Police Bodycams - One Less Excuse

[Zixinus]

Sorry, but I don't buy the idea you need a surveillance state to have a decent life (or decent police).

But what about surveillance of the police as they do their work? They are given power by the state by choosing this profession, thus they should be held under scrutiny and enforcing that scrutiny does makes sense with police bodycams that create objective evidence that is better than eye-witness accounts. Going in with the assumption that the system will be gamed and abused makes ANY system pointless.

[K. A. Pital]

I distrust the police.

I have nothing against holding them accountable for their actions based on recordings.

But I do have an issue with the idea that mass data gathering, of innocent strangers, is an acceptable way to achieve this accountability. Even if it is, it is a bad solution to a real problem.

I do not subscribe to the idea that the state has a right to treat everyone as a potential criminal, and subject them to total surveillance based on this principle. First the oversight was meant only for criminals in prisons, now it is expanded to the wholesociety? First only letters of criminals were subject to opening and reading by the jail staff, now it is everyone?

Society is just a big fucking prison then. You expand the rules and devices once meant only for criminals to everyone, every innocent out there. The innocents are potential criminals? Everyone is? And that gives this right to the state?

I also oppose the London solution and cameras at every corner. I oppose all solutions where people are constantly being watched, filmed, and photographed without their consent.

I don't fucking buy this "post-privacy" bull-shit, no no.

Clear?

[Eternal_Freedom]

Do you have a better idea then? One that could plausibly work in America or Europe now?

[K. A. Pital]

Do you have a better idea then? One that could plausibly work in America or Europe now?

Yes. How about changing the laws and closing loopholes that allow cops escape responsibility? Especially in Europe, where I think you're overestimating the scale and scope of the problem.

Generally, word against word should not lead to a conviction. This applies to cops just as much as it does to commoners.

I would rather accept a certain risk of cop misbehaviour than modifying laws in such a way that let cops film others all the time.

Bear in mind that what people and even some companies do all the time (filming others without their consent and recording conversations on the phone) in many European nations is a crime, which is punishable by law, and there are articles in the penal code for this type of action. The fact that it is widespread and often goes unpunished, does not mean that it is normal and acceptable.

My idea is that it is necessary to root out corruption, maintain strict laws on misbehaviour and do not place undue burden of proof on normal civilians vs cops. That's all.

[Eternal_Freedom]

Do you have a better idea then? One that could plausibly work in America or Europe now?

Yes. How about changing the laws and closing loopholes that allow cops escape responsibility? Especially in Europe, where I think you're overestimating the scale and scope of the problem.

And how do you do that? In America that requires either the Federal government or state legislatures, neither of which seem particularly open to such ideas at this point. Henec why I asked for a better idea that could plausibly work now.

[General Zod]

Do you have a better idea then? One that could plausibly work in America or Europe now?

Yes. How about changing the laws and closing loopholes that allow cops escape responsibility? Especially in Europe, where I think you're overestimating the scale and scope of the problem.

And how do you do that? In America that requires either the Federal government or state legislatures, neither of which seem particularly open to such ideas at this point. Henec why I asked for a better idea that could plausibly work now.

There's also the very real issue with the "blue wall of silence". Even if you change the laws cops don't tend to rat out their own people except for the most serious stuff.

[Eternal_Freedom]

That too. Honestly, while body cams for every copper is not an ideal solution, I think it's the best one available. When you've gotten to the point where you have special classes for non-white American teenagers on how to deal with the police that includes saying "please don't shoot me" repeatedly I'll take something that works over waiting for something ideal.

[K. A. Pital]

That too. Honestly, while body cams for every copper is not an ideal solution, I think it's the best one available. When you've gotten to the point where you have special classes for non-white American teenagers on how to deal with the police that includes saying "please don't shoot me" repeatedly I'll take something that works over waiting for something ideal.

The US situation might be something of an outlier. Yes, in that situation cameras and filming everything might well be the lesser evil.

But please remember that whatever legislative change is done in the US, this often spreads like disease to other nations.

I understand that in the US a large segment of the population is already being treated like potential criminals based on appearance only. So for the US, it is a positive change. But the world isn't just the US alone...

[Eternal_Freedom]

That too. Honestly, while body cams for every copper is not an ideal solution, I think it's the best one available. When you've gotten to the point where you have special classes for non-white American teenagers on how to deal with the police that includes saying "please don't shoot me" repeatedly I'll take something that works over waiting for something ideal.

The US situation might be something of an outlier. Yes, in that situation cameras and filming everything might well be the lesser evil.

But please remember that whatever legislative change is done in the US, this often spreads like disease to other nations.

I understand that in the US a large segment of the population is already being treated like potential criminals based on appearance only. So for the US, it is a positive change. But the world isn't just the US alone...

And if this were a legislative change, or if this was a global offer from Taser, I might agree with you, but it is neither, and as even you agree that this is a good thing for the US, I tihnk we can end the discussion here.

As the US situation is something of an outlier (and painfully so) the chances of such a thing being necessary in other developed nations is lower, low enough that companies or governments likely won't feel the public pressure to act against their own police force.

[Zaune]

The US situation might be something of an outlier. Yes, in that situation cameras and filming everything might well be the lesser evil.

But please remember that whatever legislative change is done in the US, this often spreads like disease to other nations.

I understand that in the US a large segment of the population is already being treated like potential criminals based on appearance only. So for the US, it is a positive change. But the world isn't just the US alone...

Police corruption and brutality is by no means limited to the United States either, though. Remember the big riots in London a few years ago? The catalyst for them was a police officer shooting a black man who turned out to be unarmed.

[MKSheppard]

So who pays for the years upon years of eternal data storage?

This is basically the razor blade model, but on a much bigger scale.

[Ralin]

total surveillance

You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it does.

If every single police officer in America wore a body camera every second they were on duty it would not come anywhere close to 'total surveillance,' because cops are neither numerous nor ubiquitous enough to match the coverage of regular security cameras in major cities. There are many situations where privacy is important and should be protected. Any time you are dealing with an uniformed police officer that expectation has gone out the window. Reducing their ability to flagrantly lie about what you said or did after the fact is a marked improvement over the alternative.

I don't fucking buy this "post-privacy" bull-shit, no no.

Clear?

No actually. Could you clarify whether there's some principle that requires you to ignore the subject at hand and hop on your soapbox to rave about the version of it in your head that you want to pontificate on or if that's just a personal quirk? Because the only person here who's talking about total surveillance and post-privacy is you.

Yes. How about changing the laws and closing loopholes that allow cops escape responsibility?

No amount of laws and regulations can solve the problem of cops refusing to follow them, lying about it afterwards and courts refusing to punish them. Body cams are step towards countering that second one.

[K. A. Pital]

If every single police officer in America wore a body camera every second they were on duty it would not come anywhere close to 'total surveillance,' because cops are neither numerous nor ubiquitous enough to match the coverage of regular security cameras in major cities. There are many situations where privacy is important and should be protected. Any time you are dealing with an uniformed police officer that expectation has gone out the window. Reducing their ability to flagrantly lie about what you said or did after the fact is a marked improvement over the alternative.

There are many situations when privacy has to be protected. The fact that you're stopped by a policeman should not have your face recorded on tape just because you are stopped and questioned. It is one of such situations. The fact that police may be questioning innocent people who are treated as suspects for the time being is already bad enough, but a commonly-accepted evil of the investigative process. But now faces of everyone involved in an investigation become recorded and stored. By private companies, with little to no ability for the person whose face or voice is recorded, to demand full and total deletion of this data. When a police officer stops you and searches your vehicle, you have the right not to have your face recorded and stored in a database.

You seem to operate under the presumption that I only oppose cameras on cops. That's not so. I also oppose their routine use on the streets. The environment is already unhealthy.

Moreover, you remove the ability to lie not just from the police, but from any person interacting with the police. You do know full well that false statements in a criminal process are themselves punishable by law. If a person makes an error in his/her statements (remember, the recording is accessible to the police, but not to the witnesses/suspects), and then gets slammed and punished for false witness, how is that not a negative consequence?

Previously a certain margin of error in statements of witnesses was deemed acceptable by the courts (because not everything is recorded, and past events fade from memory). Now they'd have to be careful with every word they say in a way that could make them afraid to talk, lest they be punshed for lying.

No amount of laws and regulations can solve the problem of cops refusing to follow them, lying about it afterwards and courts refusing to punish them. Body cams are step towards countering that second one.

I think that the problem of cops refusing to follow laws is also a problem that is solved by having, well, a more decent police force? Better selecting the individuals to work there? I mean, it is not like there are absolutely no solutions that don't involve filming every interaction with ordinary people, right?

[madd0ct0r]

Funnily enough my only engagement with the endless cctv cameras in the UK has been for a friend to prove an alibi for a fucking serious crime, and asking the neighbour if they caputered the face of the git who stole my bike. Last time I had a face off with a police officer I ended up using my phone as a body cam, just to keep the fucker honest (after he threatened to arrest me in the hope of me going away).

Yes, the system allows you to be tracked reasonably easily. So does my phone. So does my credit card. So does my fingerprints. So does my DNA. I don't think my dna is in the database, but I wouldn't be surprised if they could pull off a family match. Police are already the sharp edge of where society intrudes into people's life. Most are driven by a vocation to serve society. Most are tarnished by the shit they deal with. Some have a very screwed up definition of society and need watching. plus la change.

[Kamakazie Sith]

I'm not thrilled about Axon cornering the market because I've found their devices to leave a lot to be desired. That being said I love my camera. I wish we had two so we had one for when we are driving home but right now we drive home unprotected.

KA Pital nobody is held to answer for discrepancies in their on camera statements unless it is quite clearly a lie that they are telling to get another person charged with a crime.

[Ralin]

There are many situations when privacy has to be protected. The fact that you're stopped by a policeman should not have your face recorded on tape just because you are stopped and questioned. It is one of such situations. The fact that police may be questioning innocent people who are treated as suspects for the time being is already bad enough, but a commonly-accepted evil of the investigative process. But now faces of everyone involved in an investigation become recorded and stored. By private companies, with little to no ability for the person whose face or voice is recorded, to demand full and total deletion of this data. When a police officer stops you and searches your vehicle, you have the right not to have your face recorded and stored in a database.

If you’ll look at what other people have said in this thread, those records are routinely pruned if they don’t end up being pertinent to a criminal case or complaint against an officer. There is the possibility that the company doing the storage might use them for data mining or advertising or whatever, but if that’s a concern they can be banned from doing so and sued if they do it anyway.

I can see it being a potential concern, but it’s well below, say, the fact that arrest records and mug shots are publicly available information in many jurisdictions and some entrepreneurial souls have made a business out of putting them on their website and demanding hush money for the service of taking them down.

You seem to operate under the presumption that I only oppose cameras on cops. That's not so. I also oppose their routine use on the streets. The environment is already unhealthy.

Society has elected to give you the finger on that, to put it mildly. Even if you’re right, body cams on cops are well beneath already common forms of mass surveillance in terms of intrusiveness and ubiquity. To me it comes back to the fact that if you’re dealing with a cop and they decide to give you grief you’re already having a bad day. This is something that mostly reduces the amount of crap they can arbitrarily subject you to.

Moreover, you remove the ability to lie not just from the police, but from any person interacting with the police. You do know full well that false statements in a criminal process are themselves punishable by law. If a person makes an error in his/her statements (remember, the recording is accessible to the police, but not to the witnesses/suspects), and then gets slammed and punished for false witness, how is that not a negative consequence?

Previously a certain margin of error in statements of witnesses was deemed acceptable by the courts (because not everything is recorded, and past events fade from memory). Now they'd have to be careful with every word they say in a way that could make them afraid to talk, lest they be punshed for lying.

If they’re deliberately lying then we want police and prosecutors to be able to prove it by default. If they make an unintentional mistake…yeah, that’s a possible issue, but those sorts of crimes generally have pretty wide latitude for genuinely misspeaking, misremembering, etc. Same as how not many people are charged with libel or perjury in the US unless they’re really blatant and malicious about it.

Sure, that goes out the window if the police/prosecutors are deliberately gunning for you, but no system works if we assume completely lack of faith from the people carrying it out.

I think that the problem of cops refusing to follow laws is also a problem that is solved by having, well, a more decent police force? Better selecting the individuals to work there? I mean, it is not like there are absolutely no solutions that don't involve filming every interaction with ordinary people, right?

Not impossible, no, but for the sorts of problems we have with police in the US doing that requires various degrees of major reform that are a lot harder and less practical to carry out.
Which isn’t to say I’m against that! God knows that big chunks of the law enforcement system in the US need to be gutted and rebuilt from the ground up. But this is a relatively easy to implement policy that is likely to have substantial benefits.
It’s way easier to make every cop in America wear a body cam than to root out all of the cops inclined to murder black people.

[Zixinus]

The recording is evidence and thus should be available to lawyer defending their client, wouldn't they?

[Ralin]

The recording is evidence and thus should be available to lawyer defending their client, wouldn't they?

Eventually, sure. But there's a whole lot of time between the statement and the lawyer getting a hold of the recording where the police and prosecutor could, potentially, catch them in a lie and fuck them over.

Especially if the thing they're on trial for is giving a false statement. Since the cat is well out of the bag by that point.

Still, I think it's a relatively minor issue.

[MKSheppard]

The recording is evidence and thus should be available to lawyer defending their client, wouldn't they?

And this is the problem.

Evidence Retention Laws

Link

Texas requires that arrest reports be kept for 6 months in the case of minor crimes, and 75 years in the case of major crimes. Would video of the arrest be considered part of the arrest report?

They also require that:

"Officer-worn camera videos that do not capture a violation, use of deadly force by an officer, or are otherwise unrelated to an administrative or criminal investigation of an officer."

be kept for 90 days.

Etc etc.

There's a dizzying mashup of records, and if you have 100 sworn officers walking the beat....all this rapidly builds up. Who's going to store all the video from the cameras? $$$