9 ms·

It's high time to just make the cops wear video cameras. A whole lot of this sort of crap could just vanish.

judk 13y ago
Obama passed this law in Illinois, it launched his career to the Presidency. In jurisdictions that have this law, the cameras are amazingly unreliable. The failure rate is just huge..
- esw 13y ago
  Yeah, it's crazy - the battery keeps getting disconnected right before an arrest.
krisdol 13y ago
That evidence will never be available to be used against cops. This was in Texas. I don't recall the exact details. My bosnian friend was racially profiled (as hispanic) by the police. He was ticketed after not coming to a full stop, then arrested because the officer incorrectly assumed that his real driver's license was fake and that he was not a legal citizen. At the precinct, he was told some racist stuff by a working officer before being put in the cell. A lawyer took up his case, asserting that the conditions leading up to his arrest were not actually legal. What happened then? On the books, he didn't exist. He supposedly never spent a night in jail, was supposedly never arrested and taken in, the fees he paid for bail were supposedly never received or requested, the surveillance camera footage the night he was put in jail happened to be corrupted, and even if he succeeded in getting the bail money back, he'd be out at least an additional thousand for court an lawyer fees. Needless to say, they didn't pursue the case further.
- aeturnum 13y ago
  Some police departments wear them, and they dramatically (~80% iirc) reduce complaints / reports by citizens. You can only have video footage go missing so many times before it starts to get old for judges / the media / etc.
- vidarh 13y ago
  You'd have to combine it with systematically firing people if footage goes missing.
vonklaus 13y ago
This is the only logical way for police to do their job, if the servant of the people is given more power, so should come more scrutiny and observation.
bstrand 13y ago
I'd take it a step further and say that all on-duty officers should have to wear cameras that stream continuously into a third party repository. The BART police are mandated to wear cameras in the wake of the killing of Oscar Grant. Unfortunately it's up to them to activate the camera. Recently a BART cop was shot & killed by another officer when searching a robbery suspect's home. Supposedly none of those officers had their cameras running. http://www.sfgate.com/crime/article/Fatal-BART-shooting-not-captured-by-cameras-5168668.php http://www.sfgate.com/crime/article/Fatal-BART-shooting-not-...
kylec 13y ago
Internal investigations are also BS. If police officers are officers of the court, judges should have the authority (and use the authority) to strip the officer of the authority to act as an officer. Much like contempt of court, it should not require formal hearings or process to immediately remove bad officers from duty. At that point the police department would effectively have an ordinary citizen on their payroll, unable to wear a uniform or make arrests or risk being charged with impersonating an officer and kidnapping.
rwhitman 13y ago
Out of all the comments on this thread, this is the only one with an actionable solution to the problem.
- justizin 13y ago
  SFPD are going down this road, OPD (Oakland) and many others already do, but the officers often find an excuse for their camera to malfunction when they want, and in many cases they are instructed to turn the camera on themselves before interacting with anyone, and they simply don't. It turns out that telling the cops what to do isn't very effective.
  - wwweston 13y ago
    You're probably right; there'd need to be incentives. Maybe tying pay and funding to available footage?
    - ewang1 13y ago
      Live video uplink... and they can call all the officers with "malfunctioning" cameras back to the station to get a replacement.
  - mcherm 13y ago
    But the existence of the cameras can solve this problem (assuming that the footage is made available for subpoena). For instance, if this particular officer has a history of having their camera malfunction right before arrests and do so at rates far higher than other officers then this fact could be brought up in court.
    - justizin 13y ago
      The real world just doesn't work that way. Cops are not accountable. We need to take more responsibility for policing our own communities and spend less time demanding that more money is spent on police budgets. These SFPD were whining about how they can't afford to live in SF, but they make as much as I do SPECIFICALLY to address that problem. Police are "State Violence". They exist to encourage the rest of us to follow the rules for fear of SPECIFICALLY this sort of situation. They are never, in any precinct, going to be an acceptable institution. They will not find your stolen shit, they might arrest you if you witness a tragedy, and if you want to go tell your elected representatives they are a bunch of assholes, they will come out in paramilitary gear and spray fucking pepper spray or teargas in your face. They have one of the strongest unions in the country and their own bill of rights. Cameras are a good idea, but they're just not going to fix this. I would love to see people in the tech industry get involved in CopWatch, talk to people that have been doing this, esp in the bay area for decades. It is ASTOUNDINGLY difficult to get even a reprimand on file. Look at Johannes Mehserle and John Pike, extreme cases, but if their behavior is above reproach, how do you think that grabbing a random person and stomping you into the ground for noncompliance while you are in a state of shock is going to get them anything but a few laughs at the cop bar. I wish technology could fix the police, but it cannot.
maxcan 13y ago
And to immediately fire the chief of the SFFD who actually killed the helmet cam program because it showed how grossly negligent the SFFD responders were in the death of one of the three victims of the Asiana crash at SFO.
awj 13y ago
All of the police I know are in favor of this. They want cameras on at all times that they ideally couldn't interfere with. Not only will those cameras protect the public from police misbehavior, it will protect officers from frivolous lawsuits and an alarming amount of people calm down when they're informed their actions are being recorded. Other than the logistics of making it happen and ensuring the entirety of the video from an encounter is available, I can't see a problem with the whole idea. The only people that lose out are crooked cops and members of the public wanting to file unwarranted abuse claims.
x0054 13y ago
There was a guy on HN recently showing off his startup which makes sunglasses with built on camera. Cops should be required to where those by law and we should pass a law that basically states that an arrest is automatically invalid in any situation where a camera "malfunctioned" or was turned off.

judk 13y ago

Obama passed this law in Illinois, it launched his career to the Presidency. In jurisdictions that have this law, the cameras are amazingly unreliable. The failure rate is just huge..

esw 13y ago
Yeah, it's crazy - the battery keeps getting disconnected right before an arrest.

krisdol 13y ago

That evidence will never be available to be used against cops. This was in Texas. I don't recall the exact details. My bosnian friend was racially profiled (as hispanic) by the police. He was ticketed after not coming to a full stop, then arrested because the officer incorrectly assumed that his real driver's license was fake and that he was not a legal citizen. At the precinct, he was told some racist stuff by a working officer before being put in the cell. A lawyer took up his case, asserting that the conditions leading up to his arrest were not actually legal. What happened then? On the books, he didn't exist. He supposedly never spent a night in jail, was supposedly never arrested and taken in, the fees he paid for bail were supposedly never received or requested, the surveillance camera footage the night he was put in jail happened to be corrupted, and even if he succeeded in getting the bail money back, he'd be out at least an additional thousand for court an lawyer fees. Needless to say, they didn't pursue the case further.

aeturnum 13y ago
Some police departments wear them, and they dramatically (~80% iirc) reduce complaints / reports by citizens. You can only have video footage go missing so many times before it starts to get old for judges / the media / etc.
vidarh 13y ago
You'd have to combine it with systematically firing people if footage goes missing.

vonklaus 13y ago

This is the only logical way for police to do their job, if the servant of the people is given more power, so should come more scrutiny and observation.

bstrand 13y ago

I'd take it a step further and say that all on-duty officers should have to wear cameras that stream continuously into a third party repository. The BART police are mandated to wear cameras in the wake of the killing of Oscar Grant. Unfortunately it's up to them to activate the camera. Recently a BART cop was shot & killed by another officer when searching a robbery suspect's home. Supposedly none of those officers had their cameras running. http://www.sfgate.com/crime/article/Fatal-BART-shooting-not-captured-by-cameras-5168668.php http://www.sfgate.com/crime/article/Fatal-BART-shooting-not-...

kylec 13y ago

Internal investigations are also BS. If police officers are officers of the court, judges should have the authority (and use the authority) to strip the officer of the authority to act as an officer. Much like contempt of court, it should not require formal hearings or process to immediately remove bad officers from duty. At that point the police department would effectively have an ordinary citizen on their payroll, unable to wear a uniform or make arrests or risk being charged with impersonating an officer and kidnapping.

rwhitman 13y ago

Out of all the comments on this thread, this is the only one with an actionable solution to the problem.

justizin 13y ago
SFPD are going down this road, OPD (Oakland) and many others already do, but the officers often find an excuse for their camera to malfunction when they want, and in many cases they are instructed to turn the camera on themselves before interacting with anyone, and they simply don't. It turns out that telling the cops what to do isn't very effective.
- wwweston 13y ago
  You're probably right; there'd need to be incentives. Maybe tying pay and funding to available footage?
  - ewang1 13y ago
    Live video uplink... and they can call all the officers with "malfunctioning" cameras back to the station to get a replacement.
- mcherm 13y ago
  But the existence of the cameras can solve this problem (assuming that the footage is made available for subpoena). For instance, if this particular officer has a history of having their camera malfunction right before arrests and do so at rates far higher than other officers then this fact could be brought up in court.
  - justizin 13y ago
    The real world just doesn't work that way. Cops are not accountable. We need to take more responsibility for policing our own communities and spend less time demanding that more money is spent on police budgets. These SFPD were whining about how they can't afford to live in SF, but they make as much as I do SPECIFICALLY to address that problem. Police are "State Violence". They exist to encourage the rest of us to follow the rules for fear of SPECIFICALLY this sort of situation. They are never, in any precinct, going to be an acceptable institution. They will not find your stolen shit, they might arrest you if you witness a tragedy, and if you want to go tell your elected representatives they are a bunch of assholes, they will come out in paramilitary gear and spray fucking pepper spray or teargas in your face. They have one of the strongest unions in the country and their own bill of rights. Cameras are a good idea, but they're just not going to fix this. I would love to see people in the tech industry get involved in CopWatch, talk to people that have been doing this, esp in the bay area for decades. It is ASTOUNDINGLY difficult to get even a reprimand on file. Look at Johannes Mehserle and John Pike, extreme cases, but if their behavior is above reproach, how do you think that grabbing a random person and stomping you into the ground for noncompliance while you are in a state of shock is going to get them anything but a few laughs at the cop bar. I wish technology could fix the police, but it cannot.

maxcan 13y ago

And to immediately fire the chief of the SFFD who actually killed the helmet cam program because it showed how grossly negligent the SFFD responders were in the death of one of the three victims of the Asiana crash at SFO.

awj 13y ago

All of the police I know are in favor of this. They want cameras on at all times that they ideally couldn't interfere with. Not only will those cameras protect the public from police misbehavior, it will protect officers from frivolous lawsuits and an alarming amount of people calm down when they're informed their actions are being recorded. Other than the logistics of making it happen and ensuring the entirety of the video from an encounter is available, I can't see a problem with the whole idea. The only people that lose out are crooked cops and members of the public wanting to file unwarranted abuse claims.

x0054 13y ago

There was a guy on HN recently showing off his startup which makes sunglasses with built on camera. Cops should be required to where those by law and we should pass a law that basically states that an arrest is automatically invalid in any situation where a camera "malfunctioned" or was turned off.