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.

Comments

Deblasio has been working hard

[gurps_npc]

To make sure that NYC is not Ferguson.

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.

Re:Deblasio has been working hard

[blackraven14250]

Of course it happens more frequently in NYC than elsewhere. It's a city with 8.4 million people, and 35,000 cops. The number of cops alone is larger than most towns. As an example, Ferguson, MO is only 21,000 people - there's 14,000 more cops alone in NYC, plus another 8.4 million people. Ferguson's entire population is literally a fucking rounding error relative to NYC's population.

Re:Deblasio has been working hard

[Firethorn]

I was going to chime in with pretty much the same deal - the NYPD has about 4k more people than Juneau, the capital of Alaska.

On the topic of the IT costs - 60 cameras and associated gear for $60k sounds about right for hardware cost alone. IT costs, if you're counting labor it's going to cost more than that to obtain a person with a background in security video and preferably justice in the first quarter alone. Then you start looking at storing all the video...

Given the task, I'd probably go with the netflix solution - lots of hard drives. Speed isn't really required since the video will only be pulled up if there's a question, and any video pulled up is more likely to be viewed again, so if the main array starts getting too slow, put a caching SSD in as necessary. There's going to be just too much video to justify SSD storage. Heck, off-line tapes would be an eventual step if the program expands.

On the topic of the CAMERAS. From various places such as Canada deploying them, I've heard that rates of both assault of police officers AND allegations of police misconduct, verified and unverified both dropped with the introduction of the cameras. To me at least, it seems that people tend to 'be on their best behavior' when they know they're being recorded. It's just that to keep the 'bad' cops* from turning them off or such you need to regularly review the records and punish improper shut downs and/or abuse of the equipment. Get it to the point that 'turned off the camera' counts less as lack of evidence and more evidence that you concealed/destroyed evidence.

*Many of whom I think belong in prison.

Re:Deblasio has been working hard

[cayenne8]

And for the Ferguson thing....let's take a wait and see attitude to see what the evidence presents as what really happened.

So far, the kid seems to possibly not be quite as innocent as originally depicted by the news and Al Sharpton types....

So, at this point, best to wait and see what the evidence and witnesses show as what happened that day.

Re:Deblasio has been working hard

[myth24601]

Money can be shunted away from buying SWAT gear toward the cameras.

Re:Deblasio has been working hard

[Krishnoid]

To make sure that NYC is not Ferguson.

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. ...

This initiative, in particular, is unusually progressive.

Re:Deblasio has been working hard

[Jane Q. Public]

It's certainly subjectively good. But I think it's also an important case for monitoring data wise to see the objective value of these things. My hope is that it's a net positive for every important metric, because an even slightly mixed bag of results could be enough to talk a lot of departments out of the idea.

I agree. That's why I think it's important that ground rules be firmly established.

For one thing, camera use must not be discretionary. It must be used every time there is an interaction with citizens. Because otherwise, there is too much potential for them to be used only when it is in their favor, and at other times, "Oops, I forgot to turn it on."

So if a camera is not turned on, or data is missing or shown to be deleted, a serious inquiry should be made to determine the actual reason why.

Why do I insist on this? Because I was once a victim of "missing" camera footage. I was told everything was being recorded, and the light on the camera was on. But when it came time to go to court and testify, they claimed there was no recording and it had "never existed".

Which was complete bullshit, of course.

Never mind what it was all about. It was a non-criminal charge and despite their bullshit stories I was not convicted. But "I forgot to turn it on" is too easy of a bullshit abuse of authority.

HA!

[TheCarp]

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.

And make video available when asked

[parallel_prankster]

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.

Re:And make video available when asked

[queazocotal]

18 petabytes a year isn't much.
Taking the assumption above that there are 5000 cameras working at once.
They are paid around $35/hour. This would make the wage bill 1.5 billion. Budget is $5B - so this seems order of magnitude right.
18 petabytes, on amazon redshifts '$1000/tbyear' is only $18M.
It seems quite plausible to get that to $5m without trying really hard.

Perhaps more important than storage, is access.
It should be possible to say 'show me a list of officers and car cameras within 1000 yards of 1 WTC between 8Am and 9am last friday'.

And yes - this implies the cameras must have GPS too.

its the cops, not the cameras.

[nimbius]

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.

Re:its the cops, not the cameras.

[disposable60]

Those cameraphones capture late-stage action and aftermath. The bodycams should capture the leadup and escalation that are really needed for an impartial/fair evaluation of the event. The events you cite do sound damning, but more footage would be helpful in evaluating the encounter. Knowing that footage exists helps, too - if only to slow the officer's reach for applied violence.

Y'know, if I've got that cellphone app that streams direct to the cloud for protection from abuse of power, can't the bodycams do the same thing? Local-only data is too vulnerable to loss or abuse.

Re:its the cops, not the cameras.

[Totenglocke]

I'm sure plenty of people here will be outraged by this, but the fastest way to fix issues with police brutality / police corruption is to ban police unions. The union always fights tooth and nail to keep bad officers from being fired and in the rare instance where a bad cop does lose their job, the union frequently tries to get them reinstated (like Officer Harless from Canton, OH who was fired after public outrage over video of him threatening to murder a man pulled over for a traffic stop).

Who gets access to the video?

[Dr. Manhattan]

Is it the police only? Defense lawyers with a subpoena? The public? There's this:

Officers would be permitted to view video they recorded before making statements in cases where their conduct was questioned

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.

Re:Who gets access to the video?

[Dr. Manhattan]

Why, have you never remembered an event wrong?

Sure I have. So what? If police misremember the event, is that somehow not relevant?

The behavior of everyone will be plain to see on the video

That was actually caught on video, that is. As I explicitly pointed out. I spoke - direct quote here - about the ability "to craft a story that fits what was recorded, and leave out or invent things that weren't picked up". What happened before, or just offscreen? Police are known to claim that someone was "reaching for a gun" - even when it didn't happen. But if the camera angle is bad, they will know they can claim that regardless of what they actually remember.

every lawyer knows the trick of picking out one detail someone got wrong and spinning that into proof that everything they say is a lie

But... but... if "The behavior of everyone will be plain to see on the video", how could a lawyer get away with that?

Frankly, I consider that a feature, not a bug, anyway. Eyewitness testimony really is ureliable. 'Bout time juries learned that applies to police too.

Re:Who gets access to the video?

[MobyDisk]

If the person sees video of the event, THEN gives their testimony, it largely defeated the purpose of the testimony. You want to know what they remember, tainted by their emotions and perceptions at the time. If the testimony is merely a narration of of the video it told you nothing new. And if one of the people is lying, you won't catch them if you give them a chance to see what the camera caught.

Perhaps they need to give testimony, then watch the video, then have the opportunity to revise it. But both should be admissible as evidence.

Pilot program alright

[ArcadeMan]

"The participation of the New York department, with its 35,000 uniformed members... While the 60-camera pilot program will get running for about $60,000, IT costs are expected to quickly outstrip that amount.

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.

Re:$10,000 per camera

[dj245]

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.

Hint- Industrial type equipment designed for daily rough use is expensive. I have a Motorola Pro5150 radio on my desk here which apparently costs about $400 (finding an actual price on this thing isn't easy) depending on which model it is. For a radio. But it is built like a tank, designed very well, and looks a lot like what police departments use. A wearable camera built like this radio costing $1000 each might be expensive, but it wouldn't be absurdly expensive.

Re:$10,000 per camera

[Firethorn]

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.

As somebody who once worked in government purchasing, $60k for 60 cameras didn't even make me blink at the expense, to the point that I was figuring it's equipment expenses alone, not including labor and such.

Let's start with the camera: $399
One mounted on a pair of glasses: $599
Miscellaneous:
Dock hardware (price not listed), a few different mounting options(price not listed), etc...

IT costs, well I figure the NYPD will want to set up it's own solution but the same company offers cloud storage specifically for the video with the necessary bells and whistles for chain of evidence/custody at evidence.com: Starts at $15/month, though I wouldn't see the NYPD going for less than the 'Pro' Package at $39/month per officer(because that includes redaction and agency reports), and it could go as high as $55.

That's $468/year for storage, putting us right at $1k for the glasses and storage** for 1 year, and we don't even have anybody administering the program yet!