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Montreal Union Wants a Camera On Every Policeman's Uniform
An anonymous reader writes "The Montreal Policemen's Brotherhood is proposing that officers be equipped with uniform-mounted cameras that can be used to record various interactions. The union says in other jurisdictions where police officers are equipped with point-of-view cameras, the use of force by officers and assaults on officers drops by as much as 60%. One system is currently being tested in Edmonton, Alberta."
...facing which way?
They only record in French.
rewriting history since 2109
The system turns itself off when the taser comes out of its holster.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
That camera must be one powerful weapon if it has caused such a great reduction in "assaults on officers." I don't suppose it could be that they were making shit up, and now find it more difficult to do so with video evidence? Could this be extrapolated to suggest that a majority of "resisting arrest" charges are entirely bogus?
Started about a year ago. They are turned on when the shift starts and can't be turned off until the shift has ended.
Mounted on a hat above the right ear and they have sound.
Indiana, by the way.
SJWs are the new boogeyman. -Me
As long as there are penalties for 'losing' key footage. Whether by the officer or higher in the chain of command. Otherwise it becomes a selective evidence tool that is easily biased.
Silence is a state of mime.
I'm all for it. Make sure it can't be turned off. And "losing it" should trigger an automatic suspension.
In the two recent Canadian Police Brutality events, the police DID have cameras on their uniforms.
They turned them off until after the attack was over.
On every *person*, car, dog, street corner, tv, even a loaf of bread.
I asked my lawyer "they recorded everything, right? Their dashcam had to have recorded everything, right? They have audio recorders on their uniform right? I saw the sign that asked them to turn off their recording when I went into booking."
"No, AC, they did not, or at least, what they claim is no recordings."
"But everything they said is a lie."
"You're lucky they didn't claim you attacked them, just that you were hostile."
I have not been able to find a job because this event comes up. I was divorced as a result. The glorious republic of Canada.
From the linked to news item: -
"They are not on all the time, but must be activated and police have to tell the person they are dealing with that they are being videotaped."
So not worth a damn to spot misuse of police powers then.
I put that little rule down to the Canadian sense of Fair play.
Cop: Now sir, before I beat you senseless do you have an objection to being videotaped, its purely to be used for training purposes Ah!
OR
La Police: Maintenant, monsieur, avant que je vous battre insensé avez-vous une objection à être filmé, son purement à être utilisé à des fins de formation, ah!
it was 'always on' of course.
There will be still some ability for the officer to turn it off however - think about what happens when they go to the bathroom for example. I'm not sure they'd be too keen on having that filmed.
For best use case the camera would send the video footage over the phone network in real-time, along with a GPS and time-stamp information in every frame.
That there almost guarantees a clean police force on the beat.
FTA, we already have that where I live in the USA.
No false accusations.
And much less likely to wander off into bad behavior.
I personally think policemen should put a camera on when they put on the uniform and keep it on until they take it off.
We also need to recognize that they are human and have more training and suspensions instead of firings for emotional failures as a balance against full time surveillance.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
It seems like these cameras might produce a lot of accidental porn.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
That's what the summary says.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
Actually, what I usually hear is people explaining how much better Canada is. Don't take that wrong. But, seriously, that's gist of the vast majority of comments I read from Canadians.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
All footage is automatically and continually uploaded to servers located in a branch of government with a vested interest in preservation of the footage.
There is no power switch, it is always on, self contained and hardened against direct access without custom, specialized tools.
Any time footage is "missing", the officer is automatically suspended with pay pending an investigation. If it's determined to be a genuine malfunction, the officer can resume work. If it can be reasonably demonstrated, however, that the officer deliberately disabled, tampered with or obstructed the device, they should be forced to pay back any wages received during the suspension and charged for tampering with evidence.
But, really, who am I kidding... in reality, this will be no different than dash cams in every cruiser. Any time there is a hint of officer abuse or brutality, the footage will be mysteriously and conveniently "unavailable", there will be no real oversight to the whereabouts and, "yes, your honor, the camera just happened to malfunction during the exact time of the brutality accusations against me," will be accepted by the courts.
Until we have real oversight by people who genuinely have the public interest in mind over their own, this won't change anything.
the use of force by officers and assaults on officers drops by as much as 60%
Uh huh, and do you know why that is? That's because if you annoy a cop, you get charged with "assault on a police officer" even if you didn't touch them. With a video recorder serving as a witness, the cops know they can't engage in what is commonly called "testilying."
In my city, the charges cops love to slap anyone they don't like with include AOAPO and "disturbing the peace" - the latter of which basically consists of "a crowd gathered because of you."
I knew someone - a sub-5-foot-tall, sub-100-lb girl - whose birthday party was ended by cops because it was too loud. Fair enough. She provides her information to one cop, and then a second cop comes in and asks her for her personal information again a few minutes later. She asks him why - she just gave it to the other cop. He refuses to say why, and she asks him again why he can't get the information from the other cop.
Next thing she remembers, her head is slammed on the countertop and she's in cuffs. Spent the night in jail, and the next day in court answering charges including disorderly conduct, resisting arrest, and assault on a police officer.
The judge looks at her, then looks at the cop, who's a burly nearly-6-foot-tall dude, then looks at the charges and says "Seriously? SHE resisted arrest and assaulted YOU? You've got to be kidding me. Dismissed."
Wasted thousands of dollars in legal fees, because some dickhead cop broke the law and filed false charges, lied in his report, and lied in court.
Please help metamoderate.
The police will just turn them off, cover them. missing footage etc.
As somebody who frequently works with law enforcement, they get blamed for a lot of ridiculous (and completely false) stuff - I've seen officers get accused of assaults (and then exonerated when surveillance footage from a building shows they didn't even touch the suspect). A lot of our officers just recently got uniform-mounted cameras and the footage always shows that the complaints are completely unfounded.
Dominion of Canada... constitutional monarchy.
But I expect he was, badly, trying to make a comparison to the Democratic Peoples' Republic of Korea or some such. What really tips his hand that he's not actually a Canadian is that the question that shows up on job applications in this country is "have you ever been convicted of an offense for which a pardon has not been granted." It's ridiculously easy to get a pardon in this country, an issue which has been the subject of national-level debate in parliament. If he's too stupid to fill out a form and wait 6-8 weeks for his pardon to come through, then he deserves to be flipping burgers, which is a job where they don't even ask that question.
Simply having been accused and acquitted of a crime is *not* grounds for refusing to hire somebody and doesn't even show up on a normal background check. There's absolutely no reason to mention it during the hiring process.
Besides which, most employers won't actually deny you a job if you answer "yes" to that question. They just want to know about it going into it. We had to let somebody go a few months ago because he'd lied and put "no" after having been convicted of fraud, and the irony is that if he had simply said "yes", it wouldn't have affected his eligibility for the job. I guess it's not fraud if you're honest about it. ;)
The union says in other jurisdictions where police officers are equipped with point-of-view cameras, the use of force by officers and assaults on officers drops by as much as 60%.
That's a meaningless "statistic", because it's actually two statistics combined. How much did "the use of force by officers" drop by and how much did "assaults on officers" drop by? Considering how much the police love to be monitored when on duty, I wouldn't trust any proposal like this coming from a police union.
They will be sure to turn the camera off before assaulting you.
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
I'm sorry that your significant other was silly enough not to be able to deal with what the life has served you both. I can't understand such relationships. If you're not in "it" together, then what's the point? Lower taxes?
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
Have gnu, will travel.
Spent the night in jail, and the next day in court answering charges including disorderly conduct, resisting arrest, and assault on a police officer.
Something very similar happened to me. The cop even charged me with assault on a police officer with a deadly weapon. A much more serious charge. A felony which could have resulted in many years in prison. Because beating me nearly to death just wasn't sufficient apparently. That deadly weapon charge mysteriously vanished when I appeared in court.
The judge looks at her, then looks at the cop, who's a burly nearly-6-foot-tall dude, then looks at the charges and says "Seriously? SHE resisted arrest and assaulted YOU? You've got to be kidding me. Dismissed."
Unfortunately, being male, I didn't get any such leniency from the judge and now I have "assault and battery on a police officer" on my record. In addition to every other contempt of cop charge the asshole could think of. I wasn't found guilty. I pleaded something similar to "no contest" because the plea bargain offer had no jail time. Just probation and a small fine. I paid thousands in legal fees and have lingering memory problems as a result of the beating I received.
Since my contact with the police was due to a roadblock, I plan to either move to one of the few states where such things are illegal or leave the country entirely for a place where the police are not so violent and dangerous.
If only the cop who beat me had been forced to wear a camera which was required to be on for any of the common contempt of cop charges to be allowed I would have been saved at least from the false charges. I would probably still have been severely injured or even killed but that would have been the end of it.
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
There is no citation or evidence provided that this would be how the system works. If you believe that is something the police might want, fine, but that is different than claiming it is.
Something isn't "insightful" because you want to agree with it.
So basically you're saying its a typical metro area? And compared to almost all the other metro areas in north america, its dirty cheap, liberal, well maintained and green. Aside a few US states, everywhere has to report $$$ to two levels of governments and the way the credit agencies operate in Canada is far better than in the US.
Wake me up when you can't buy a decent 2 bedroom for 1 million+++ anymore.
if you read the plan, the push for the cameras is being accompanied by pushing a new law that would make evidence from the cameras inadmissible in cases AGAINST the cops, but admissible without question in cases against YOU (i.e. it can't be thrown out of court for any reason).
Do you have a link for that? I didn't see it in any of TFA's.
Their hats could take off as drones too!
Basically a law saying that if a police officer is supposed to have a camera running on something, and that footage is unavailable for whatever reason, then their testimony is excluded. So if they are giving testimony about a time when they don't have a camera and aren't supposed to, like they are off duty, then their testimony is treated like the testimony of any other person. However if they were supposed to have a camera at the time and the footage is gone, well then they can't offer any testimony as to what happened during that time.
It would give strong incentive to keep them on and running, and make sure the footage is kept. Otherwise, cases would get lost due to lack of evidence.
What if you knew here and /
Found her dead on the ground ?
-- Neil Young
They actually stopped giving pardons and replaced it with some other Harper program that still allows people to see that you have been convicted of something. The old process took 6 months to a year to complete btw, and cost a few hundred. The new one cost over $700. This current government would rather have people unable to rejoin society after a criminal conviction as they have strong ties to US jail profiteers and are planning to privatize Canadian prisons as well. (I AM Canadian and in government)
Yes, you're now in the strange and wonderful universe where the conservative media's lies about unions aren't true.
I'd agree with this on three conditions:
What I usually hear is people explaining how much better *place* is. Don't take that wrong. But, seriously, that's gist of the vast majority of comments I read from *place*ians.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
The union says in other jurisdictions where police officers are equipped with point-of-view cameras, the use of force by officers and assaults on officers drops by as much as 60%.
This sort of tells us what we already knew. That basically most of the force police use already is applied illegally applied or over-applied. The camera is forcing police to act more ethically, which reduces their use of force, but also hints that they widely act unethically at present. It isn't unique to Canada.
Big apple, new Yorik, undig it, something's unrotting in Edenmark.
I would really like a camera that starts recording when I experience something shocking or similar. I guess it's a way to detect if we go into some kind of temporary shock.
...or are they going to stop washing their uniforms ?!?
I think this should be required on all cops in the US as well. It would help protect both the police and citizens.
http://interserver.net/
Lets get this in the US.
We the People: Force all Law enforcement officers to wear unform embedded cameras
I'm sure anti-spam protection will slaughter the link, so just search for it on We The People.
For the non-USAians here, what do you mean? Are jurors not allowed to see the words "jury nullification", or what?
How inappropriate to call this planet Earth, when clearly it is Ocean.
This indicates 60% of "assaulting an officer" charges are falsified and 40% uses of force are unnecessary. Who watches the watchmen indeed.
Yes, I did notice it. I'm not sure if you are familiar with police practices, but "assault on an officer" is often used as a blanket crime by police to arrest people in any situation where the police use force, especially if they use improper or excessive force. It is completely logical to me that both would drop by 60% because very often they are the same thing.
That is, often a police officer will aggress against a person for whatever reason and then later claim that the person they aggressed against was the agressor. It basically allows an officer to arrest or even beat anyone up for anything and is a much more common tactic than you think. When the citizen gets to court, do you think a judge or jury will believe the police officer or the citizen?
We hear a lot about the minority of cases where a bystander taped the scene and the police did something wrong, but you don't hear about the majority where nobody was there to video tape it.
Big apple, new Yorik, undig it, something's unrotting in Edenmark.
doesn't it.
notice how the officer is now standing at a 90 degree angle to the person he is talking with? Seems they figured out how to subvert that countermeasure pretty quickly. Also an officer will never approach your vehicle door head-on either, they always walk along the side of your car and poke there head around to corner into your window - they are trained to do it this way because it is safer. The only thing this would really be useful for is when pursuing a fleeing suspect
As a counterpoint, I've seen quite a few cases where somebody ends up being charged with 'assaulting an officer' more or less for arguing with him.
I've seen videos of it. Sure, the person is normally being a douche while running his mouth a mile a minute and is sometimes failing to take action to officer directions that require active movement like 'Turn around', 'get on your knees', etc... But does failing to produce ID count as assaulting a police officer? Threatening a lawsuit? Complaining that the stop is illegal?
These charges normally end up dropped, but my point would be that if officers think they can get away with charges like this when the interaction is being caught on their car's camera, what are they doing when they don't think they're being video taped?
Maybe, knowing that they're being recorded, the officers are actually practicing their de-escalation techniques and they're working.
I don't read AC A human right
I've come to believe that you don't so much have good or bad police officers. What you have is good or bad police DEPARTMENTS. The difference in local police culture can be tremendous.
I'll try to boil it down a bit: Basically, take a brand new cop. They run the range of idealistic and great to power tripping and corrupt. Good and Bad, but most are in the middle. Then they get to their first department. A good department will show the bad eggs the door rather quickly, provide good role models to the middle run recruits, making them good officers. A bad department will often do much the opposite - driving the idealistic good officers away(remember the intelligence test where you wouldn't be hired if you scored too high?), providing shelter(often at great expense in lawsuits!) to the bad ones, and showing the middle ground recruits bad habits and procedures that they pick up, becoming worse than when they were recruited.
This is why you can have comparable districts with OOMs worth of difference in lawsuits, corruption trials, etc... But there's a huge difference between a department with half a dozen lawsuits a year, most of which end up dropped, and a department that's paying millions of taxpayer dollars in a dozen settled wrongful death lawsuits every year. Oh, and has a case in the supreme court for possibly unconstitutional discriminatory practices.
I've seen the difference in the military with how the supervisors are.
I don't read AC A human right
I 2nd the motion and move for a vote.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
Personally I think this is the inevitable future for law enforcement, and I couldn't be happier about it. Absolutely everyone benefits from a complete A/V record of an officers activity. Except bad cops and actual criminals, but I don't really feel for them.
Your post reminded me of something funny.
Except for limited sections of 1 state, prostitution is illegal in the USA. IE you cannot legally pay or receive money for sex.
However, producing pornography IS legal.
Set up a shell business where you pay to have sex ON TAPE, then never release the footage (Amateur/not good enough/whatever), and you're still good to go.
Just remember to keep the videos, logs, maybe even spend some money on occasion 'editing' said footage. Keep logs of EVERYTHING.
Oh, and consult a lawyer in your local are beforehand, I'm not a lawyer, and laws vary. It shouldn't need to be said, but while I object to anti-prostitution laws as they are now, if you're going to use a 'we're making legal porn' excuse, you'd better be able to convince a jury that you ARE in the business, even if you aren't particularly successful.
I don't read AC A human right
I wasn't found guilty. I pleaded something similar to "no contest" because the plea bargain offer had no jail time.
Guess what, you have that on the record because "no contest" is effectively the same as pleading guilty. As a result, you may find moving to another country incredibly difficult. Heck, even Canada will demand thousands in fees and professional document creation(IE lawyers filling out forms) before they'll let you in.
Of course, I hate how our current system allows police and prosecutors to effectively punish people without ever finding them guilty of anything. Legal fees alone can ruin people.
I don't read AC A human right
i dont get it. wrong thread?
For the non-USAians here, what do you mean? Are jurors not allowed to see the words "jury nullification", or what?
Defense lawyers aren't allowed to say them, and any juror who demonstrates knowledge of the concept during interviews will be rejected by the prosecution.
I used to dread a jury summons. Still do, because last time I got one they just wasted my time and cancelled the selection. But I'll do my best to appear to be a normal dumb sonofabitch next time I get a summons, so I can actually be on a jury.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
To be fair when ever some one makes a complaint against the police, the police ussally follow it with a resisting arrest or assulting a police officer charge. It confuses the system enough that the police officer will always get let off.
Rocket Surgeon.
You tell me, what thread had the "I need to compensate" thread in it for you to mispost from?
I understand the things you described fine, and I'm also aware of some of the history that brought us to the current position. I just question whether the assumptions that led to that position a very long time ago are still relevant today, and therefore whether protecting those "rights" is still in the interests of justice.
Also, conflating completely different things (right to remain silent vs. right to informed legal counsel, for example) is a straw man, and a cheap shot that someone you disagree with "probably should not be participating in this discussion" is not an argument.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
right to remain silent is a subset of right to not be forced to self incriminate which is amendment 5. right to a lawyer is a subset of due process which is also in the bill of rights. GP is right, the whole reason the bill of rights was made in the first place because of the english "bill of non-rights"
And how many centuries ago was that?
There are a lot of things that weren't protected by other means in those days that would probably bring down governments if you tried to overturn them today, as for example women and anyone who isn't white can affirm.
So once more, I repeat the same fundamental question: How is protecting these "rights" in the interests of justice today?
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
omg you're totally correct. the era of bad govt is over. now that govt is our friend and is looking out for us we don't need to worry about pesky "rights." you first, my friend.
Please stop putting words under my fingertips. I never said anything about governments never being bad, or about not protecting important rights. I just asked how protecting the specific "rights" we're talking about is in the interests of justice in modern society. And I notice that you still haven't even attempted to answer that question, and nor has anyone else in this thread.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
As a member of junkies against crime I love it when the cops get bashed for inflicting their stupid drug laws on people or picking on the homeless which is their main job ithis society if enought of them get hurt maybe the government will get the message that their denial of the right to political office to addicts has stopped ever being raised .that is we addicts have human rights in theory but in practise we are slaves to be exploited to death.
it's the job of police and prosecutors to get convictions, and they use every tool at their disposal to do so. the purpose of the miranda rights is to draw a bright line to say, you can't bully and manipulate. the defendant should be able to plan his own defense (defence as you say) and so should be able to stay silent until consulting with an attorney.
if you've ever been hauled away in handcuffs late at night (DUI say or something similar) you know how scary and intimidating it is. Without those rights being enumerated to you, you'd probably say and admit to anything
that's why the adversarial justice system works so well!
it's the job of police and prosecutors to get convictions, and they use every tool at their disposal to do so.
Once again that's a rather US-centric approach. To give a contrasting example again from here in the UK, there are plenty of times that the CPS (our public prosecution service) decide not to go ahead with a prosecution because they decide that it's not in the public interest.
the defendant should be able to plan his own defense (defence as you say) and so should be able to stay silent until consulting with an attorney.
Right, so as long as the questioning is taking place under caution and legal counsel is present, what's the problem?
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Once again that's a rather US-centric approach. To give a contrasting example again from here in the UK, there are plenty of times that the CPS (our public prosecution service) decide not to go ahead with a prosecution because they decide that it's not in the public interest.
In the US it's the prosecutor's job to prosecute and the judge's job to make decisions on mitgating circumstances. it's a lot cleaner this way.
Right, so as long as the questioning is taking place under caution and legal counsel is present, what's the problem?
duh, this is the purpose of miranda rights, to make sure that this happens! without the rights do you think police would wait for a defense lawyer to arrive?
duh, this is the purpose of miranda rights, to make sure that this happens! without the rights do you think police would wait for a defense lawyer to arrive?
Yes, I think that's exactly what happens here in the UK, which is where we're talking about in this thread if you recall.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
the difference is that you think the gov't is nice and will do these things regardless, where I think the govt is nasty and will take all they can, except for what is protected by rights. who is correct? spoiler alert: me.
Stop moving the goalposts. We were talking specifically about the UK's closest equivalent to US Miranda rights. The question was why the right to remain silent, even when being formally questioned with legal representation present, should be protected, and how allowing someone under those conditions to change their story in court later and suddenly remember things convenient to their defence is actually in the interests of justice.
You still haven't given anything resembling an actual argument in support of that position. All you're posting is fear-mongering about some hypothetical bogeymen, and a few allegations that are disproved every day by the way our system actually works, for real, in practice, here in the UK. I think you don't have any logical or evidence-based argument to make, and you're just defending a legal right that the US singles out for protection because of dogma.
If you have anything with any real substance, feel free to post it and maybe I'll reply again, but otherwise this thread doesn't seem to be going anywhere.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
your words make no sense. literally, it's like you're speaking a language other than english. you have fundamentally not grasped the difference between 'changing your story' and staying silent. they're not the same! if you stay silent in the interview room, that doesn't mean you're 'changing your story' later in court.
maybe there's a fundamental misunderstanding here? maybe you think "staying silent" means answering no to every question. in fact it means, I'm not going to provide a response to that question.
,br>so, you agree with me now. hopefully this clears it up.