London Police To Wear Video Cameras In Pilot Project

An anonymous reader writes "The London Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) is reportedly engaging in a year-long pilot program to determine the benefits of its police force wearing video cameras during interactions with the public. 'The pilot will include a total of 500 cameras distributed across ten city boroughs.' London joins some major U.S. cities in this endeavor to improve the quality of policing through the use of wearable cameras. Privacy advocates argue, however, that police officers having these devices on their persons is not enough: 'the efficacy of police body-mounted cameras as a crime reduction and accountability tool hinges on enforcement of good policies and procedures—including something as basic as preventing officers from being able to deactivate the cameras at their own discretion.'"

Comments

Can't turn them off?

[mrxak]

You can (effectively) turn any camera off. Just "accidentally" point it the wrong way, or "accidentally" cover it up with something.

Re:Can't turn them off?

[canthusus]

You need to turn them on first...

From BBC article: "The force said officers taking part in the pilot must comply with guidelines about when cameras are to be used, but that they will not be permanently switched on."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-e...

Re:Can't turn them off?

[Threni]

And, as the police supporting the government during the Miner's Strike in the 1980's, you can simply leave it at home (in that case it was the unique ID they were supposed to wear in case - and of course this never happened - there was any accusation that they were involved in acts of illegality).

Re: Can't turn them off?

[ian_billyboy_morris]

To have IDs to wear, they would have to have been actual police instead of the military dressed in ill fitting police uniforms.

Re:Can't turn them off?

[JosKarith]

It's safer for everyone to have them always on - more to record what the officer's doing than anything else. After all if the police have nothing to hide they have nothing to fear...

Re:Can't turn them off?

[gnoshi]

One possible solution to the 'recording everything' issue is to encrypt things as they are recorded, and to require a representative from the police and a representative from a civil liberties organisation to provide keys in order to decrypt the video. That way, even constantly-recording video couldn't be used for wholesale surveillance (theoretically).

I imagine the intention is that video would only be viewed if a complaint was made or there was some contention about the events between a member of the public and the police so having a bit of an overhead for viewing the videos wouldn't be unreasonable (I don't think).

Re:Can't turn them off?

[gbjbaanb]

The video will be used as evidence in any case the police bring, hence the concept of switching it on just before going to deal with an incident.

Its not for general recording in case they spot something, or to protect the police in case of complaint - though obviously a compliant is a case in itself, and the video would be used as evidence then too.

So really- the camera will be off when the officer is just walking the beat, or sat in his car, and turned on only when he gets to the scene of an incident.

Re:Can't turn them off?

[Zocalo]

Being able to turn it off is fine; running a video camera continuously will eat batteries for the sake of recordings that will mostly be useless. The trick is to make sure that the camera is switched on when it is required, and it the heat of the moment I would imagine it would be very easy to genuinely forget to turn the thing on. Perhaps a very noticeable "recording light", similar to that on Google Glass, so that people interacting with the police will both be aware they are being recorded and be in a position to insist the interaction be recorded if it's currently turned off. The whole "my client alleges that he was abused during the arrest, you *do* have the recording, right?" issue should make sure the police want the cameras on as much as possible.

The real trick will be making sure the camera is switched on for spur of the moment stuff, like where an incident happens when the officer is actually present, so perhaps some kind of automatic activation based on feedback from accelerometers and similar activity detectors is also required. If the sensors detect that the officer has started to run, there is a jolt to the camera, or some other abnormal activity, then start recording until the camera is manually disabled again.

Re:Can't turn them off?

[Richard_at_work]

The 1980s miners strike was an illegal strike - Arthur Scargill did not hold the required ballot but instead just declared a strike, which was illegal under legislation then active - so the police had every right to "support the government".

Being non-identifiable was a safety issue with regard to the police, because it was shown on many occasions that the striking miners were not adverse to taking action against identified individuals and their families.

Re:Can't turn them off?

[Joce640k]

As noted, battery life would be a problem.

Writing to flash memory needs a surprising amount of electricity.

Re:Can't turn them off?

[Vermonter]

Include a law that makes any cop's testimony that is not backed up by there personal camera inadmissible in court.

Re:Can't turn them off?

[Joce640k]

Gee, if only there was a way to address that issue.

Like making them pay for repairs out of their wages, fining them for forgetting to wear their camera, etc.

But... I guess there isn't - because Mr. AC says so.

Re:Can't turn them off?

[Ash Vince]

Being able to turn it off is fine;

No, it is not. Part of the role of these camera should be to force the Police to be constantly held account for all their actions while on duty. We had a recent incident here in the news where a UK bunch of UK soldiers shot dead an injured Afghan insurgent, the only reason it was found out though was because they made a mess of turning off one of the squaddies body cams and recorded themselves committing murder. This clearly shows the people wearing these cannot be trusted with and on off switch, that way even if the cover the lens it will still be recording audio which may well be equally important.

This should be an additional reminder to the police that they are our public servants and we do not live in a police state where they are above the law, something they do occasional forget at the moment, particularly when dealing with demonstrations.

I understand that this may involve vast amounts of data storage but the average UK cop wears quite a lot of very expensive kit, adding a 1Tb 2.5in SSD should not be a problem from a cost of bulk perspective. They don't carry guns routinely here in the UK so I reckon a this would be lighter than that and could even be built into the back of the stab vests without a problem.

The real trick will be making sure the camera is switched on for spur of the moment stuff, like where an incident happens when the officer is actually present, so perhaps some kind of automatic activation based on feedback from accelerometers and similar activity detectors is also required. If the sensors detect that the officer has started to run, there is a jolt to the camera, or some other abnormal activity, then start recording until the camera is manually disabled again.

Even assuming that you do not have the ability to store the vast amount of data from an always recording camera, the UK police had a much better solution to the one you suggest that they issued to the city cops on bikes in London years ago: they had an always recording camera that kept a 2 or 3 minute buffer at all times so the officer could press a button and it dumped the previous 2 or 3 minutes footage from the buffer to permanent storage.

It might be worth something like that you suggest as a backup for if the cop is just randomly attacked or something and knocked out cold so he was unable to press the button, but I reckon it would be damn hard to get right so it didn't do this just because they sat down to heavily in the donut shop :)

It's also worth knowing that here the UK all cops have a panic button on their radios that screams "HELP" very quietly to every other cop in the area. They are trained to hit that at the drop of a hat if they think they need assistance so making that also do the recording thing at the same time should not be a problem.

Re:Can't turn them off?

[Ash Vince]

As noted, battery life would be a problem.

Writing to flash memory needs a surprising amount of electricity.

Not really. Things like GoPro are designed to be worn during sports and not interfere with the athletes mobility too much and they can still stretch to 3 or 4 hours recording. The average UK cop wears a ton of gear, including stab vests and god knows what else. Including a battery that meant they could easily give up to 6 or 7 hours recording for the addition of a few pounds should not be too bigger problem.

Re:Can't turn them off?

[Immerman]

How much battery do you really need though? Give an iPhone 20x the batteries and I bet you could record an officer's entire shift while also live-streaming the video to headquarters over the cellular network for backup, all in a package lighter than their pistol. Let the officer tag time blocks that might be evidence for a case for long-term retention (preemptively or retroactively), and keep everything else for a few weeks just in case anyone lodges a complaint, in which case the time in question likewise gets archived as evidence, as well as giving the complainant a copy to avoid any "accidental" archive deletions. And should even a single minute of video be missing from the "rolling buffer", well that's pretty clear evidence of tampering, with suspicion naturally falling heavily on the officer in question, though obviously the potential that someone else is trying to cause them problems should not be overlooked. And it should be pretty trivial to have an automated system continuously scan the archives for any evidence of tampering.

Hell, there's no reason we couldn't have the "vidphone" analyze the video in real time and continuously warn the officer should the video feed be disrupted - don't even give them the option of saying "I didn't notice the lens cap was on", or "the camera was broken" - they get alerted within moments of such a problem, and unless they're in a critical situation they better get their ass back to the station to get it replaced.

Re:Can't turn them off?

[Immerman]

No? How about that Occupy woman who was just sentenced to 7 years for elbowing a cop, but was prevented from rewinding or zooming out the video evidence to provide context to the jury?

preventing officers from being able to deactivate

[Chrisq]

I think it is unlikely that police would deactivate it without good reason. Where cameras have been used they have resulted in a large reduction in complaints against police . If they were widely used then switching them off would be seen as suspicious if a complaint was received.

There are some times when an officer might want to switch it off - for example when taking a toilet break or dealing with a vulnerable victim. Ideally switching on should be easy; a "one touch" operation, but switching off harder (hold two buttons for 10 seconds) so it cannot be done (or claimed to have been done) accidentally.

A step in the right direction

[GeekWithAKnife]

Perhaps an unpopular opinion but I think this is overall a good thing. It will require more discipline from police and help reduce the number of unjustified police action.

As the same time this will serve to catch criminals and is a precursor to automatic face recognition (like they have with car number plates)

Just remember the next time you see police, you're on camera.

Re: A step in the right direction

[Anonymous Coward]

If you live in a big city then that may be true, but most towns only have a few cameras covering the high street and it's unlikely you'll find them in villages. So for most of the UK it's not true and only hype/lies. You can keep your guns and we will "settle" for lower crime rates.

Re:A step in the right direction

[digitig]

Not actually true -- I live in London, and it's a five-minute walk from my house until I get on camera (basically, when I get to my local high street). The majority of the cameras you see reported in London (and the UK as a whole) are private security cameras inside shops. And the figures for the vast number of cameras in the UK are bogus -- they were based on counting the number of cameras on two busy shopping streets and multiplying by the total number of streets in the UK.

Turning camera off

[bradley13]

Turning a camera off - this should work the same as things like medical hotlines. For most hotlines, every call is recorded. You, as a patient, can request that the recording be turned off. Your request will be recorded, and then nothing more (at least, that's how it is supposed to work).

It should be the same for police officers: Sure, there are times they may need to turn the camera's off, but the reason should be clear and should itself be recorded. In the absence of a justification, the camera should always run.

Re:preventing officers from being able to deactiva

[gbjbaanb]

not really - "deems worth recording" isn't really the case.

Consider that police don't just walk around in the hope of finding bad things happening. They get sent places from the control centre, which in turn gets reports from the public via 999 calls or similar.

So the officers will be sent to deal with an incident, and will be expected to have switched their cameras on when they arrive - and its pretty easy to see if they didn't as they'll have no recording to match to the case incident.

Lets be realistic

[mice7943]

What if your boss told you "I want you to wear a camera that records EVERY SECOND while you are on the clock". Would you willingly accept? In the Police Dept. I do work for we are testing body cams but only with the ability to turn them off. Why? Due to Freedom of Information that video is available to the public upon request. Think of all the Youtube moments that would give rise to, from bathrooms to discussions about possible suspects. "Always on" cameras will never be the standard for body cams.

Re:preventing officers from being able to deactiva

[Richard_at_work]

Consider that police don't just walk around in the hope of finding bad things happening. They get sent places from the control centre, which in turn gets reports from the public via 999 calls or similar.

Aside from the fact that I regularly see plenty of uniformed police officers or PCSOs patrolling on foot around the city in which I live (Norwich, UK), try going to a population centres club district and see how heavy the police presence is then - here in Norwich, its not unusual to see 50 or more police on one stretch of road (Prince of Wales Road - the main nightclub district for the city) at the same time on a friday or saturday night. This is a road I can typically walk from one end to the other in less than 15 minutes.

So yes, the police do "just walk around in the hope of finding bad things happening", they just do it when appropriate.

Outbreak

[ThatsNotPudding]

"The London Met Police are reporting a sudden outbreak of vandals with tiny cans of spray paint, waggishly obscuring the copper cams at the worst possible moment."