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Entering the Age of Body-Worn Police Cameras (arstechnica.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Cyrus Farivar writes about what's being called a new era in policing: the era of body-worn cameras. They're gaining a foothold in departments around the U.S. after a year of increasing tensions between police and citizens, caused by a series of high-profile shootings. Several research groups are busily evaluating how the cameras affect the way police do their jobs. Many officers welcome the technology — in addition to providing evidence backing up the use of force, it often helps with investigations, capturing details they may miss at the time of an incident. Farivar even goes through a couple of simulated encounters, while pretending to be a cop. The camera easily shows him everything he did wrong. In this way, police officers can also review encounters for training purposes. As more departments adopt them, it's looking like a win-win — police benefit, and the public gets access to some much-desired accountability.
A lot of the things that have happened recently in the U.S. could have been put to rest - one way or another - with first person video (and often multiple points of view).
Dash cams are great, and we should continue using them on EVERY car, but every officer should also have this kind of tech. There should also be punishments or reprimands if the device is turned off during a shift (malfunctions aside). The video should also be streamed to their vehicles and, perhaps, even relayed directly back to the station.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
in addition to providing evidence backing up the use of force
If a police officer needs to use force for anything other than a massive shoot-out with criminal gangs then either he's failing as a police officer or America is failing as a civilisation. There are countries in the world where the police don't routinely carry guns. American police have killed more people in the first few days of the year than most countries do annually.
Police should be attempting to find alternatives to the use of force to resolve situations rather than backing it up.
It's not just to curtail abuses of power either, but to protect good cops who take the appropriate actions but afterwards are second-guessed and told they acted inappropriately. Instead of just having "they say this/the officer says that", we can have a video released showing the entire encounter. That video can either exonerate the officer (stopping huge protests or calls for his arrest) or provide evidence if he did do something wrong. Either way, more transparency is a good thing for everyone involved.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
Some will (rightly) point out the privacy problems of police executing a no-knock raid and getting film of the housewife traipsing about in her birthday suit.
Some of them will then proceed to blame the cameras rather than the [unconstitutional] no-knock raids. It's important to be able to clearly analyze the entirely of these situations and realize that the cameras are pointing out yet another reason existing abuses need to be extinguished.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
And it is quite foolish to assume that cops want to actually be held accountable. Citizens need to get their own body cams or use apps like Bambuser and Cell 411 to notify each other when they encounter police. Theses types of apps that stream live video are especially necessary for activists and people involved in police encounters on a regular basis. Cops have erased video from citizens' devices in the past in order to destroy evidence, so it is not wise to assume their body cams are there for our protection.
Policing involves dealing with people who are motivated to lie
Yes: cops.
Being glib, but every time there's some problem with the police (over hear at any rate), they release a statement, then a week later, it turns out that the police lied to try to save their own skins.
SJW n. One who posts facts.