Should police have cameras recording their work at all times?
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Re:...like dash cams. (Score:4, Informative)
This works.
Dashcam video clears NJ man [7online.com]:
The tale of the police dashcam video has now helped clear a Bloomfield, New Jersey man who faced a multitude of criminal charges, including eluding police and assault.
Re:Been trialled in Queensland - Australia (Score:5, Informative)
Replying to myself.
Turns out wearing a camera is an optional piece of equipment for Queensland Police. They are not mandated but any officer can choose to wear one. The guideline is apparently 1 officer in a group should be wearing one when likely to encounter situations where people are likely to be under the influence. So they tend to be worn but the city cbd officers on night patrol through the entertainment areas.
Re:"Accidentally" (Score:5, Informative)
Though I can see your point, there are becoming more incidences either in fact or just in reporting of police officers behaving badly and lying to cover it up. I'm referring in general, not any specific case at the moment. One police department that has the mandatory cameras for officers and the police chief actually enforces it had a huge drop (88%) in citizen complaints and incidents where violence was used (60%). [nytimes.com] This makes a iron clad case for police cameras.
Plus sadly, this is where Google is correct. Privacy is dead. Any illusion of privacy we still have is just that, and illusion.
Re:"Accidentally" (Score:2, Informative)
While Texas is the most blatant example it is far from the only one, officers in Hollywood Florida willfully altered footage sent to a defense attorney to remove a plot by officers to frame a woman for vehicular assault of a police officer, no one was charged. CCTV operators in Denver Colorado willfully shifted a CCTV camera away from a police beating, no one charged. Half of the vehicle camera/mic equipment of the LAPD (installed BECAUSE of abuse) was found to be inoperable due to officer sabotage, no one charged. I could go on for quite some time but I trust my point is made.
Re:...like dash cams. (Score:3, Informative)
if the potential suspect decides to sue for any kind of wrongdoing on the part of the police officer
The Supreme Court recently ruled that cities/counties can't be held financially liable for rights violations by their officers, no matter how egregious. And the officers themselves hold a professional immunity while on duty, so they already can't be individually sued.
Re:"Accidentally" (Score:5, Informative)
As someone who has worked for four years in public safety software (particularly police dispatching, mobile computing, and communications), I can tell you that the cops (as any sane person) aren't fond of the idea of being put under a microscope. They have justifiable fears that the technology will be used in unfair ways against them.
For instance, we were going to be logging all messages. There was a legal requirement to be able to reconstruct situations months or years after the fact. Officers and dispatchers often have informal chats. They were concerned about content and people giving them grief for that.
Officers were also concerned that they were going to have NCOs and shift leaders riding their back every moment of a shift. This too was a justifiable fear - in one meeting I was in, a detachment shift supervisor wanted to use the data on how many calls an officer was taking and how long they were taking to clear them to determine who was slacking off. On the surface, it seemed like a good idea, but a) call clearance rates and call times aren't a good indication of quality (metrics rarely represent what they are meant to assess terribly well) and b) the officers would be hurling the computers out of the cars if they felt like this was going on.
The senior IS NCO for the division (a province) said 'We won't be using the systems for that. We want these systems to improve officer safety. We want officers to want to use them.". He went on to add that "You already know who is a 'participator' and who is a slacker without this to tell you if you're doing your job.". Wisely, the federal agency responsible had elected NOT to allow local shift supervisors to use the technology to witch-hunt officers.
Flash forward to today's discussion.
A sane strategy for cameras is: We review the data when there is a concern raised or a legal requirement to, the rest of the time, we don't look over the officer's shoulder. This creates a record of key happenings without micromanaging and making the officer feel watched at all times. We may use the cameras during tactical exercises for coordination. The officer can disable his camera when on break but most turn it back on when his break is over (and failure has a serious penalty attached).
This will serve to protect citizens, the police, and help in some court cases.
NOTE: Cameras aren't all seeing, all hearing, or all knowing. There is inevitably a lot that happens outside of the reach of the camera or happens in low light and sometimes even in hand-to-hand melee. It is often hard to understand prior context that isn't visible or to make out what the camera is showing or what the audio track includes. Cameras (where they have been used) are often as much of a source of confusion as they are of clarity.
They are worth having because they provide a possibility of clarity and they may, in some cases, help the public or the officers. That's a good enough reason.
The officers have to understand it isn't about witch hunts and it isn't about spying on them and never giving them any downtime.
-- kaladorn (too lazy to login)
Re:About things "accidentally breaking" (Score:4, Informative)
Take two examples from California. In one, the laws tried to be strict and explicitly listed what substances (drugs) were illegal. The result was criminals took the base drugs, made a small tweak to them, and presto, it was legally a new drug that the law didn't make illegal, even though it did the exact same thing as the parent drug. The legislature was constantly playing catch-up trying to add the never-ending list of new substances, and until they did, the substances were legal and the authorities couldn't do anything about them. The second case is the recent court decision regarding use of cell phones while driving. Again, the law intended to make driving safer by outlawing the use of cell phones while driving, but it was drafted before the proliferation of smartphones, and the lawmakers being not that technically inclined, specifically mentioned calls and text messages. The court ruled that therefore technically, only calls and text messages were illegal, any other use like playing games, was legal (the actual case was chosen to be a safe challenge and involved a person using their cell phone as a GPS for navigation). In both of these cases the narrowness of the law didn't allow for the laws to be used to prevent the actions they intended to.
So unfortunately, pick your poison: too narrow and lets edge cases or new technology get aware with murder (perhaps literally), or too broad and leave the discretion in the hands of the authorities.