4 ms·

>Instead, I've always thought they were good for those particularly difficult "he said / she said" cases that capture public attention. I agree, but at what pr

by gph 9y ago

>Instead, I've always thought they were good for those particularly difficult "he said / she said" cases that capture public attention. I agree, but at what price point would you say it's worth it? In principle I want bodycams, but with this new study it's making me wonder if pragmatically it's really worth spending millions of dollars each year just for a handful of difficult 'he said / she said' cases to be better resolved. Probably it still is given that these small handful of cases get the biggest media attention / public backlash that hurts the image of the police. In that sense bodycams can almost be thought of as a public relations expense.

corey_moncure 9y ago
An economic solution lies in wait. What is the impact of settlements in "he said / she said" cases resolved in the defendant's favor? Is it "millions of dollars each year"?
- magnetic 9y ago
  I don't know if that works... I mean, even if it's millions of $ each year that PD have to settle/pay, why does it hurt them? Aren't they simply going to pass that cost back to the taxpayers?
  - PhasmaFelis 9y ago
    Police departments have budgets, not blank checks. If the police come to the local government saying they need an extra umpty-million this year because they keep getting sued for brutality, questions are going to be asked.
    - magnetic 9y ago
      Certainly, but at the end of the day, they'll say: "well if we don't get $x then we will have to cut the force. If we don't pay our officers, they are just going to leave." What do you do then? You can fire people you hold accountable, but that isn't going to fix your budget situation: if you don't fund the PD, the services are going to be cut, and taxpayers are going to be impacted.
dsr_ 9y ago
Only millions? No problem at all. Let's revise that estimate, though. 765,000 sworn state-level personnel in 2008. We'll round up to a million. At $1000 each for hardened, certified cameras, that's a billion dollars. But we should expect them to last about three years, so $333M each year. Storage costs are cheap, but secure handling of storage is not. Let's say one full-time $100K employee per hundred camera-wearing officers. That's a billion dollars per year. So I'll go with a cost estimate of 1.3 - 1.5 billion per year for cameras for all police officers. Is that worth it? I think so.
- jandrese 9y ago
  Why is the lifetime so short? Are the batteries non-replaceable? I'd definitely be looking into replacing worn out batteries on $1000 devices.
  - lostlogin 9y ago
    And yet many people don’t on their phones that cost close to this.
    - jandrese 9y ago
      Back in the days when you could replace the batteries on most phones they would be badly obsolete and unsupported in 3 years. Even today it's a bit iffy on spending the $50 to replace a battery in a 3 year old Android phone. A camera won't become obsolete nearly as fast. Assuming the cops shoot in HD today (it would be really dumb if they didn't) then that will still be HD tomorrow. Maybe not 4k, but honestly I don't think 4k brings a lot to the table at this time in this application.
      - MertsA 9y ago
        I disagree, human vision is pretty amazing with a huge field of view and while the amount of detail is only really high at the center of vision to match what an officer can make out you'd pretty much need a lot of detail everywhere. I don't think we'll see affordable 4k body cameras for a while but there's definitely benefits to recording in 4k.
jandrese 9y ago
Those he said/she said events can turn into multi-million dollar lawsuits really quickly. It only takes a couple of incidents for the cameras to pay for themselves. The data storage issue is definitely a concern, but I think it is one that can be effectively managed.
- larrykwg 9y ago
  wait but wouldn't the states have to pay for those lawsuits if the video evidence showed the cop doing the thing? Ohh I guess the narrative is that the police is most often wrongfully accused of wrongdoing, costing the state millions, which the cameras could help to clear up. Fnord.

by gph 9y ago

corey_moncure 9y ago

An economic solution lies in wait. What is the impact of settlements in "he said / she said" cases resolved in the defendant's favor? Is it "millions of dollars each year"?

magnetic 9y ago
I don't know if that works... I mean, even if it's millions of $ each year that PD have to settle/pay, why does it hurt them? Aren't they simply going to pass that cost back to the taxpayers?
- PhasmaFelis 9y ago
  Police departments have budgets, not blank checks. If the police come to the local government saying they need an extra umpty-million this year because they keep getting sued for brutality, questions are going to be asked.
  - magnetic 9y ago
    Certainly, but at the end of the day, they'll say: "well if we don't get $x then we will have to cut the force. If we don't pay our officers, they are just going to leave." What do you do then? You can fire people you hold accountable, but that isn't going to fix your budget situation: if you don't fund the PD, the services are going to be cut, and taxpayers are going to be impacted.

dsr_ 9y ago

Only millions? No problem at all. Let's revise that estimate, though. 765,000 sworn state-level personnel in 2008. We'll round up to a million. At $1000 each for hardened, certified cameras, that's a billion dollars. But we should expect them to last about three years, so $333M each year. Storage costs are cheap, but secure handling of storage is not. Let's say one full-time $100K employee per hundred camera-wearing officers. That's a billion dollars per year. So I'll go with a cost estimate of 1.3 - 1.5 billion per year for cameras for all police officers. Is that worth it? I think so.

jandrese 9y ago
Why is the lifetime so short? Are the batteries non-replaceable? I'd definitely be looking into replacing worn out batteries on $1000 devices.
- lostlogin 9y ago
  And yet many people don’t on their phones that cost close to this.
  - jandrese 9y ago
    Back in the days when you could replace the batteries on most phones they would be badly obsolete and unsupported in 3 years. Even today it's a bit iffy on spending the $50 to replace a battery in a 3 year old Android phone. A camera won't become obsolete nearly as fast. Assuming the cops shoot in HD today (it would be really dumb if they didn't) then that will still be HD tomorrow. Maybe not 4k, but honestly I don't think 4k brings a lot to the table at this time in this application.
    - MertsA 9y ago
      I disagree, human vision is pretty amazing with a huge field of view and while the amount of detail is only really high at the center of vision to match what an officer can make out you'd pretty much need a lot of detail everywhere. I don't think we'll see affordable 4k body cameras for a while but there's definitely benefits to recording in 4k.

jandrese 9y ago

Those he said/she said events can turn into multi-million dollar lawsuits really quickly. It only takes a couple of incidents for the cameras to pay for themselves. The data storage issue is definitely a concern, but I think it is one that can be effectively managed.

larrykwg 9y ago
wait but wouldn't the states have to pay for those lawsuits if the video evidence showed the cop doing the thing? Ohh I guess the narrative is that the police is most often wrongfully accused of wrongdoing, costing the state millions, which the cameras could help to clear up. Fnord.