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Cameras On Cops: Coming To a Town Near You

Posted by Soulskill on from the for-the-record dept.

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."

6 of 264 comments (clear)

  1. Won't do any good. by rahvin112 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:Won't do any good. by sjames · · Score: 5, Interesting

      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.

    2. Re:Won't do any good. by Jane+Q.+Public · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

    3. Re:Won't do any good. by TubeSteak · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

      --
      [Fuck Beta]
      o0t!
    4. Re:Won't do any good. by FuzzNugget · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

  2. Re:Broken camera by GerryGilmore · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.