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NYPD Starts Body Camera Pilot Program
An anonymous reader writes: In the wake of the Michael Brown shooting, calls for continuous recording of all police activity have become loud and strenuous. Now, one of the biggest police forces in the world will begin testing body cameras. The New York Police Department announced a pilot program to test the wearable cameras in high-crime districts. "[T]he participation of the New York department, with its 35,000 uniformed members and vast footprint on the country's policing policy, could permanently shift the balance in favor of the cameras, which both civil libertarians and many police chiefs have cited as a way to improve relations between citizens and law enforcement, particularly in heavily policed minority communities." The NYPD will be testing hardware from two manufacturers: Vievu and Taser International. While the 60-camera pilot program will get running for about $60,000, IT costs are expected to quickly outstrip that amount.
He has a couple of "meet the police" fairs, which I never saw before.
He has done everything right that Ferguson did wrong.
Now, the NYC police is not perfect, but at least they are actively attempting to do a better job, rather than attempting to prove how 'tough' they are.
The police have a hard job and the violent nature of their business tends to make certain foolish people think their job is to be as powerful as possible.
Glad to see that NYC is moving in the right direction.
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I am normally against increasing the number of cameras around and being under surveillance all the time. That said, I think NYC needs this to finnally start putting nails in the coffin of their stop and frisk program. Finally either one of two things HAS to happen: Either they collect massive amounts of evidence about how they have been stopping random people and trumping up charges, or.... the number of incidents must go down. Either way, its progress.
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There have been numerous instances where the cops have reported "malfunctioning" devices to avoid providing videos of situations which may have provided incriminating evidence. Just yesterday there was news about how a guy fell from a cop car into the water below while handcuffed and the police couldn't provide any video evidence! Maybe there should be strict penalties for losing video recordings as well.
When Eric Garner was choked to death by NYPD cops, cameraphones were rolling to capture the event. when they shot dead a man on 37th street for brandishing a knife, video was taken through bystanders. two years ago when a cop shot a homeless mans dog in East Village there was plenty of footage from bystanders. 11 months ago when the NYPD fired haphazardly into a crowd of people to control a single disorderly man, there was quite a bit of footage. when the NYPD dragged a nude grandmother from her apartment last month, plenty of cameraphones picked up the action.
Strapping a camera to a police officer at this point is moot. its designed to deflect attention from the routine use of disproportionate force against the citizens theyre charged with protecting. the actual issue the NYPD needs to deal with is either burned out or unfit for duty officers. Rookies fresh from Afghanistan and 10 year veterans with a calloused trigger finger need training, counseling, and support to help correct a systemic 'us vesus them' mentality. PTSD evaluations and regular, significant performance reviews should be a part of every officers career and something the police union should champion first. Strapping a go-pro to your departments beat-cops will result in either a glut of abuse evidence or no footage at all. Do not promote unfit officers to higher ranks either; the glut of stonewalled or ignored FOIA requests is evidence this is a bad practice.
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I would vastly prefer they make statements without access to the video. Seeing the video allows them to craft a story that fits what was recorded, and leave out or invent things that weren't picked up. If they don't know exactly what the cameras saw, they have to stick much closer to the truth.
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So, 0.171428571429% of the NYPD will have a body camera. And as nimbius said above, it's not a problem of monitoring, it's a problem of psychology and mindset. It seems police officers think of themselves as soldiers fighting enemy forces instead of officers serving and protecting the public.
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If you, the reader, has any experience with office politics or politics you know the popular underhanded technique of supporting something while undermining it.
Overhead, corruption, and incompetence are too often used as an excuse; many times it IS simply an underhanded attack by the "supporters." When NYPD spends $60,000 while saying it's going to cost more for only 60 cameras there are people involved who WANT it to be as expensive as possible of a deterrent. A high profile test group like NYPD will get cited all over the nation. Given how badly it is needed and demanded by the public, the costs are going to have to be high to deter widespread common use. Despite how actually cheap it would be - I bet their flash lights cost more... I had a cheap pen camera from china that was in that price range; it didn't last long or store much video but that was 6 years ago.
This is also where greedy capitalism comes in because that is all about how much the market is willing to pay--- and they've got to make sure this is a niche market so it doesn't have to compete with the extremely cheap mainstream market.
Sure, the way public budgets are managed is they take all projected costs (on the high side) then divide them out in ways that makes things like this seem like it's $10,000 a camera -- and one can sometimes spot the traitors because they'll focus on such false estimates.
Now it could be this is a totally honest move by NYPD and their high costs are because they are preparing for a full scale deployment with this just being a testing group. I'm just too cynical to take things at face value... wonder if any reporters exist who can hang around enough to pick up on such things anymore.
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I have unfortunately. There is a reason they are 'friends'.
The police, DA, judge ARE buddy buddy, they see and work with each other every day, its dumb to expect them not to trust each other ... but as soon as there is evidence rather than heresy they tend to back off and hang the cop out to dry. They protect the cop by default because 99 times out of 90, the 'victim' isn't a victim and is lying to deflect blame, get out of trouble or get some sort of money out of the police. Ferguson is a prime example of this. Multiple witnesses claiming the kid was shot in the back while running away with his hands up ... yet all the bullet wounds show that to be complete and utter bullshit ... all the wounds entered from the front, and the wounds in his arm made it clear they were not in the air when he was shot. This came from an autopsy done by someone hired by the victims mother, NOT the local government. THAT SHIT is why the judge/da believe the cop by default, and THAT is why cops get by with being thugs in some instances. That sort of shit is also why MANY of them ARE thugs, because they deal with the trashiest of trashy people most of the time. Thats their job, by definition.
These cameras will stop both sides from being such open and obvious racists. Well, no, it won't stop them, but it'll make it obvious for everyone else so we don't have riots in towns because a bunch of people wanted to cover each others asses and start shit because one guy was a different color than the other.
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