Montreal Union Wants a Camera On Every Policeman's Uniform 320
An anonymous reader writes "The Montreal Policemen's Brotherhood is proposing that officers be equipped with uniform-mounted cameras that can be used to record various interactions. The union says in other jurisdictions where police officers are equipped with point-of-view cameras, the use of force by officers and assaults on officers drops by as much as 60%. One system is currently being tested in Edmonton, Alberta."
Re:That's a statistic? (Score:4, Informative)
How much do they like being monitored? Do you know, or are you just guessing based on a few sensational news stories?
I don't know of any studies on the matter, so yes it's based on anecdotes. There have been a lot of what you call "sensational news stories" about police "objecting" to being photographed or video recorded, where "objecting" can anything from falsely yelling that it's illegal (in fact it's expressly protected) to illegally grabbing the camera to finding some excuse to arrest the person (which means their equipment is confiscated and erased, if not damaged). Mysteriously the charges are usually dismissed, which often means there were no grounds for them in the first place.
I even witnessed one such event as a teenager where my friend started photographing someone getting arrested (in the park, not at some demonstration) and was told in no uncertain terms to get lost or risk being arrested.
I also worked on an early vehicle locating system, that would report back to base station where a vehicle was. This was a long time ago when such an idea was novel. Pilot systems were installed in ambulances in one city and patrol cars in another. The ambulance drivers never had any problem with it. Units were returned from patrol cars with anything from wires ripped out to, in one case, a shotgun blast though it.
It could be completely opposite of what you think, as this guy [slashdot.org] suggests with his anecdote.
He wrote:
A lot of our officers just recently got uniform-mounted cameras and the footage always shows that the complaints are completely unfounded.
First, how do I know he isn't talking about selective monitoring (use it when police are innocent, don't turn it on or "lose" it when they're not)? That's the biggest issue on this thread. Second, he wrote "always shows that the complaints are completely unfounded". Always?