that the uploaded video is encrypted and the cops can't access it.
- ctoth 11y ago
  Luckily this already exists, check out the Police Tape app on iOS and Android from the ACLU.
  - jMyles 11y ago
    Last I checked, Police Tape did not actually upload video in real time, but stored it and waited until after the video to ask the user to upload it. Is this still the case?
- lips 11y ago
  Such apps basically exist, in various permutations: - http://www.copblock.org/apps/ http://www.copblock.org/apps/ - https://www.aclu.org/feature/aclu-apps-record-police-conduct https://www.aclu.org/feature/aclu-apps-record-police-conduct

Gracana 11y ago

> Toronto police confirmed the officers are now being investigated by the force’s Professional Standards division. Of course, the "oversight" comes from within. How can we even begin to believe that they will act without bias?

cxseven 11y ago

It'll be nice when it becomes cheap and easy to live stream video from a cellphone to multiple viewers and secure storage.

jsprogrammer 11y ago
It's pretty close. You can setup a system yourself if you want.

rocky1138 11y ago

Is there a GoPro that auto-uploads to Youtube? Would be really handy for dashcams or bodycams or whatevercams.

jMyles 11y ago
I really want a handheld, in the form factor of a Canon SX50 or thereabouts, that can upload via wifi or GSM. Who is making this? edit: to clarify, I mean upload in real-time, like a live broadcast.
- Zombieball 11y ago
  You could buy an SX50 + Eye-Fi card to accomplish this.
  - jMyles 11y ago
    As I understand it, this only saves after the video is stopped, right? I'm talking about real-time transmission, like bambuser.
    - Zombieball 11y ago
      Oooh gotcha. You might be right, and that would definitely be awesome! Although, living in Canada, I'd be afraid of any associated cellular data costs if uploaded over GSM.
      - jMyles 11y ago
        Likewise. Presumably you'd use 320x240 (or maybe even lower) if you were doing GSM. Ideally, I'd like to see it work over a reasonably large wifi mesh network to create a local news station of sorts.
- rocky1138 11y ago
  What's your use-case?

rokhayakebe 11y ago

We'll have to admit that some cops are just bullies who entered the system to have a legal way of being who they want to be. They need to tighten the psychological profile/test required to be and remain an officer of the law.

IkmoIkmo 11y ago
I've got no experience with psych tests but I can easily imagine most power abusers would easily pass one, and if not, they soon will because it's now a test and tests become gameable if they matter with takers knowing exactly what the desired answer is. I think the solution rather lies in two other places. One is obviously transparency. This man was acquitted due to video, so let's put video on every police officer. Toronto for example is playing with this, and it makes financial sense. They have about 5.000 police officers on a police department budget of $1.7 billion. We all know how cheap cameras (just look at the cameras on $50 smartphones) and storage have become in recent years, with a per officer budget of about $350k, spending a few thousand a year (much more than you'd need for a solid camera & storage system) on cameras would constitute a 1% cost increase, and you can probably offset that cost immediately due to cost savings in faster trials due to less ambiguous evidence, fewer complaints, less use of force etc (for example we've seen in recent months reports of 70% fewer citizen complaints, 30% drop in use of force incidents in Birmingham). Chicago for example spent $500m over 10 years on police abuse cases (obviously paid for by citizens, not the police officers in question themselves) Second is to stop the bs 'internal investigation'. Police officers aren't diplomats, they're citizens on duty as civil servants, when they're suspected of harming the civilians they're supposed to serve, why have them be investigated by their colleagues and close peers? I mean it's ridiculous. This is so terrible because we see the old 80/20 rule in police departments, too, I don't know the exact statistics from the top of my head but the notion that 80% of the complaints and incidents are caused by 20% of the police officers isn't far from the actual number. A ton of honest and awesome cops go their entire career without any abuse of power, you can't prevent the others from getting in, but you can make sure they get out once you catch them. Donald Sadowy for example has been accused of excessive force 10 times in 2 years in actual lawsuits, imagine how many times he must've used excessive force if he was taken to court 10 times, yet he's still on the force. If you actually run the same 3 strikes and you're permanently fired policy on abuse that you do on citizens smoking some harmless pot who go to jail for years, and have officers investigated by an independent court with bodycam evidence, you'd probably already cut out a lot of abuse from guys like these, let alone if you fire people after one incident and even send people to jail for abuse of power. Beyond that, getting fired should mean losing the ability to be a police officer, period, nationwide. A lawyer for example can lose his license nationwide in most countries, but police officers too often leave one department and simply join another.

dandare 11y ago

So that brings us to a question what app would you use to a) Secretly record a video on your phone. b) Stream the video to a cloud (youtube, dropbox, other) while you record, so that even if the phone is snatched from your hand and crashed by a heavy police boot, as much of the video as the network allows will be already uploaded.

takee 11y ago
If you just record a video with the default video/camera app on your phone, Google photos (assuming you have the app and have it set to auto backup at default quality) will back it up on the cloud.
- theGimp 11y ago
  I don't think that's what dandare meant. They were asking for an app that uploads the video _as it's being recorded_. If you have to stop recording before having the video backed up, all a bad actor needs to do is physically destroy your device, and you'll lose your evidence. As it happens, such apps seem to already exist. Another comment in this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10284629 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10284629
marvin 11y ago
I've been looking for a similar app for iPhone, for either video or audio (preferably both). DropVox isn't too bad, but I'm not sure what happens if you break the phone before pressing "stop recording". Any suggestions?
chrsstrm 11y ago
I remember using Qik[0] way back in like 2008 or 2009 and back then you could stream video in real-time to your public profile and it also saved the video for playback later. Looks like they were bought by Skype and I don't know if it still has those features. [0] - https://www.skype.com/en/qik/ https://www.skype.com/en/qik/
lips 11y ago
Bringing to mind... all of these apps should have the ability to lock the screen when they detect a strong shock, i.e. being knocked to the ground.

wahsd 11y ago

There should be a public intelligence organization, a kind of wiki that crowd sources public records and profiles on police officers, their departments, and shootings so officers can't simply move around the country and they have a record of their own, which departments then can not claim having no knowledgeof.

noonespecial 11y ago
I think copwatch.com is/was trying for something like this.
- jqm 11y ago
  They aren't doing a very good job. Their site is broken.

pascalmemories 11y ago

Ah, yes. Toronto police. The guys who gave us Officer Bubbles. And financed his defamation action against YouTube out the public purse. [0] I'm sure the Professional Standards division will be all over an assault by officers on a member of the public. [0]http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2010/10/16/officer_bubbles_sues_youtube_and_users_over_cartoons.html http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2010/10/16/officer_bubbles_s... plus many others.

jongraehl 11y ago

Police slapping phones/cameras out of someone's hands need to get control of their emotions and bear the "I will catch you slipping up" threat with confident professionalism. That said, the criminal-record stereo-blaster was probably lying about 'his uncle' and I don't think you get to 'you have no warrant we're done here' and shut the door on the police responding to a neighbor noise complaint. If they want to give you a talking-to or a ticket (depending on local law), they can. I do believe the guy about his phone being "lost", though (should be easy to corroborate if they have signatures/records of personal items), and we can expect real sanction for the phone-slapper if it's clear which cop did it.