20 ms·

Police have undermined the promise of body cameras

214 points by panic 3y ago

bell-cot 3y ago
Immediate Reaction: Um, yes? Only the naive, self-deluding, and techno-utopians would have expected otherwise. Vs. an experienced teller from a well-run 1950's podunk bank could tell you that no security technology is worth crap if the managers don't actually care, or are crooked themselves.
- JadeNB 3y ago
  > Immediate Reaction: Um, yes? Only the naive, self-deluding, and techno-utopians would have expected otherwise. Vs. an experienced teller from a well-run 1950's podunk bank could tell you that no security technology is worth crap if the managers don't actually care, or are crooked themselves. If one isn't trained as (or thinking as) a scientist, then I think it's easy to miss the importance of documenting expected results. One shouldn't believe a conclusion, even an expected and obvious conclusion, without data supporting it. This makes gathering data to support expected results a valuable process, and one that should be recognized. (For example, in this particular context, if one wants to argue against police claims that body-cams offer sufficient accountability, being able to argue from specific cases where the accountability has been subverted is much more likely to be useful than arguing from a general feeling that they won't be used properly.)
  - bell-cot 3y ago
    > If one isn't trained as (or thinking as) a scientist, then... Reaction: When possible, leave "science" out of any broad-based public policy discussion. Between the people with negative reactions to the word, and those who tune out "because science is hard stuff", and those who start judging the arguments by "how fancy is his lab coat?" criteria - it's seriously counter-productive. > ...if one wants to argue against police claims that body-cams offer sufficient...argue from specific cases where... YES, that is the right approach. Go directly there. And pick your specific cases very carefully, to make it extra-clear to your audience that naive quick fixes - which all-too-many of them really want to believe in - are nothing but different brands of square tires.
  - coldtea 3y ago
    >If one isn't trained as (or thinking as) a scientist, then I think it's easy to miss the importance of documenting expected results. (...) (For example, in this particular context, if one wants to argue against police claims that body-cams offer sufficient accountability, being able to argue from specific cases where the accountability has been subverted is much more likely to be useful than arguing from a general feeling that they won't be used properly.) That would only matter if it was a matter of "better argument" setting the issue. Whereas it's a matter of power balance: those in power want the police on their side, and the police wants less oversight. Though the parent does not "argue against police claims that body-cams offer sufficient accountability". I think they're rather pointing that the accountability they offer in "optimal use", don't matter if police chiefs don't care how they're used/bypassed/workaround-ed/and so on, and this is allowed to have minimal impact on the officers and them.
- hindsightbias 3y ago
  But you hav to admire the opportunities that other obvious players like GoPro seem to have missed out on: "Motorola Solutions Raises Spending on Body Cameras to Grab Market Share The equipment maker expects revenue in its video-security business to jump more than 20% this year after a 30.7% leap last year" https://www.wsj.com/articles/motorola-solutions-raises-spending-on-body-cameras-to-grab-market-share-11622745009 https://www.wsj.com/articles/motorola-solutions-raises-spend...
  - leetrout 3y ago
    We explored this space with an investor and did not get far before backing away in ~2017ish. The makers of the TASER, Axon, gave away body cams to sell the services supporting them. It worked well and was very expensive to try to enter the market against their brand loyalty and existing market penetration.
- Zigurd 3y ago
  The companies selling this tech are explicitly techno-dystopians.
jMyles 3y ago
Seems like this is the thesis: > As policymakers rushed to equip the police with cameras, they often failed to grapple with a fundamental question: Who would control the footage? Instead, they defaulted to leaving police departments, including New York’s, with the power to decide what is recorded, who can see it and when. In turn, departments across the country have routinely delayed releasing footage, released only partial or redacted video or refused to release it at all. The impetus to avoid transparency is the strongest indication I can observe that the state will be deprecated in favor of the internet in the coming centuries.
- eropple 3y ago
  Is the Internet going to pave roads? How?
- quantified 3y ago
  "Will be"... by whom? People won't do it, the state sure isn't.
- meepmorp 3y ago
  You're right, of course - nobody ever lies on the internet.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
WillAdams 3y ago
A police officer in performance of his duties should have zero expectation of privacy, and has a legal obligation to fill out an accurate duty log, which is such that it may be used as evidence in court. Body camera footage should be viewed as an extension of that, and when missing or unavailable, that absence should be viewed in the same light as a failure to properly document something in a duty log --- it is a dereliction of duty and of their obligation to be accountable to the public which they ostensibly serve.
- saalweachter 3y ago
  This is another example of "an untested backup doesn't exist", as well. Regardless of whether some of the time, a police department is full of bad apples and concealing or destroying body-cam footage, if you treat your body cams as a backup -- and only look at it when something goes wrong -- you're going to discover that your body cams weren't working all along and no one noticed. And then you're going to look hella guilty of hiding evidence, even if it was just bad IT policies & procedures. If you have body cameras, you need a process where you frequently, randomly pull the footage from random officers, and check whether it was turned on, recording properly, filed correctly, whether the camera quality is uselessly grainy, etc etc etc. Otherwise, just like you don't have backups if you aren't testing your restore process, you'll find out you don't have body camera footage even when it would clear you of blame.
  - tjoff 3y ago
    This can be completely automated though. Noone has to watch any footage unless the system feels like something is wrong with it. And that could be in conjunction with the involved party.
    - lotsofpulp 3y ago
      Seems like good policy to randomly pull bodycam footage on a continuous basis for performance evaluation purposes.
      - 3y ago
sixothree 3y ago
Without adversarial third party oversight police will continue to abuse the public.
- NickC25 3y ago
  This. So much this. The problem is that due to the underlying need for police cooperation in unrelated cases, no sane DA or judge would dare challenge a cop (or the police union) who can claim "oh it was a malfunction" or "oh uh the battery ran out" when it comes time for video footage to be reviewed and made public in the case of a police officer breaking the law. My proposal: make it someone's (or an anonymous board of lawyers') job to review any and all police video footage. The police union is not allowed in any circumstances to know who is doing that job, nor are they allowed to protest. Make it federal law that every officer when on duty has no expectations of privacy, and their body cam must be on 100% of the time when on duty, no exceptions. If you are going to work (and retire) on the public's dime, using equipment the public paid for, you must without question bow to public demands of complete transparency and full accountability. I don't give a damn what the union thinks, they are on our dime.
  - engineer_22 3y ago
    State and Federal gov'ts have priority in prosecution. If it is true that DA or judge are reticent to prosecute, then the appropriate avenue is State/Fed
    - greedo 3y ago
      Guess where little State Prosecutors grow up? Working cases at the municipal level until they move to the minor leagues. Federal prosecutors work up the same route, so all the institutional bias and privilege is instilled early. How many Attorneys General worked as public defenders? I bet out of the current 50 US AGs, it's probably close to zero.
  - SamoyedFurFluff 3y ago
    I agree with this except I think that policing should also be a highly educated position matching the expectations. Social workers and teachers are generally required to have graduate degrees, for example. Police academies are a scant few weeks in America, and these are people who enforce complex law in the most crucial life-or-death circumstances. Cops should be the best of us.
Eumenes 3y ago
I want elected officials to wear body cameras too
- dcsommer 3y ago
  "Transparency" in Congress has lead to grandstanding and posturing to cameras, at the expense of the necessary compromises and deals that could otherwise happen.
  - lotsofpulp 3y ago
    Transparency would be transcripts of every communication the politician has. At the golf courses, at the bar, on vacation, etc. See Clarence Thomas for example. Internet/bandwidth creating cost free video channels for politicians to advertise themselves is not transparency.
  - Eumenes 3y ago
    Sounds like something a Corporation would say. You can have compromise and transparency, it doesn't have to be one or the other.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
  - master-lincoln 3y ago
    If that is true, the issue is in the egos of people making deals
    - coldtea 3y ago
      The don't grandstand because of "egos" but because they have things to win from that (like press coverage, voter sympathies, money and deals from opponents of the issues they grandstand against, and so on).
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
ranting-moth 3y ago
Adverse inference should be be applied. Seriously.
- Aachen 3y ago
  For anyone else to whom this term is new: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adverse_inference https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adverse_inference > is a legal inference, adverse to the concerned party, drawn from silence or absence of requested evidence. [...] According to Lawvibe, "the 'adverse inference' can be quite damning at trial. Essentially, when plaintiffs try to present evidence on a point essential to their case and can't because the document has been destroyed (by the defendant), the jury can infer that the evidence would have been adverse The first paragraph sounds a lot like "assume the worst in people" (must be a nice way to go through life); the second paragraph specifies it only in the case of intentionally destroyed evidence (that seems reasonable when you can know it was intentional). Interesting concept
  - ranting-moth 3y ago
    > This rule applies not only to evidence destroyed but also to evidence existing but not produced by the party. If the police is refusing to release a video to prove their stance, there is absolutely no need to give the police the benefit of the doubt.
RecycledEle 3y ago
Until it is a felony for a cop to turn off a camera, Until it is a felony to not upload all video within 1 hour of the end of the cops shift and make it publicly available on the web with geotagging left in place, I live under a tyranny.
- engineer_22 3y ago
  I think this is an extreme view. I think we can all agree that body cam footage is an important tool to get justice, but in the interest of public safety I don't think providing bad actors real time information about police habits and location is a good idea.
  - Zigurd 3y ago
    You are taken in by TV cop show scenarios. Criminals are not smart. Cops are not warriors in danger of a guerrilla attack. The real effect of knowing what cops do all day would be half as many cops, or fewer.
    - rpmisms 3y ago
      This is not true. The criminals police deal with are not smart. There are very, very smart criminals, and they tend to gravitate towards specialties that will not get them caught, like Congress. > Cops are not warriors in danger of a guerrilla attack. I think some of them need to hear that.
    - engineer_22 3y ago
      -> Criminals are not smart. Let's just agree to disagree
- waihtis 3y ago
  Are you also one of those people who think the SF approach of not prosecuting theft was a good idea?
- jon-wood 3y ago
  Making the video public is incompatible with a legal system that presumes innocence. The moment this video is publicly available someone else will be making a service to check whether your employees/ex-wife/children have had an encounter with the police.
btbuildem 3y ago
> And so as policymakers rushed to equip the police with cameras, they often failed to grapple with a fundamental question: Who would control the footage? Instead, they defaulted to leaving police departments [..] with the power to decide what is recorded, who can see it and when. I think it's incredibly naive to portray this as a "defaulting" or "failing to grapple with a fundamental question". I am 100% certain "who controls the footage" was the first question out of the police brass' mouths, and the crucial point in negotiations, where conceding to let the police themselves control the footage allowed the use of bodycams in the first place. Nothing was left to chance here, this is entirely deliberate.
- aaomidi 3y ago
  Why are we negotiating with police for this anyway? And if the police union is threatening to strike, then who cares. Those cops are not the ones we want anyway. Rehire.
  - meepmorp 3y ago
    > Why are we negotiating with police for this anyway? Because if you don't, you get election ads with scary looking footage and a voice-over that says something like: "Mayor/Governor/whatever Smith's anti-police crusade is putting you and your family in danger. This November, send a message by voting out the pro-crime politicians." You could argue that politicians should make a principled stand against this and do the right thing anyway, and you're right in a moral sense. But there's good odds that those guys will get replaced with people who are more willing to give the police what they want.
    - waihtis 3y ago
      > give the police what they want Like the ability to actually do something when a looter horde raids a department store?
      - meepmorp 3y ago
        In the context of the conversation, the interpretation of "give police what they want," is clearly something like, "defer to the departments about how they handle bodycam footage, policies about recording, and discipline for officers that don't conform to related laws and policies." The fact that you chose an unrelated topic couched in deliberately inflammatory language only shows bad faith on your part.
RecycledEle 3y ago
Information is power. I want information to be available to as many people as possible or available to nobody. Suggestion: When an altercation occurs, everyone with a recording of it should upload it to a public web site where all video is permanently available to the public. Anyone not uploading their video is assumed by the courts to be at fault for the altercation. Another suggestion: All recordings in public places must be geotagged and uploaded to a public web site within 24 hours where they become part of the public record. This can be implemented with the creation of a government website and software updates to cameras/DVRs/phones.
- some_random 3y ago
  The purpose of a panopticon isn't so that the inmates can keep the guard in check.
proee 3y ago
Police should wear two body cameras, maybe even one worn on the back to show the entire scene. Why not make them wireless as well and send back to central to ensure they are getting recorded.
- sschueller 3y ago
  360 camera on shoulder and synced to a 3rd party the departments have limited access too. They need to file paperwork to get footage they need. 3rd party can deal with warrents directly and office should be punished for turning off cameras. This 3rd party however may not be connected or funded in anyway to cause a conflict of interest. No funding by the police!
  - salawat 3y ago
    Ah hahahaha! So you're actually going to start sufficiently funding my Quality Assurance department instead of treating it like a cost center, right? Right?! I won't hold my breath on that one.
- jdoss 3y ago
  The battery requirements for constant streaming on LTE/5G would most likely be a constraint here. I do think your point makes a lot of sense however.
  - chucksta 3y ago
    With all the tech they have in their cars, could easily do local backup there and then upload to a central location at return or when a trusted wifi becomes available
deleted 3y ago
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lsy 3y ago
Body cams were always a band-aid solution on top of over-arming police and granting them almost total immunity from charges of misconduct. The resulting mentality of us-vs-them and mafioso, bullying behavior from police is all down to feeling a cut above “civilians” and being confident in their power to legally murder anyone who’s too resistant. This behavior also discourages any thoughtful people with integrity from applying, and beats it out of them quickly when they do. The streets would be a lot safer with more citizens performing a genuine public safety role with fewer weapons and chips on their shoulders, but the police lobby essentially holds cities hostage by monopolizing the public safety role and strategically withdrawing from that role in protest whenever an insufficiently deferential policy is passed.
- Aachen 3y ago
  > being confident in their power to legally murder anyone who’s too resistant. * in a few select countries around the world. This is a rather narrow view of police(wo)men as a blanket statement.
  - bjornsing 3y ago
    Is it? I think Sweden is probably recognized as one of the most civilized countries in world in this regard, but here too the police can murder anyone who’s too resistant and very likely get away with it. I know of several cases that ended up in bizarre acquittals, and none that ended in a conviction. They are sometimes sentenced in the court of public opinion though, as with Osmo Vallo [1]. 1. https://sv.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osmo_Vallo https://sv.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osmo_Vallo
fasteddie31003 3y ago
Watching police body camera footage has given me much more appreciation for the tough job police have. I can't imagine having people actively try to kill me in my day-to-day job as a software engineer.
- xuhu 3y ago
  Many officers take a step back when things heat up beyond "papers please". No one ever got fired for doing that. If an officer escalates, it's because their inner voice says "come at be bro".
  - networkchad 3y ago
    [dead]
- kkielhofner 3y ago
  It's been really interesting to watch the rise of dedicated police body cam YouTube Channels. There are TONS of them and they often have millions of subscribers. They more-or-less paint two pictures: 1) Wow, this job is TERRIBLE. People doing stuff like committing a crime on video, going on a high speed chase, crashing into multiple cars and injuring people, finally crashing the car into a tree, shooting at the police, running on foot, hiding behind a building, and then fighting to the point it takes four-five cops to subdue them but then constantly screaming stuff like "I didn't do anything! Why are you hassling me? You better hope I don't find out where you live because I'm going to [insert the most disgusting, profane, and explicit sex crime stuff you can't even think of] to your wife and daughter". All while claiming they're having an asthma attack even though they just sprinted 1/4 mile. Then it takes the same number of cops 10 minutes just to get them in the police car because they're still fighting, spitting, kicking, who knows what. The really bizarre ones are once they get in the car their primary concern is where their phone ended up... They end up at the jail with a "spit hood" over their head and their entire body strapped to a special wheeled chair where they can't move at all because they're still that dangerous. Most of us here cannot imagine it. It's the wildest stuff you've ever seen - hence the millions of subscribers. 2) Wow, this cop is TERRIBLE. Obvious racial profiling, screaming at people for doing nothing or committing minor infractions, beating/killing people for no reason, inventing charges, etc, etc. People are people and it's a cross-section: terrible people doing terrible things on either side of the law. Obviously the police should be held to a higher standard but more often than not my take away is "I don't know how cops do this job without turning into completely cynical, jaded, paranoid, and aggressive maniacs". I've been on about 24 hours total of ride alongs in some "rough" areas and hit my lifetime quota. It's that disturbing, terrifying, and high-stress. After each "shift" it would take me a while just to start to reconcile what I experienced. I think anyone would have a tough time dealing with someone who (for example) tries to kill you, threatens your family, spits on you, etc while still treating them decently and humanely. In many areas this is over and over, day after day. In the US especially police are basically the "catch all" for all of the other (ample) problems in our society. The people on both sides are often in impossible, no-win situations.
tylerdinner 3y ago
They're public servants. That footage should be public property. Just like "this call may be monitored for blah blah", your actions as a cop should be monitored by the public. Maybe we should have local citizens watching/reviewing body cam footage 24/7 to make sure cops are doing their job correctly. It's also job creation. Edit: obviously there are some confidentiality issues, so only certain folks should have that clearance. But it feels like we need a better oversight system, whatever that may be.
- mantas 3y ago
  Yeah, some confidentiality issues.. I'm pretty sure such system would be abused. To leak footages of low situation in peoples' lives. To make sure cops enforce rules by the letter even if situation is objectively silly on the spot. To get dirt on cops by logging mistakes which everybody does. That's like requiring screensharing + camera on for remote workers 100% of the time. It sucks.
  - kevinventullo 3y ago
    Remote tech workers aren't expected to occasionally assault or kill people as part of carrying out their duties.
    - mantas 3y ago
      It's not about deadly shooting. In my country bigger problem is police being not bold enough. Here police fires once in few years. As a whole force. Yet we have same issues with body cams. People cry foul over whatever policing is going on. Policing is hard enough job as it is. Make it even harsher by 24/7 monitoring and even fewer people will show up. Then you'll have to scrap the bottom of the barrel to find any officers. Which is not exactly good for the society. Looking from afar, US policing issues surrounding gun use is just a reflection of the overall society. US as a whole is overall much more aggressive society. Both police and criminals are more aggressive.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
gtmitchell 3y ago
We're trying to use technology to solve a legal / political issue, which predictably ineffective results. Unfortunately, I don't even think improved state oversight will help until the underlying issue of qualified immunity is addressed. The current legal framework in the US literally rewards police officers for being ignorant of the law.
- bitcharmer 3y ago
  I have no idea why you're getting down voted. The amount of BS and straight out criminal conduct cops can get away with due to immunity is sickening.
NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago
I never saw promise in body cameras. The organization they were meant to make accountable is the same organization that gets to edit the video, gets to turn the cameras on and off, gets to refuse to release them, gets to release them at the most opportune time, gets to, and gets to "lose" them if there's no way to scrub their misbehavior. If that weren't enough to know how useless they'd be, we'd had dash cams for t least 20 years at that point (since Rodney King? I can't remember honestly, but mid-1990s anyway). Nothing improved. No less abuse, no better outcomes. We had already run the experiment, but collectively decided that the results were wrong. So, why did we bother to camera up all the cops? Because intelligence agencies wanted millions of cameras out there the feeds from which they could watch. They wanted mobile cameras, not fixed. And we're still 20 or 30 years too early for the robot revolution. It had to be meat drones.
dclaw 3y ago
I always said when this whole body cam business started years ago that everyone is going to be real fucking upset when they get live facial recognition on these things. Be careful what you wish for.
- InCityDreams 3y ago
  I would accept facial recognition with cops being held accountable, sure - I can wear a mask (and i often do, especially in malls, phone left in car). Unbeating myself...more difficult.
sonicanatidae 3y ago
Anyone else shocked by the hardware mysteriously failing, while a cop is violating someone's rights, but works perfectly at all other times? How about the simple fact, that if you delete data that would be used in a court case, the court will automatically assume the worst case, while cops can do it, and the penalty? Nothing!
deleted 3y ago
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wavemode 3y ago
I'm just going to give my personal opinion - I think this article does a great job of arguing, in a somewhat roundabout way, that the NYPD has failed to create proper accountability through the release of body camera footage. It really makes no sense that all body cam footage is not automatically public record in the case of the death of the civilian. But at the same time, it does a poor job of arguing that the two recorded shootings it spends most of its word-length on (Richards and Trawick) were actually wholly unjustified. The author probably should have chosen some different, more egregious cases to make their point.
- greedo 3y ago
  In both shootings, the officers didn't follow standard procedure (let the ESU take over the situation), and instead went all Rambo on the victims. Then failed to render aid after they pumped dozens of rounds into each victim. Or they let had a dog handler attack a suspect (killing him), then laughed about "getting a bite." All three of these cases described are disgusting instances of police overreach and failure.
  - wavemode 3y ago
    Look, this is always a pointless debate to go back-and-forth about because it tends to become more dominated by emotion than logic. What I will say is that I do believe all the incidents described in the article were tragedies, and sadly preventable. And I do believe there were breaches of protocol by officers at the scene in all of the cases. But I just plain don't believe that the turning point moment for Richards and Trawick was the officers' decision to use force. If a mentally ill person has reached the point of charging at police officers holding a knife (and/or whatever Richards was doing with his knife and fake gun), they were already failed, woefully, by society and by their support network.
rich_sasha 3y ago
Are all the responses below from US? I mean, I get it, TFA is US-specific. I'm glad to live in a country where the police, for sure not perfect, are not an enemy of the people / above-the-law racket which can do as it pleases. And I believe they don't wear body cams.
bborud 3y ago
Police will represent a problem in the US as long as it is not a single, national organization with a national set of rules, proper standards for education and conduct. That, of course, will never happen. Which means police organizations in the US will always represent a risk to the public.
dang_undead 3y ago
[dead]
eightysixfour 3y ago
I’ve always thought the obvious play here in a capitalist driven society is to require police officers to have private insurance. Insurance companies would quickly land on: 1. No camera, no insurance 2. A national registry for individual officer history Having exclusive use of legal force needs some kind of counter balance. Not sure what else could do it.
- HDThoreaun 3y ago
  We've tried this, the police refuse.
  - eightysixfour 3y ago
    I mean at some point refusals only go so far. I’m absolutely not pretending it would be easy, but when you refuse to do your job under new conditions for your employer… you lose your job. New police departments wouldn’t be the worst thing for a lot of cities.
    - HDThoreaun 3y ago
      > when you refuse to do your job under new conditions for your employer… you lose your job Ideally yes, but when every cop in the city refuses to do their job at the same time the city doesnt really have a choice. Firing every police officer is not an option for politicians who want to be re-elected.
    - Der_Einzige 3y ago
      If you fire your cops, all cops will refuse to work for your new department. This is the status quo in Oregon right now. Lots of money for new cops, no one applies.
realclarkeg687 3y ago
[flagged]

214 points by panic 3y ago

Immediate Reaction: Um, yes? Only the naive, self-deluding, and techno-utopians would have expected otherwise. Vs. an experienced teller from a well-run 1950's podunk bank could tell you that no security technology is worth crap if the managers don't actually care, or are crooked themselves.

JadeNB 3y ago
> Immediate Reaction: Um, yes? Only the naive, self-deluding, and techno-utopians would have expected otherwise. Vs. an experienced teller from a well-run 1950's podunk bank could tell you that no security technology is worth crap if the managers don't actually care, or are crooked themselves. If one isn't trained as (or thinking as) a scientist, then I think it's easy to miss the importance of documenting expected results. One shouldn't believe a conclusion, even an expected and obvious conclusion, without data supporting it. This makes gathering data to support expected results a valuable process, and one that should be recognized. (For example, in this particular context, if one wants to argue against police claims that body-cams offer sufficient accountability, being able to argue from specific cases where the accountability has been subverted is much more likely to be useful than arguing from a general feeling that they won't be used properly.)
- bell-cot 3y ago
  > If one isn't trained as (or thinking as) a scientist, then... Reaction: When possible, leave "science" out of any broad-based public policy discussion. Between the people with negative reactions to the word, and those who tune out "because science is hard stuff", and those who start judging the arguments by "how fancy is his lab coat?" criteria - it's seriously counter-productive. > ...if one wants to argue against police claims that body-cams offer sufficient...argue from specific cases where... YES, that is the right approach. Go directly there. And pick your specific cases very carefully, to make it extra-clear to your audience that naive quick fixes - which all-too-many of them really want to believe in - are nothing but different brands of square tires.
- coldtea 3y ago
  >If one isn't trained as (or thinking as) a scientist, then I think it's easy to miss the importance of documenting expected results. (...) (For example, in this particular context, if one wants to argue against police claims that body-cams offer sufficient accountability, being able to argue from specific cases where the accountability has been subverted is much more likely to be useful than arguing from a general feeling that they won't be used properly.) That would only matter if it was a matter of "better argument" setting the issue. Whereas it's a matter of power balance: those in power want the police on their side, and the police wants less oversight. Though the parent does not "argue against police claims that body-cams offer sufficient accountability". I think they're rather pointing that the accountability they offer in "optimal use", don't matter if police chiefs don't care how they're used/bypassed/workaround-ed/and so on, and this is allowed to have minimal impact on the officers and them.
hindsightbias 3y ago
But you hav to admire the opportunities that other obvious players like GoPro seem to have missed out on: "Motorola Solutions Raises Spending on Body Cameras to Grab Market Share The equipment maker expects revenue in its video-security business to jump more than 20% this year after a 30.7% leap last year" https://www.wsj.com/articles/motorola-solutions-raises-spending-on-body-cameras-to-grab-market-share-11622745009 https://www.wsj.com/articles/motorola-solutions-raises-spend...
- leetrout 3y ago
  We explored this space with an investor and did not get far before backing away in ~2017ish. The makers of the TASER, Axon, gave away body cams to sell the services supporting them. It worked well and was very expensive to try to enter the market against their brand loyalty and existing market penetration.
Zigurd 3y ago
The companies selling this tech are explicitly techno-dystopians.

jMyles 3y ago

Seems like this is the thesis: > As policymakers rushed to equip the police with cameras, they often failed to grapple with a fundamental question: Who would control the footage? Instead, they defaulted to leaving police departments, including New York’s, with the power to decide what is recorded, who can see it and when. In turn, departments across the country have routinely delayed releasing footage, released only partial or redacted video or refused to release it at all. The impetus to avoid transparency is the strongest indication I can observe that the state will be deprecated in favor of the internet in the coming centuries.

eropple 3y ago
Is the Internet going to pave roads? How?
quantified 3y ago
"Will be"... by whom? People won't do it, the state sure isn't.
meepmorp 3y ago
You're right, of course - nobody ever lies on the internet.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

WillAdams 3y ago

A police officer in performance of his duties should have zero expectation of privacy, and has a legal obligation to fill out an accurate duty log, which is such that it may be used as evidence in court. Body camera footage should be viewed as an extension of that, and when missing or unavailable, that absence should be viewed in the same light as a failure to properly document something in a duty log --- it is a dereliction of duty and of their obligation to be accountable to the public which they ostensibly serve.

saalweachter 3y ago
This is another example of "an untested backup doesn't exist", as well. Regardless of whether some of the time, a police department is full of bad apples and concealing or destroying body-cam footage, if you treat your body cams as a backup -- and only look at it when something goes wrong -- you're going to discover that your body cams weren't working all along and no one noticed. And then you're going to look hella guilty of hiding evidence, even if it was just bad IT policies & procedures. If you have body cameras, you need a process where you frequently, randomly pull the footage from random officers, and check whether it was turned on, recording properly, filed correctly, whether the camera quality is uselessly grainy, etc etc etc. Otherwise, just like you don't have backups if you aren't testing your restore process, you'll find out you don't have body camera footage even when it would clear you of blame.
- tjoff 3y ago
  This can be completely automated though. Noone has to watch any footage unless the system feels like something is wrong with it. And that could be in conjunction with the involved party.
  - lotsofpulp 3y ago
    Seems like good policy to randomly pull bodycam footage on a continuous basis for performance evaluation purposes.
    - 3y ago

sixothree 3y ago

Without adversarial third party oversight police will continue to abuse the public.

NickC25 3y ago
This. So much this. The problem is that due to the underlying need for police cooperation in unrelated cases, no sane DA or judge would dare challenge a cop (or the police union) who can claim "oh it was a malfunction" or "oh uh the battery ran out" when it comes time for video footage to be reviewed and made public in the case of a police officer breaking the law. My proposal: make it someone's (or an anonymous board of lawyers') job to review any and all police video footage. The police union is not allowed in any circumstances to know who is doing that job, nor are they allowed to protest. Make it federal law that every officer when on duty has no expectations of privacy, and their body cam must be on 100% of the time when on duty, no exceptions. If you are going to work (and retire) on the public's dime, using equipment the public paid for, you must without question bow to public demands of complete transparency and full accountability. I don't give a damn what the union thinks, they are on our dime.
- engineer_22 3y ago
  State and Federal gov'ts have priority in prosecution. If it is true that DA or judge are reticent to prosecute, then the appropriate avenue is State/Fed
  - greedo 3y ago
    Guess where little State Prosecutors grow up? Working cases at the municipal level until they move to the minor leagues. Federal prosecutors work up the same route, so all the institutional bias and privilege is instilled early. How many Attorneys General worked as public defenders? I bet out of the current 50 US AGs, it's probably close to zero.
- SamoyedFurFluff 3y ago
  I agree with this except I think that policing should also be a highly educated position matching the expectations. Social workers and teachers are generally required to have graduate degrees, for example. Police academies are a scant few weeks in America, and these are people who enforce complex law in the most crucial life-or-death circumstances. Cops should be the best of us.

Eumenes 3y ago

I want elected officials to wear body cameras too

dcsommer 3y ago
"Transparency" in Congress has lead to grandstanding and posturing to cameras, at the expense of the necessary compromises and deals that could otherwise happen.
- lotsofpulp 3y ago
  Transparency would be transcripts of every communication the politician has. At the golf courses, at the bar, on vacation, etc. See Clarence Thomas for example. Internet/bandwidth creating cost free video channels for politicians to advertise themselves is not transparency.
- Eumenes 3y ago
  Sounds like something a Corporation would say. You can have compromise and transparency, it doesn't have to be one or the other.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- master-lincoln 3y ago
  If that is true, the issue is in the egos of people making deals
  - coldtea 3y ago
    The don't grandstand because of "egos" but because they have things to win from that (like press coverage, voter sympathies, money and deals from opponents of the issues they grandstand against, and so on).
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]

ranting-moth 3y ago

Adverse inference should be be applied. Seriously.

Aachen 3y ago
For anyone else to whom this term is new: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adverse_inference https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adverse_inference > is a legal inference, adverse to the concerned party, drawn from silence or absence of requested evidence. [...] According to Lawvibe, "the 'adverse inference' can be quite damning at trial. Essentially, when plaintiffs try to present evidence on a point essential to their case and can't because the document has been destroyed (by the defendant), the jury can infer that the evidence would have been adverse The first paragraph sounds a lot like "assume the worst in people" (must be a nice way to go through life); the second paragraph specifies it only in the case of intentionally destroyed evidence (that seems reasonable when you can know it was intentional). Interesting concept
- ranting-moth 3y ago
  > This rule applies not only to evidence destroyed but also to evidence existing but not produced by the party. If the police is refusing to release a video to prove their stance, there is absolutely no need to give the police the benefit of the doubt.

RecycledEle 3y ago

Until it is a felony for a cop to turn off a camera, Until it is a felony to not upload all video within 1 hour of the end of the cops shift and make it publicly available on the web with geotagging left in place, I live under a tyranny.

engineer_22 3y ago
I think this is an extreme view. I think we can all agree that body cam footage is an important tool to get justice, but in the interest of public safety I don't think providing bad actors real time information about police habits and location is a good idea.
- Zigurd 3y ago
  You are taken in by TV cop show scenarios. Criminals are not smart. Cops are not warriors in danger of a guerrilla attack. The real effect of knowing what cops do all day would be half as many cops, or fewer.
  - rpmisms 3y ago
    This is not true. The criminals police deal with are not smart. There are very, very smart criminals, and they tend to gravitate towards specialties that will not get them caught, like Congress. > Cops are not warriors in danger of a guerrilla attack. I think some of them need to hear that.
  - engineer_22 3y ago
    -> Criminals are not smart. Let's just agree to disagree
waihtis 3y ago
Are you also one of those people who think the SF approach of not prosecuting theft was a good idea?
jon-wood 3y ago
Making the video public is incompatible with a legal system that presumes innocence. The moment this video is publicly available someone else will be making a service to check whether your employees/ex-wife/children have had an encounter with the police.

btbuildem 3y ago

> And so as policymakers rushed to equip the police with cameras, they often failed to grapple with a fundamental question: Who would control the footage? Instead, they defaulted to leaving police departments [..] with the power to decide what is recorded, who can see it and when. I think it's incredibly naive to portray this as a "defaulting" or "failing to grapple with a fundamental question". I am 100% certain "who controls the footage" was the first question out of the police brass' mouths, and the crucial point in negotiations, where conceding to let the police themselves control the footage allowed the use of bodycams in the first place. Nothing was left to chance here, this is entirely deliberate.

aaomidi 3y ago
Why are we negotiating with police for this anyway? And if the police union is threatening to strike, then who cares. Those cops are not the ones we want anyway. Rehire.
- meepmorp 3y ago
  > Why are we negotiating with police for this anyway? Because if you don't, you get election ads with scary looking footage and a voice-over that says something like: "Mayor/Governor/whatever Smith's anti-police crusade is putting you and your family in danger. This November, send a message by voting out the pro-crime politicians." You could argue that politicians should make a principled stand against this and do the right thing anyway, and you're right in a moral sense. But there's good odds that those guys will get replaced with people who are more willing to give the police what they want.
  - waihtis 3y ago
    > give the police what they want Like the ability to actually do something when a looter horde raids a department store?
    - meepmorp 3y ago
      In the context of the conversation, the interpretation of "give police what they want," is clearly something like, "defer to the departments about how they handle bodycam footage, policies about recording, and discipline for officers that don't conform to related laws and policies." The fact that you chose an unrelated topic couched in deliberately inflammatory language only shows bad faith on your part.

RecycledEle 3y ago

Information is power. I want information to be available to as many people as possible or available to nobody. Suggestion: When an altercation occurs, everyone with a recording of it should upload it to a public web site where all video is permanently available to the public. Anyone not uploading their video is assumed by the courts to be at fault for the altercation. Another suggestion: All recordings in public places must be geotagged and uploaded to a public web site within 24 hours where they become part of the public record. This can be implemented with the creation of a government website and software updates to cameras/DVRs/phones.

some_random 3y ago
The purpose of a panopticon isn't so that the inmates can keep the guard in check.

proee 3y ago

Police should wear two body cameras, maybe even one worn on the back to show the entire scene. Why not make them wireless as well and send back to central to ensure they are getting recorded.

sschueller 3y ago
360 camera on shoulder and synced to a 3rd party the departments have limited access too. They need to file paperwork to get footage they need. 3rd party can deal with warrents directly and office should be punished for turning off cameras. This 3rd party however may not be connected or funded in anyway to cause a conflict of interest. No funding by the police!
- salawat 3y ago
  Ah hahahaha! So you're actually going to start sufficiently funding my Quality Assurance department instead of treating it like a cost center, right? Right?! I won't hold my breath on that one.
jdoss 3y ago
The battery requirements for constant streaming on LTE/5G would most likely be a constraint here. I do think your point makes a lot of sense however.
- chucksta 3y ago
  With all the tech they have in their cars, could easily do local backup there and then upload to a central location at return or when a trusted wifi becomes available

deleted 3y ago

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lsy 3y ago

Body cams were always a band-aid solution on top of over-arming police and granting them almost total immunity from charges of misconduct. The resulting mentality of us-vs-them and mafioso, bullying behavior from police is all down to feeling a cut above “civilians” and being confident in their power to legally murder anyone who’s too resistant. This behavior also discourages any thoughtful people with integrity from applying, and beats it out of them quickly when they do. The streets would be a lot safer with more citizens performing a genuine public safety role with fewer weapons and chips on their shoulders, but the police lobby essentially holds cities hostage by monopolizing the public safety role and strategically withdrawing from that role in protest whenever an insufficiently deferential policy is passed.

Aachen 3y ago
> being confident in their power to legally murder anyone who’s too resistant. * in a few select countries around the world. This is a rather narrow view of police(wo)men as a blanket statement.
- bjornsing 3y ago
  Is it? I think Sweden is probably recognized as one of the most civilized countries in world in this regard, but here too the police can murder anyone who’s too resistant and very likely get away with it. I know of several cases that ended up in bizarre acquittals, and none that ended in a conviction. They are sometimes sentenced in the court of public opinion though, as with Osmo Vallo [1]. 1. https://sv.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osmo_Vallo https://sv.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osmo_Vallo

fasteddie31003 3y ago

Watching police body camera footage has given me much more appreciation for the tough job police have. I can't imagine having people actively try to kill me in my day-to-day job as a software engineer.

xuhu 3y ago
Many officers take a step back when things heat up beyond "papers please". No one ever got fired for doing that. If an officer escalates, it's because their inner voice says "come at be bro".
- networkchad 3y ago
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kkielhofner 3y ago
It's been really interesting to watch the rise of dedicated police body cam YouTube Channels. There are TONS of them and they often have millions of subscribers. They more-or-less paint two pictures: 1) Wow, this job is TERRIBLE. People doing stuff like committing a crime on video, going on a high speed chase, crashing into multiple cars and injuring people, finally crashing the car into a tree, shooting at the police, running on foot, hiding behind a building, and then fighting to the point it takes four-five cops to subdue them but then constantly screaming stuff like "I didn't do anything! Why are you hassling me? You better hope I don't find out where you live because I'm going to [insert the most disgusting, profane, and explicit sex crime stuff you can't even think of] to your wife and daughter". All while claiming they're having an asthma attack even though they just sprinted 1/4 mile. Then it takes the same number of cops 10 minutes just to get them in the police car because they're still fighting, spitting, kicking, who knows what. The really bizarre ones are once they get in the car their primary concern is where their phone ended up... They end up at the jail with a "spit hood" over their head and their entire body strapped to a special wheeled chair where they can't move at all because they're still that dangerous. Most of us here cannot imagine it. It's the wildest stuff you've ever seen - hence the millions of subscribers. 2) Wow, this cop is TERRIBLE. Obvious racial profiling, screaming at people for doing nothing or committing minor infractions, beating/killing people for no reason, inventing charges, etc, etc. People are people and it's a cross-section: terrible people doing terrible things on either side of the law. Obviously the police should be held to a higher standard but more often than not my take away is "I don't know how cops do this job without turning into completely cynical, jaded, paranoid, and aggressive maniacs". I've been on about 24 hours total of ride alongs in some "rough" areas and hit my lifetime quota. It's that disturbing, terrifying, and high-stress. After each "shift" it would take me a while just to start to reconcile what I experienced. I think anyone would have a tough time dealing with someone who (for example) tries to kill you, threatens your family, spits on you, etc while still treating them decently and humanely. In many areas this is over and over, day after day. In the US especially police are basically the "catch all" for all of the other (ample) problems in our society. The people on both sides are often in impossible, no-win situations.

tylerdinner 3y ago

They're public servants. That footage should be public property. Just like "this call may be monitored for blah blah", your actions as a cop should be monitored by the public. Maybe we should have local citizens watching/reviewing body cam footage 24/7 to make sure cops are doing their job correctly. It's also job creation. Edit: obviously there are some confidentiality issues, so only certain folks should have that clearance. But it feels like we need a better oversight system, whatever that may be.

mantas 3y ago
Yeah, some confidentiality issues.. I'm pretty sure such system would be abused. To leak footages of low situation in peoples' lives. To make sure cops enforce rules by the letter even if situation is objectively silly on the spot. To get dirt on cops by logging mistakes which everybody does. That's like requiring screensharing + camera on for remote workers 100% of the time. It sucks.
- kevinventullo 3y ago
  Remote tech workers aren't expected to occasionally assault or kill people as part of carrying out their duties.
  - mantas 3y ago
    It's not about deadly shooting. In my country bigger problem is police being not bold enough. Here police fires once in few years. As a whole force. Yet we have same issues with body cams. People cry foul over whatever policing is going on. Policing is hard enough job as it is. Make it even harsher by 24/7 monitoring and even fewer people will show up. Then you'll have to scrap the bottom of the barrel to find any officers. Which is not exactly good for the society. Looking from afar, US policing issues surrounding gun use is just a reflection of the overall society. US as a whole is overall much more aggressive society. Both police and criminals are more aggressive.

deleted 3y ago

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gtmitchell 3y ago

We're trying to use technology to solve a legal / political issue, which predictably ineffective results. Unfortunately, I don't even think improved state oversight will help until the underlying issue of qualified immunity is addressed. The current legal framework in the US literally rewards police officers for being ignorant of the law.

bitcharmer 3y ago
I have no idea why you're getting down voted. The amount of BS and straight out criminal conduct cops can get away with due to immunity is sickening.

NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago

I never saw promise in body cameras. The organization they were meant to make accountable is the same organization that gets to edit the video, gets to turn the cameras on and off, gets to refuse to release them, gets to release them at the most opportune time, gets to, and gets to "lose" them if there's no way to scrub their misbehavior. If that weren't enough to know how useless they'd be, we'd had dash cams for t least 20 years at that point (since Rodney King? I can't remember honestly, but mid-1990s anyway). Nothing improved. No less abuse, no better outcomes. We had already run the experiment, but collectively decided that the results were wrong. So, why did we bother to camera up all the cops? Because intelligence agencies wanted millions of cameras out there the feeds from which they could watch. They wanted mobile cameras, not fixed. And we're still 20 or 30 years too early for the robot revolution. It had to be meat drones.

dclaw 3y ago

I always said when this whole body cam business started years ago that everyone is going to be real fucking upset when they get live facial recognition on these things. Be careful what you wish for.

InCityDreams 3y ago
I would accept facial recognition with cops being held accountable, sure - I can wear a mask (and i often do, especially in malls, phone left in car). Unbeating myself...more difficult.

sonicanatidae 3y ago

Anyone else shocked by the hardware mysteriously failing, while a cop is violating someone's rights, but works perfectly at all other times? How about the simple fact, that if you delete data that would be used in a court case, the court will automatically assume the worst case, while cops can do it, and the penalty? Nothing!

deleted 3y ago

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wavemode 3y ago

I'm just going to give my personal opinion - I think this article does a great job of arguing, in a somewhat roundabout way, that the NYPD has failed to create proper accountability through the release of body camera footage. It really makes no sense that all body cam footage is not automatically public record in the case of the death of the civilian. But at the same time, it does a poor job of arguing that the two recorded shootings it spends most of its word-length on (Richards and Trawick) were actually wholly unjustified. The author probably should have chosen some different, more egregious cases to make their point.

greedo 3y ago
In both shootings, the officers didn't follow standard procedure (let the ESU take over the situation), and instead went all Rambo on the victims. Then failed to render aid after they pumped dozens of rounds into each victim. Or they let had a dog handler attack a suspect (killing him), then laughed about "getting a bite." All three of these cases described are disgusting instances of police overreach and failure.
- wavemode 3y ago
  Look, this is always a pointless debate to go back-and-forth about because it tends to become more dominated by emotion than logic. What I will say is that I do believe all the incidents described in the article were tragedies, and sadly preventable. And I do believe there were breaches of protocol by officers at the scene in all of the cases. But I just plain don't believe that the turning point moment for Richards and Trawick was the officers' decision to use force. If a mentally ill person has reached the point of charging at police officers holding a knife (and/or whatever Richards was doing with his knife and fake gun), they were already failed, woefully, by society and by their support network.

rich_sasha 3y ago

Are all the responses below from US? I mean, I get it, TFA is US-specific. I'm glad to live in a country where the police, for sure not perfect, are not an enemy of the people / above-the-law racket which can do as it pleases. And I believe they don't wear body cams.

bborud 3y ago

Police will represent a problem in the US as long as it is not a single, national organization with a national set of rules, proper standards for education and conduct. That, of course, will never happen. Which means police organizations in the US will always represent a risk to the public.

dang_undead 3y ago

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eightysixfour 3y ago

I’ve always thought the obvious play here in a capitalist driven society is to require police officers to have private insurance. Insurance companies would quickly land on: 1. No camera, no insurance 2. A national registry for individual officer history Having exclusive use of legal force needs some kind of counter balance. Not sure what else could do it.

HDThoreaun 3y ago
We've tried this, the police refuse.
- eightysixfour 3y ago
  I mean at some point refusals only go so far. I’m absolutely not pretending it would be easy, but when you refuse to do your job under new conditions for your employer… you lose your job. New police departments wouldn’t be the worst thing for a lot of cities.
  - HDThoreaun 3y ago
    > when you refuse to do your job under new conditions for your employer… you lose your job Ideally yes, but when every cop in the city refuses to do their job at the same time the city doesnt really have a choice. Firing every police officer is not an option for politicians who want to be re-elected.
  - Der_Einzige 3y ago
    If you fire your cops, all cops will refuse to work for your new department. This is the status quo in Oregon right now. Lots of money for new cops, no one applies.

realclarkeg687 3y ago

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