Police Cars To Transmit Real-Time Video

Hugh Pickens writes "In the first such system deployed in the country, police vehicles in Ponca City, Oklahoma will have wireless video cameras installed so precinct dispatchers and supervisors can monitor activities during traffic stops in real time, and quickly deploy additional officers and resources if necessary. The system to provide an added level of monitoring and protection for its force is part of a broadband mesh network comprised of more than 490 wireless nodes and gateways connected to 120 miles of fiber backbone that will provide coverage for approximately 30 square miles of the city. The network will provide field communications for city services including police, fire and emergency, parks and recreation, public works and energy, but will also be used to provide free wireless internet access for all residents of the city. 'The testing of this network showed that it was robust enough to handle not only municipal traffic, but also citizens' traffic.' said Mayor Homer Nicholson. 'So the Ponca City Board of Commissioners voted to allow the extra internet access to be given to the citizens of Ponca City for free.' The second phase of the project will expand the network and wireless coverage to more than 430 square miles surrounding the city with an estimated annual cost savings of over $1 million for city residents, who can discontinue their existing internet service. 'Our goal is to be one of the most mobile communities in America, and this is a significant step in that direction,' said Nicholson."

Comments

Fine, Just Fine...

[slifox]

I say this is a good thing, but we shouldn't stop there. I'd say everyone's car should have [hidden] video cameras...

Anything that happens on public ground, especially involving public servants (i.e. police), should be considered to be recorded by the public. Privacy in public is an outdated concept, and has never truly existed anyways (so give it up). Someone will be watching -- the question is, is everyone watching, or is it a one-sided situation (like the CCTV system in the UK)?

Events taking place on public ground should never come down to "his word vs. mine." In cases where this involves police, then the police officers' word is always given more credit than the citizens'. Now while this is probably a reasonable bias to have, it neglects the fact that police officers are just humans too, and are themselves just as influenced by biases as anyone else. Video recordings have no bias...

This is essentially becoming a reality, especially considering that most everyone's phone has a camera. Let's see what happens the next time there is an instance of abuse of authority, say during a traffic stop or what-have-you...

As Marge Simpson said...

You know, the courts may not be working any more, but as long as everyone is videotaping everyone else, justice will be done.

Re:Fine, Just Fine...

[sticky.pirate]

There will still be lost tapes, only the excuses will change; "our servers were offline during that period", "the hard drive got corrupted", "viruses", "microwave radiation interference", et cetera. I'm sure most supervisors can be trusted (and most officers, as well), but some are going to be tempted to erase evidence of wrong-doing, just as some officers in the field will be tempted to turn off the camera. As long as we rely on the police to police themselves, there will always be possible ways to get around these kinds of things. What we would really need is for those real-time video feeds to be open to the public

Re:Fine, Just Fine...

[Naturalis Philosopho]

this is the best news I've ever heard to prevent police corruption and increase productivity

Huh? Is my sarcasm meter blinking out? You are joking, right? Is someone going to review all this video? If it's not open to the public (who would watch it- distributed computing through voyeurism) who watches the video to make sure the cops really are doing their job,"increasing productivity", etc? I won't use a car analogy here since we're actually talking about something car related. But $1M isn't cost savings when you pay in taxes rather than in ISP fees, and hiring more and more levels of security to watch people is not real security, nor efficient. If society has really reached the point where everyone has to be watched and no one can be trusted, then is that society worth saving, or is it just another failed experiment to be tossed into history's dust bin?

And by "free"

[Anonymous Coward]

They mean paid for by their own tax dollars.

I live south of ponca city

[trinity93]

I live south of Ponca City in Stillwater, OK. I can tell you that what ever mom and pop isp is in the area is probably gonna run the whole thing for them. There isn't a strong presence in the area by any large isps. It should also be noted that Ponca City is mostly Oil Refineries (Connaco / Philips ) and the area around there is sparsely populated. Were talking farmland and grazing grassland prairie. Most of the people around here do not have Internet access other than dial up. I pay a hefty fee to get 1 mb point to point 802.11 from a tower 3 miles away.

Re:Let the lawsuits begin ...

[AmberBlackCat]

They'll just have to offer upload and/or download speed that is faster than the free service and some people will be willing to pay the price for the higher speed... if the company actually delivers the speed they paid for...

Hacked in

[PPH]

...and all I've seen for hours is a static shot of Dennys.

Re:Security thinking

[afxgrin]

Dude, you can have a real-time police radar like in GTA4.

Each car is constantly transmitting ... a proximity detector should be rather easy to implement just based on signal strength alone.

Depending what frequency they're using, you can possibly use two antennas to triangulate a guess as to where the police car is relative to you.

The pain in the ass comes in when you start dealing with reflected signals in urban areas.

good, though I'm skeptical

[misanthrope101]

I still think the cops will have the ability to turn off the camera. One of my first jobs out of high school ('89) was in a company that made, among other things, circuit boards for cop-car cameras. If the lights were on, the camera was rolling. I'd been there a week when we had to change the product, because all of the police departments requested a kill switch for the camera. The first thing that popped out of my mouth was "why would they want to turn off the camera?" That little question was the cornerstone from which my entire political worldview was built, and I've yet to see a reason to change it. Cops want the power and freedom to be able to deal with suspects without leaving any evidence. It's not that I don't trust cops, but that I don't trust people with power. When those people take active steps to keep their exercise of power, their methods, secret, that sends up a whole bucket of red flags.

Re:good, though I'm skeptical

[DutchSter]

"why would they want to turn off the camera?"

There are lots of good reasons. What do you do when you're called to a traffic accident on the freeway and your car is blocking traffic for six hours with the lights on? Multiply that by the three or four cars that respond and note that our system records both the forward view out the windshield and the in-car (facing backseat) camera, that's a lot of footage of nothing. Yes, "storage is cheap" but when you consider an indefinite retention period and a discoverable chain of custody, it's very expensive relative to the budget of the average department.

I like the system in the cars my department has. It starts recording when you hit RECORD or active the overheads. When it starts recording, it automatically saves the 60 seconds immediately prior to the activation event. When you turn the lights off or hit STOP, it will keep recording for 45 seconds and then really stop. Thus for each activation event you're going to get a minimum of 1:45 recorded, including a full minute before you hit the lights. This look back feature really helps to put recordings in their proper context.

While you certainly can stop recording at any time, it's going to look really bad if you've always recorded your stops to completion and then a nasty allegation is made against you at the same event where you hit STOP right in the middle of the contact.

Incidentally our systems are tape-free. Each car has a WiFi antenna and it will automatically upload any new files when the car drives into one of several zones in the city. For example, there's a WiFi zone at the service garage pumps and in the station lot. However, the cameras also pipe a feed to the MDT which is connected to the network through a Verizon Air Card. Even though it's not streaming video, dispatch does have the ability to pull up real-time video from any car. It works well for our purposes, and probably a lot cheaper than the solution this town is looking at.