Cameras On Cops: Coming To a Town Near You

An anonymous reader writes "The trend of police officers using body-mounted cameras is going nationwide. As we discussed last month, the NYPD is pondering the cameras, and the LAPD is actively testing them. A town in California (population ~100,000) has tested them with seeming success: incidents involving officers using force have dropped more than half, and citizen complaints have dropped almost 90%. '[C]ops are required to turn on their cameras in any confrontation with a suspect or citizen. The footage is uploaded to computers when they return to the station, and is typically retained for one to three months.' The town's success is even drawing interest from police departments in other countries. The ACLU likes the idea, but has problems with it in practice, so they're opposing the trend (PDF). They worry about privacy abuses, and they want citizens caught on camera to be allowed equal access to the footage."

Comments

Won't do any good.

[rahvin112]

Fact is as long as they can turn the cameras on or off and the video is in police custody this will do almost nothing to reduce police abuse. Either the camera will be off, the video will be "lost" or the recording device will be "broken". They want the video for convictions, but they will make damn sure the video is lost or the camera is off when they go to beat the shit out of some innocent person.

They should be required to wear camera, the cameras should record while they are on shift and video should be stored by an independent third party. Any missing footage should result in someone being fired.

Re:Won't do any good.

[NotDrWho]

Yeah, but it's great for when you need admissible footage of some criminal screaming "DICK JONES! I WORK FOR DICK JONES! HE OWNS THE COPS!"

Re:Won't do any good.

[mythosaz]

A lot of the good (from the police perspective) is that people don't act like jerks when they're clearly being filmed. Amazingly you're less likely to be a dick to cops when the camera is on you. In-car cameras turn on and off automatically when they have the lights and sirens on. Pull a guy over, and video gets shot - period. Wearables don't have that yet, but we'll get there.

I know that even mentioning this on /. gets you modded to oblivion, but the overwhelming majority of police are good people with a genuine desire to do good in the world -- and they're not out there looking to bust heads and turn off their cameras...especially in a world where every last person on a planet has their own camera and might catch it. There's obviously a good number of well documented "bad cop" cases, but there's a lot of cops, and bad cop stories make news, because it's a big violation of our trust.

The ACLU and others will fight for transparency with those videos - and the videos will keep cops and people safer.

Re:Won't do any good.

[aardvarkjoe]

Fact is as long as they can turn the cameras on or off and the video is in police custody this will do almost nothing to reduce police abuse. Either the camera will be off, the video will be "lost" or the recording device will be "broken". They want the video for convictions, but they will make damn sure the video is lost or the camera is off when they go to beat the shit out of some innocent person.

And yet, the actual evidence cited in the summary shows the exact opposite result of your theory.

Kind of funny, considering that you also posted a comment about how the anti-vaccination movement ignores real evidence that contradicts their views.

Re:Won't do any good.

[sjames]

It will never happen, but if a law was passed that when the video is unavailable, the citizen's report is presumed to be true and complete, I'll bet those cameras would suddenly get a lot more reliable.

Re:Won't do any good.

[aardvarkjoe]

Not only this -- I suspect that a large part of the 90% drop in complaints has to do with the fact that it makes it a lot harder for people to lie about their interaction with a police officer.

Re:Won't do any good.

[smooth wombat]

makes it a lot harder for people to lie about their interaction with a police officer.

I remember a case where a woman claimed she was beaten in the back of a patrol car by the two responding officers. Too bad for her there was an in-car camera pointed to the back seat which clearly showed her yelling and screaming, telling the cops to stop beating her, and she was the only one in the scene the whole time.

Re:Won't do any good.

[Jane Q. Public]

Not only this -- I suspect that a large part of the 90% drop in complaints has to do with the fact that it makes it a lot harder for people to lie about their interaction with a police officer.

I agree with this, BUT...

Having been a victim of what I definitely consider to be police abuse... in a situation in which video that was clearly being made somehow later "went missing", I also have to agree that this very much works both ways.

I agree with the ACLU, to the extent that I agree there should be independent oversight of these videos, and any "missing" video should be a cause for reprimand at the very LEAST.

Because I also happen to live in an area that has experienced many years of police "incidents" in which innocent people somehow end up injured or dead, but there was no independent investigation, and the internal "investigations" have almost invariably exonerated the policeman, even when no reasonable person looking at the same evidence would (or does) conclude that no wrong had been committed.

I agree that most police are probably fine people. I even have relatives who are or have been police. But the few who aren't good can cause a hell of a lot of damage, especially when there is more than one of them and they scratch each others' backs.

Re:Won't do any good.

[Copid]

This is the best part of it IMO. It doesn't matter whose fault the problems were. Was it the suspect misbehaving? Was it an abusive cop? Is it a liar trying to get an officer in trouble after the fact? On the whole, it's a mix of all of them, but we don't need to know the actual mix to appreciate the fact that it seems to be better for everybody.

It's very hard for police unions to fight against something that clearly reduces their physical danger and exposure to complaints. If they save face by pretending that the cameras are making the "bad guys" behave and that it wasn't a police problem in the first place, that's fine by me.

Re:Won't do any good.

[TubeSteak]

I know that even mentioning this on /. gets you modded to oblivion, but the overwhelming majority of police are good people with a genuine desire to do good in the world -- and they're not out there looking to bust heads and turn off their cameras...especially in a world where every last person on a planet has their own camera and might catch it. There's obviously a good number of well documented "bad cop" cases, but there's a lot of cops, and bad cop stories make news, because it's a big violation of our trust.

The problem isn't a small minority of bad cops, it's the alleged majority of good cops that don't immediately report and ostracize the bad cops.

You end up with a police culture that intentionally turns a blind eye to bad behavior.
That's not lawful good, no matter how you try and spin it.

Re:Won't do any good.

[jythie]

Yeah, but one side has the ability to mysteriously disappear the recordings while the other does not.

Re:Won't do any good.

[SecurityGuy]

IIRC, there's some evidence principle that if you should have records of a thing and I claim those records exonerate me, if you can't provide the records, then the court assumes they say what I claim they do. A principle like that would work well here. If you had or should have had camera footage of our interaction and I claim you punched me in the nose, if your recording is "lost" or your camera was "broken", then you punched me in the nose.

If ya don't like that, don't lose your recording and make sure your cameras work.

Re:Won't do any good.

[JackieBrown]

I was dating a female sheriff. She was laughing about how a police friend of hers would like to sneak E in his dates drinks and how one girl caught him and swapped drinks.

The fact that she found it funny, that all of his police friends knew he was date raping these women, really put a dent in my view of the police.

And the worst thing is, they would probably treat a civilian that did the same thing as a filthy monster.

Re:Won't do any good.

[mythosaz]

You reported your friend too, right ?

Re:Won't do any good.

[anagama]

A picture is worth a thousand words, but a jury will sleep through a negative inference instruction.

Re:Won't do any good.

[FuzzNugget]

the overwhelming majority of police are good people with a genuine desire to do good in the world

Any cop who consciously neglects to report a corrupt colleague or subordinate is equally corrupt.

Are you really suggesting the "overwhelming majority" of "good people" in uniform have no idea what their colleagues and subordinates are up to and are completely unaware of their corruption? Do you have idea how minutely detailed the paperwork is required to be and how glaringly obvious it is when details are "missing" or plainly false?

Has there ever been a single situation where one corrupt jackass is tazing some innocent law-abider for "non-compliance" and one of the five other cops standing around him said, "what the fuck are you doing? You can't just torture someone into submission!" ... of course not, they readily assist him by wrenching the victim's arms to put him/her in cuffs to be dragged into the cruiser (or worse).

Until we get rid of this "protect the brotherhood above all else" attitude that's heavily ingrained in police culture, corruption will continue to reign and continually worsen.

Re:Won't do any good.

[Jack Griffin]

There's obviously a good number of well documented "bad cop" cases, but there's a lot of cops, and bad cop stories make news, because it's a big violation of our trust.

I tend not to pay much attention the news, but my problem is not so much good cop/bad cop but stupid cop. Maybe I have a nostalgia goggles, but when I grew up, cops wore blue trousers and a blue shirt and shoes, like an office worker. You'd see them walking the beat and they were friendly and said hello. Now every time I see cops they have commando boots, cargo pants and a combat vest with guns and tasers and all sorts of GI Joe paraphernalia. They have visible tattoos and wrap around sunglasses and all like look like wannabe gangster thugs. It makes it hard for me to teach my kids to respect the law when the create that image for themselves.

Re:Broken camera

[GerryGilmore]

Look, there are always going to be abuses of ANY system, but anything that helps raise the bar of accountability is inherently a Good Thing(TM) so please stop the whining about how it's not totally perfect.

It's all fun and games until the NSA gets involved

[calzones]

Just wait, til the cops start uploading all their footage to a central server for the NSA to add to its collection so they can start cataloging every social interaction that cops see while on their beat. Someone who's face matches a potential subject of interest in a database will get flagged when they show up on the footage and the NSA will then start tracking them based on geolocation data in the footage.

Just try to do the same

[Opportunist]

Run around and point a video cam at a cop.

Or ... better don't.

Prediction

[letherial]

I predict that these 'cameras' will have a higher then normal fail rate.

Re:Broken camera

[lgw]

This! Every system can be defeated, but each new system that has to be defeated is good. Plus, for anything serious more than one cop will be there, and stories about "accidental damage to devices" become even less likely to fly when it coincidentally affects all 6 officers who responded to the same incident, and no one else that day.

Incidents dropped by 50%, I wonder why?

[Jaime2]

So, when cops have cameras, reported incidents of police using force dropped by half. I believe that means that 50% of uses of force were unwarranted or unnecessary, otherwise why would they have stopped?

This sound like pretty clear evidence that police think they can get away with bending the law as long as no one (except the victim) sees them.

Re:Incidents dropped by 50%, I wonder why?

[Copid]

Either that or people see cameras on them and are less likely to run or resist arrest. But most likely a mixture of the two. I'm sure there's a lot of misbehavior on both sides when the cameras are off. It looks like the cameras are a big win for everybody.

Re:Incidents dropped by 50%, I wonder why?

[Megane]

You forgot D) it's possible that some or many of the reports of excessive force were bullshit, and this weeds out false accusations.

The ACLU really is obstructionist, aren't they?

[dave562]

I used to think that the ACLU was a force for good, and they might be. But they do not know when to quit, or compromise on anything. Here we are finally getting accountability for law enforcement, and now they want to stop the program?

I wonder if anyone told them that nothing is perfect and life is all about compromises.

Re:The ACLU really is obstructionist, aren't they?

[Frobnicator]

I used to think that the ACLU was a force for good, and they might be. But they do not know when to quit, or compromise on anything. Here we are finally getting accountability for law enforcement, and now they want to stop the program?

Obviously you didn't RTFA.

The ACLU complaint was that while the law requires LEOs to carry the cameras, it does not mandate that they actually record anything, it does not mandate that the recordings be made available to the citizens who were arrested, interviewed, or interacted with, and it doesn't specify a data retention policy.

The ACLU agreed that cameras are good. They want mandatory recordings rather than optional recordings. They want the complete, unedited recording to be available to the citizens involved. And they want a data retention policy so officers cannot delete the material the same day, nor can they keep it indefinitely.

The ACLU's 2-page comment (see the article) cited specific cases where these were problems. One had multiple officers turn cameras off when a citizen didn't cooperate, then they turned the cameras back on to reveal a citizen who was badly injured, with the official report being they had injured themselves while resisting arrest. Also it cites accounts where officers clearly edited footage by removing potentially incriminating bits, and of officers deleting the recordings the same day rather than filing them as part of the reports of their associated incidents.

Re:Does it record sound?

[amicusNYCL]

If I really want to tell the cops to shut off all of their cameras, I'm sure they will be happy to oblige.

Nonsense

[Uberbah]

A lot of the good (from the police perspective) is that people don't act like jerks when they're clearly being filmed.

Everyone knows that cops have had video cameras mounted in their cars, for decades. Neat how you skipped the parts of the summary talking about how police violence and complaints have dropped dramatically where these cameras have been used.

Almost like it's the cops who are the real jerks here. Interesting.

but the overwhelming majority of police are good people with a genuine desire to do good in the world -- and they're not out there looking to bust heads and turn off their cameras...especially in a world where every last person on a planet has their own camera and might catch it

The problem with the "aww, it's just a few bad apples" canard is that one bad one rots the whole barrel. When all your "good cops" are willing to commit perjury to cover up for the "bad apples", there are no good cops.

fascist apologist

[Uberbah]

I suspect you should have a good chat with Kelly Thomas and revise your storyline. Or read up on LEO departments stealing millions from people not convicted of any crime via "asset forfeiture". Or how hundreds of thousands of mostly black and brown men are stopped in NYC without probable suspicion under "stop and frisk".

Re:fascist apologist

[Uberbah]

Who do you guys even think you're kidding here? When was the last time you heard of a LEO held in contempt of court for perjury or falsifying evidence, much less charged by a DA, much less convicted? The cops that murdered Kelly Thomas by bashing his head in as he screamed for help from his father were just let off scott free. You have to have something as egregious as a cop shooting a handcuffed man lying facedown on the pavement, on fucking video, before they serve time. And even then, they serve less time than a football player who shot himself in the leg.

So again, who do you even think you're kidding here, Slick? Try and tell us with a straight face that if you give a group of people a huge amount of authority, with next to zero accountability, that their authority wont be abused on a constant basis.

Re:Broken camera

[Anonymous Coward]

If you can't tell the difference between a cane and a rifle from a distance of thirty feet, you have no business being a police officer.
( Officer Tip: The entire non-law enforcement population is NOT your God Damned enemy. Quit treating us like we are unless you truly want us to go down that path. . . . )

Had the guy been dressed like a ninja, cartwheeled out of the truck cab, tossed a few smoke bombs and filled the air with throwing stars, and amazing acrobatics, then fine. Shoot him.

Elderly gentleman who can barely move without a cane ? Really ? Holy shit, imagine if he had pulled something REALLY EVIL from the truck. . . . like a ( that can't be a walker, it must be a QUAD ROCKET LAUNCHER ) what then ? Going to call in a swat team ? Sick the canine on him ? Call in air support ? :|

Thought: If YOU or I had done this we would be rotting in jail for eternity. Regardless of what you THOUGHT it looked like, the fact of the matter is: YOU WERE WRONG and someone was seriously injured because of your piss poor observation skills. Go ahead, try it out. Randomly walk down the street and open fire on anyone carrying anything that you might perceive to be a gun and watch what happens.

At the very least the officer should be fired and his peace officer certificate revoked. At the very LEAST.

Re:Broken camera

[Frobnicator]

But the footage can be lost and blamed on an "off" camera.

That is exactly what the ACLU objected to.

The proposed bill mandated that police carried them, but left optional what is recorded, did not require access by citizens, and did not specify a data retention policy. The ACLU objection (see the actual story) cited cases where police turned off the cameras during the (alleged) abuses, sometimes multiple cops turning off each others cameras, and where judges ruled in favor of the cops when the evidence was missing. Data could also be deleted the same day for no reason other than a personal judgement call.

The bill was a good start, but needs mandatory recording requirements, mandatory citizen access, and mandatory data retention policies.