Obama Offers Funding For 50,000 Police Body Cameras 262
An anonymous reader writes: Today President Obama announced $263 million worth of funding for law enforcement agencies around the country to outfit officers with body cameras and improve training. The money requires matching funds from state and local authorities, and the $75 million dedicated to body-cams should buy about 50,000 of them. This is in response to the recent events in Ferguson, Missouri. "Obama also plans to overhaul how the federal government disperses military equipment to local police departments, the White House said Monday. ... The Ferguson police department deployed officers wearing gas masks, military fatigues, stun guns and rubber bullets during the initial protests. Studies show the procurement of military equipment by police departments has been on the rise as law enforcement has been allowed to cheaply purchase gear originally deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan."
There are issues to resolve... (Score:5, Informative)
Up here in Washington State, several police agencies have embraced the idea of Body Cams. And while there has been no philosophical push-back about public access to Body Cam footage by the coppers, a recent Public Records Request illustrates a more fiscal problem...
A public records request was made for all Body Cam footage for the last year from several local departments that have been experimenting with the technology. Why should this be a probem, after all, just burn it all to a CD and send it to the guy?
The are three issues: Privacy - not every interaction a police officer has is in a public place or does not contain things than fall under privacy rules.
Second is commercial use - You know those Mug Shot Extortion sites? The ones that publish mug shots but for a small fee of several hundred dollars will take yours down? Same thing.
Third is the fiscal issue - The time to parse through a requst for "all your files for the year" for privacy issues and other things that simply should not end up on a commercial "shock" site or YouTube, this will cost a butt-load.
So it's become an issue. Here is a Seattle Times article on the subject: http://seattletimes.com/html/l... [seattletimes.com]
Re:There are issues to resolve... (Score:5, Insightful)
1. the footage shouldn't be public. there's a lot of interaction that cops deal with which is embarrassing and private for individuals. your underage arrest has to live with you forever? your suicide attempt or domestic issues should be open to prying eyes? no, no, no
2. the footage shouldn't be under the control of local police departments. "oops, sorry, i 'bumped the server' and we lost the footage of that controversial shooting by my buddy nate. oh well"
state level? federal level?
and then really solid rules about who gets to access what footage must be enacted. something similar to HIPAA rules and fines
Re:There are issues to resolve... (Score:4, Insightful)
"Server bumping" could be solved by he same mechanism as "camera malfunctions", though implementation would admittedly be a problem: have the police face a presumption of guilt for all accusations that aren't on film.
Re:There are issues to resolve... (Score:5, Insightful)
have the police face a presumption of guilt for all accusations that aren't on film.
"On duty, on video."
"All" that needs to be done is to remove qualified immunity when the camera turns off. Expect thousands of police union lawyers at that hearing - sometimes obvious solutions are impossible if the system isn't optimizing for solutions.
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"Server bumping" could be solved by he same mechanism as "camera malfunctions", though implementation would admittedly be a problem: have the police face a presumption of guilt for all accusations that aren't on film.
That's pretty much how it is now, Darren Wilson found himself in such a hostile work enviroment, that he was forced to resign even though he was exonerated, then to add insult to injury, his pregnant wife was asked to resign due to her marital status. Things would have been much easier with dash cameras and body cameras.
start with traffic tickets no video = no ticket (Score:3)
start with traffic tickets no video = no ticket (even DUI's just to make the cops have the system working) with no need to go to court.
Privacy (Score:5, Insightful)
Mod parent up.
Washington State has a very good public records law; but this is sometimes a problem. The press should be able to get police body cam feeds, probably, and certainly on matters of public concern but realistically it causes more harm than good to have all police bodycam feeds publicly available through, for example, data-mining firms.
Should the time cops broke up that party a kid was at be available, in video, for the rest of the kid's life?
How about the time the couple at the end of the block fought and a noise complaint got called in? Should future employers be able to get access to recordings of people at the worst moments of their lives?
Re:Privacy (Score:5, Insightful)
There already is a wonderful curator. It's called the courts.
The recordings must be kept, and they're available to the public. All the public needs to do is convince a judge as to what records you want (giving a date and time) and why.
If you want all the video recorded, then you have to convince a judge as to why they're relevant to you.
And if the police fail to produce records they should be able to produce, guess what? The judge can order production, or hold the police in contempt.
So if you're a kid that got recorded during an out of control party, well, your employer needs to be able to convince the judge that that exact incident is relevant for their business.
For crimes or police harassment, the date and time as well known and the judge can easily demand release of video around that time - even +/- 1 hour to give some leeway.
But try convincing a judge that you need all video recorded on December 1, 2014 from everyone. The judge will ask you about what incident requires you to have that much video.
Re:Privacy (Score:5, Interesting)
The judge can order production, or hold the police in contempt.
In many cases where it isn't a matter of the police testimony vrs the accuesed, and in just about all cases in civil court, judges will instruct the jury that they should put the worst reasonable interpretation on one side 'losing' evidence. Losing cases from that is generally going to correct police departments faster than individual contempt citations, and can be used in more situations (Just who gets the contempt citation when a judge suspects the guy running the evidence room was involved, but he's not been called as a witness ? Yes in theory, making the prosecution prove chain of evidence is part of the rights of the accused, but what if the accused's lawyer hasn't even thought of putting that person on the list of witnesses to call? Does the judge have to first order that cop to come to the court and testify on a matter relating to the trial, get him sworn in and get him to say something for the record, so he can be included in the contempt citation?)
Telling the jury to regard missing evidence in the light most favorable to the opposition lets a good judge cut through a lot of BS. I saw a judge use it once when a prosecutor was trying to convince the jury they needed to unravel one of those situations where a subordinate was saying they were just following orders and their surpervisor was claiming that their orders had been misinterpreted before they could go any further. The judge told the jury they didn't have to worry about where the problem had originated, they just had to treat ALL the related claims as unreliable, and listed what those were. Pushing judges to use this tool as they would in so many other cases looks like a pretty safe way of fixing a social problem to me, but I wouild be interested in hearing how treating cops the standard way (when it comes to losing evidence) can be abused, if people have some counter-examples.
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In the case of red-light-cameras, the fact that they're usually run by outside companies also acts as a good buffer to blanket FOIA requests.
Since the camera footage is owned by the private company, you have no ability to FOIA "all footage of this intersection on this date". You CAN request all footage of a camera or set of cameras which resulted in tickets, however.
(As told to me by the FOIA officer of a local town.)
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Depends on the reason for wanting the video.
How about all requests should be presented before a judge and you need to justify the reason why you want the video.
Wanting to put them online is not in the public interest.
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Up here in Washington State, several police agencies have embraced the idea of Body Cams. And while there has been no philosophical push-back about public access to Body Cam footage by the coppers, a recent Public Records Request illustrates a more fiscal problem...
A public records request was made for all Body Cam footage for the last year from several local departments that have been experimenting with the technology. Why should this be a probem, after all, just burn it all to a CD and send it to the guy?
The are three issues: Privacy - not every interaction a police officer has is in a public place or does not contain things than fall under privacy rules.
Second is commercial use - You know those Mug Shot Extortion sites? The ones that publish mug shots but for a small fee of several hundred dollars will take yours down? Same thing.
Third is the fiscal issue - The time to parse through a requst for "all your files for the year" for privacy issues and other things that simply should not end up on a commercial "shock" site or YouTube, this will cost a butt-load.
So it's become an issue. Here is a Seattle Times article on the subject: http://seattletimes.com/html/l... [seattletimes.com]
The request for the footage was made by the police officers union or people working as their proxy in an attempt to prevent the cameras from getting implemented elsewhere.
How would the police handle a request for all of their Dashcam footage? Radio traffic? etc? You could make similar silly requests for all sorts of things and I'm sure they've managed to deal with those types of requests without incident as well. Don't let yourself get played.
Re:There are issues to resolve... (Score:5, Insightful)
The request for the footage was made by the police officers union or people working as their proxy in an attempt to prevent the cameras from getting implemented elsewhere.
I'm sorry, but this is complete bullshit. The request was made by a private citizen that after the fact gave a number of interviews that indecated he was against the cams as a private citizen.
Where are your references that support your bullshit?
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So you acknowledge the poster was correct about the motivation for the footage request? Just (maybe) wrong about who requested it.
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Which was ...?
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Where's your evidence that the "private citizen" isn't a retired cop or friend/relative of one? Nah, it's just very very very convenient that this story always pops up about the worrisome costs of cop body cams.
Re: There are issues to resolve... (Score:2)
FOIA laws only require departments to produce documents that are requested IF they already exist. A well-crafted retention policy could make this fairly manageable, and FOIA also allows agencies to charge reasonable charges for documents they produce (think $1/page).
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FOIA laws only require departments to produce documents that are requested IF they already exist. A well-crafted retention policy could make this fairly manageable, and FOIA also allows agencies to charge reasonable charges for documents they produce (think $1/page).
Yup. Just charge $100 for each hour of video requested (the cost to locate and review the footage for appropriateness). That gets paid up-front before a determination is made as to whether the video is acceptable to release. For a high-profile shooting the press/etc won't have any trouble coming up with the cash. If a random idiot wants to request 3 years worth of footage they're welcome to pay for the department to hire 50 temps to stare at screens for six months straight.
Wrong... (Score:2)
FOIA also allows agencies to charge reasonable charges for documents they produce
FOIA only applies to the Federal government, not local and state government.
Re:Wrong... (Score:5, Informative)
True, but most states have a law similar to FOIA. Oregon has Oregon Open Records Act, which is similar to FOIA. The Oregon Open Records Act applies to the State of Oregon, all municipalities, and all county governments, so pretty much all cops are covered in Oregon.
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Re:There are issues to resolve... (Score:5, Informative)
QLD Police force use body cams. They are worn at the discretion of the officer but must be on during all times they are patrolling. All the video is time stamped and there needs to be a reason why it was turned off - ie went to the toilet. Turning them off during an incident would get you severely punished here.
The video is then handed over to a dedicated unit that curates all the data. It is not possible for an officer to access the raw data directly.
Generally speaking one office in a group wears one when on foot patrol in areas with high alcohol or other related type incidents. So the Valley of Brisbane CBD at night. These have been in place for years and I am not aware of any issues that have arisen from their use.
Re:There are issues to resolve... (Score:5, Interesting)
Not quite as clear cut as you claim http://www.brisbanetimes.com.a... [brisbanetimes.com.au]. What is interesting is that police officers are buying there own cameras to protect themselves because the courts seem to be unbiased toward police testimony and police must prove the validity of the actions against citizens.
Re:There are issues to resolve... (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't believe that 75% comment for a second. There is currently an argument between the police union and the police commissioner with the union pushing for 100% cameras and the police commissioner pushing back saying there are significant unresolved privacy issues about wearing cameras all the time. As it stands there are cameras in most of the larger stations but they are generally used by the fortitude valley and brisbane city branches.
As for the coppers buying their own camera I don't see it. I don't see it on the police walking around and I don't get it from friends and family that are in the force.
Source - My father was a general duties police officer of 35 years till he retired in July. My brother in law is currently in comms working through police training.
As for police bias for or against in the courts - police shootings are actually rare in Australia. Even drawing your firearm results in an internal investigation. The same goes for discharging a taser. This sounds like standard procedure to get all the information. The stuff I read about in the states and places like Fergusen are almost unbelievable from my experiences here.
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Re:There are issues to resolve... (Score:5, Interesting)
not enthuisastic about this (Score:2)
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we already have it in the form of everyone with a cell phone camera. if anything remotely interesting in public happens, 5 or 6 people are filming it and its uploaded within the hour and mirrored forever beyond any possible take back within a few hours
if loss of privacy bothers you, the concept of little brother should bother you more than the concept of big brother. you can hold government accountable and force it to abide by rules and sue it. you can't do that with every random anonymous yahoo around you
Re:not enthuisastic about this (Score:5, Insightful)
we already have it in the form of everyone with a cell phone camera. if anything remotely interesting in public happens, 5 or 6 people are filming it and its uploaded within the hour and mirrored forever beyond any possible take back within a few hours
To bad that didn't happen in Ferguson, huh?
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Considering how many witnesses were caught telling multiple, incompatible versions of their story for the grand jury, part of me wonders if someone actually did have a video but kept quiet.
Re:not enthuisastic about this (Score:5, Insightful)
Considering how many witnesses were caught telling multiple, incompatible versions of their story for the grand jury, part of me wonders if someone actually did have a video but kept quiet.
They didn't need a video. They had abundant physical evidence that debunked the obvious BS that a bunch of the Get Me On The TV types were trying to sell. And then there's the number of witnesses who finally admitted they hadn't seen anything at all, and just told what they assumed (hoped?) had happened, or heard from somebody else.
There were a core of witnesses who said very similar things, and whose observations were right in line with the physical evidence. It's very telling that most of those witnesses wanted to be sure that their reports would be kept private, and out of the media. Gee, I wonder who they're scared of? Not the police - they went TO the police.
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The first place to be looted was the QT. It was also the only place ( it was certainly the first place ) to be torched in the first rounds of riots. The word is that there were rumors around that Mike Brown robbed a convienence store and that store called the cops. The QT was mistaken for the convienence store.
One thing is certain, on the side of the QT someone spray painted the phrase "Snitches Get Stiches".
Re:Actually, there's a very simple way around this (Score:4, Insightful)
society functions on trust. you can't have civil society with people who are anonymous. you need to see their emotions and their intent. even wearing sunglasses is evasive and makes you seem untrustworthy
Re:not enthuisastic about this (Score:5, Insightful)
Pervasive surveillance by law enforcement is a bad thing. Pervasive surveillance of law enforcement is a good thing. And that is what these body cams are: They aren't recording anything that police officers aren't already seeing with their own eyes. Instead, these cameras create a record of officers' actions -- a record that keeps them accountable for said actions.
Re: not enthuisastic about this (Score:5, Insightful)
Meh, effectively the same. Which would you rather see, a picture of the officer shooting his gun at somebody, or a picture of what the guy who got shot was doing right before he got shot? If we had the latter in Ferguson there would probably be a lot less looting going on regardless of what the footage showed.
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There was very little looting to begin with. It's the same media amplification that allowed 200 Teabaggers hanging outside a congressional office to get more coverage than 200,000 people protesting the invasion of Iraq.
Re: not enthuisastic about this (Score:4, Informative)
ferguson isnt about one incident.
its about a track record of bad behaviour on the part of their local PD.
of abusive and discriminatory police actions.
indeed, in this case it appears that the officer have been justified*, and therefore the protestors shouldnt focus so much on this particular incident but rather more on that history, on that pattern of behaviour.
but then again, these are folks so disillusioned with their local police, so cut off from their local government, that they no longer trust anything the local authorities tell them.
rightly or wrongly, they view the findings in the brown/wilson case are simply more of the same. if it was a different colored group of people distrusting the government and protesting a track record of government abuse (existent or not), like say some rancher somewhere, there would be less condemnation and more support. people would even drive clear across the country in that support.
and looking at how the police handled this case, from the very begining, it really is more of the same:
-body was left in the street for hours...no ambulence came, no nothing
-police abused protestors, both physically and verbally, with racial epithets thrown
-police roughed up journalists
-police violated civil rights of protestors
-police kept out news helicopters trying to cover story (didnt want aerial footage like the infamous footage from Selma)
-SWAT and sniper teams with weapons aimed at protestors
-tear gas used against protestors (held to be unconstitutional by the Supreme Court years ago)
Basically everything they could do wrong in handling the entire situation, they did.
In fact it even seemed like they were purposely antagonistic to the protestors.
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Right... Because the dispute is so often about what the police officer was doing.
So you have a video of the police officer yelling "stop resisting! stop resisting! stop resisting!" and swinging his baton at something off camera. That doesn't seem all that useful really. However a video of a guy not moving but being struck repeatedly by that baton would be informative. As would a video of a guy fighting back.
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surveillance of the polices actions, of course.
besides, you're going to get charged with something on the word of the police anyways, rather have the video to back it up too so they can't just write anything they want on the report and have it go through stamped as true because they're the cop.
Re:not enthuisastic about this (Score:5, Insightful)
it just seems another step to pervasive surveillance.
Unfortunately, there are good reasons for wanting police interaction with the public to be recorded - Rampant police misconduct, and I'm not talking about Furgeson.
Here is Seattle, our police department is under supervision by the D.O.J. mandated by the Federal Courts after numerous verified "use of force" issues.
When there is not video, who do you think juries and courts believe?
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The other good reason for wanting police interaction with the public to be recorded - Rampant false allegations of police misconduct
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Note that multiple witnesses said that Wilson shot Brown in the back, but three autopsies (including one funded by the family attorney) found that wasn't true.
That doesn't necessarily mean they were lying. Wilson fired 12 times. Brown was hit 7 times. So Wilson missed 5 times, and some of those may have been fired toward Brown's back.
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That doesn't necessarily mean they were lying. Wilson fired 12 times. Brown was hit 7 times. So Wilson missed 5 times, and some of those may have been fired toward Brown's back.
Except that the witnesses (who went to the police, quietly and in hopes of remaining anonymous out of concern about retribution by the kind of people who burn down businesses out of spite) who related the events in a way that - what a shock! - was completely consistent with the physical evidence ALL said that there was no point at which Wilson was shooting at Brown from behind. Rather, that he was yelling, loudly and repeatedly, to stop - and that he (Wilson) was backing away from the 6'-4", 290lb Brown wh
Re:not enthuisastic about this (Score:5, Informative)
it just seems another step to pervasive surveillance.
Currently they videotape you whenever they want to. Every officer already has the means to tape you if they so choose. The current situation is that they only do record and keep the video when it suits their needs, and they delete it when it's bad for them. The only change here will be the requirement to always record and retain that data.
For example, were you aware they always record interrogations? (see the video in my sig) but only for their own review to be use against you in court. After they finish the interrogation they intentionally delete it so you can't use it in your defense. They've proven that a jury will more likely believe a police officer stating that you confessed than a video of you actually confessing! So they destroy the audio/video!
Any and all testimony you make against yourself should be required by law to be taped. There is absolutely no excuse for the current state of things where law enforcements word is trusted implicitly when current technology makes it completely unnecessary to do so. Every statement a person makes to law enforcement could be recorded, virtually for free, and there would then be no need for their testimony at all.
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After they finish the interrogation they intentionally delete it so you can't use it in your defense. They've proven that a jury will more likely believe a police officer stating that you confessed than a video of you actually confessing! So they destroy the audio/video!
What crazy jurisdiction do you live in??
I've never seen this ever. That would never make it past a set of appeal judges - what possible interaction with police nowadays, inside a police station, would not be videotaped? I've never seen a judge that would go "Oh, ok" if police described obtaining a confession in an interrogation room and it wasn't recorded. I don't know a lawyer on earth who couldn't argue there is reasonable doubt there. A verbal confession would be enough for reasonable and probable
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"it just seems another step to pervasive surveillance."
How is it?
Those cameras won't save anything the cop is not already seeing but it will save the cops in action.
Yes this is pervasive surveillance... pointed towards police, not the citizen. I see that to be a good thing.
Re: not enthuisastic about this (Score:3, Insightful)
Where do you think the federal government gets it's money? From local taxpayers.
I agree this is a local, not federal, problem - I find it hard to believe that every Barney Fife across the country needs to wear a body camera because one cop in Ferguson killed someone that was attacking him.
Re: not enthuisastic about this (Score:5, Insightful)
I find it hard to believe that every Barney Fife across the country needs to wear a body camera because one cop in Ferguson killed someone that was attacking him.
Preventing another Ferguson is the catalyst, but certainly not the only reason for copcams. The cameras provide accountability. They reduce violence, since both the cop and the perp will behave better on camera. BIG ONE: They dramatically reduce lawsuits against the police. Partly because there are fewer incidents, but also because there is less dispute about what happened. They also make prosecutions faster and less expensive, since there is no dispute about what was seen or heard by the cop.
Citations:
California police body cams cut violence [theguardian.com]
Year long study on the effect of Copcams [policefoundation.org]
Every cop car should have a dashcam.
Every patrolling cop should have a bodycam.
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You just legitimately committed the logical fallacy of begging the question - congratulations!
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Who do you think cops brutalize? Local taxpayers. Who do Libertarian Loons whine about when the city is forced to pay out damages? Local taxpayers. What piece of technology would reduce the affects on both?
Libertarians: penny wise, pound stupid.
Comment removed (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Part of the Solution (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Part of the Solution (Score:4, Insightful)
"Stop resisting" is too often the codeword for "we will beat the shit out of you regardless of what you do".
That said, I think both sides will be on better behavior if they know the encounter is being recorded...
Re:Part of the Solution (Score:5, Informative)
Police also need to respect citizens. Being on camera all the time will help that at lot. Everyone behaves better when they're on camera. [reason.com]
Example from the article:
Re:Part of the Solution (Score:5, Insightful)
It just makes sense to record these interactions. It protects everybody who is in the right, and deters people from being in the wrong. It gets rid of the whole he-said/she-said nonsense and restores public confidence in policing.
If the shooting in Ferguson was captured on video there would have been no protests. If the video showed a harmless man being gunned down in cold blood then the cop would be on trial for murder and the public would see justice being served - there would certainly be complaints but nothing like what we saw. If the video showed a credible threat against the officer's or the public's safety with a measured response, then that would take the wind out of the sails of most of the protests. In the absence of conclusive evidence either way everybody gets to invent their own story of what happened.
Re:Part of the Solution (Score:4, Informative)
If the shooting in Ferguson was captured on video there would have been no protests. If the video showed a harmless man being gunned down in cold blood then the cop would be on trial for murder and the public would see justice being served - there would certainly be complaints but nothing like what we saw.
Unfortunately, that's not what happened in this case [youtube.com] with the Bart police.
The police officer only got nine months of prison, and even then, that's only because of the protests and the riots that followed. Initially, they didn't have any intention of pressing charges.
No wonder, the Bart police is just looking for ways to quickly shut down [sfgate.com] the cell phone service. Had they had this ability to shut down the cell phone networks during the initial incident, they would have at least had the time to confiscate everyone's cell phone before the video could have been uploaded anywhere.
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"If the shooting in Ferguson was captured on video there would have been no protests."
I would say that that is wishful thinking for Ferguson and other cases like it.
The different eyewitnesses reported seeing different things. And that's what with video evidence as well: People with a negative view of the police will interpret it one way, people with a negative view of the race/class/culture/dress/whatever of the perpetrator will interpret it another way. One person sees police brutality, another person see
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http://youtu.be/KeT_oSLtI-o?t=... [youtu.be]
Re: Part of the Solution (Score:2)
Yes, they do, because their job forces them into life-and-death situations they are given wider latitude than a private citizen that chooses to insert themselves into a given situation.
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Why? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Was going to post the same comment. It's not the federal government's role to tax people in one state to buy toys for cops in other states.
The article does preface the $75 million with "proposed", so like most things the President proposes, perhaps nothing will come of it.
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The article does preface the $75 million with "proposed", so like most things the President proposes, perhaps nothing will come of it.
That's OK, really. I've been in a high orbit on the effort to mandate body cams here, and it's been mostly libertarian Republicans who have been pushing for them. Obama being out in front is a gift, and I'll be using it in my testimony in a few months.
This should not be a partisan issue, but any issue without a 50/50 sponsor ratio turns into one in our dysfunctional system.
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It shouldn't be a federal issue, partisan or otherwise. That's not what the federal government is for. If a community wants their police force to have cameras, let the community figure out how to pay for it. If this was common practice, we wouldn't have small police forces armed with Bearcats and enough firepower to take over Canada. If the feds are desperate to buy cameras for something, put them on the porous southern border to help direct Border Patrol agents. That's something that's actually a fede
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It's what it's for since the passage of the 14th Amendment. You can give the Libertarian Loonery a rest while you google "Bill of Rights" and "equal protection clause".
Re:Why? (Score:5, Insightful)
Why is this a federal charge? While I firmly believe all cops should wear cameras, I also firmly believe individual departments should be paying for them.
So the departments in poor neighbourhoods with lots of controvertial police interactions also have the cheap crappy cameras that fail all the time?
Re:Why? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: Why? (Score:2)
An MRAP cost $2,000 - just a tiny bit more than one body camera (if you divide 50,000 cameras into $75,000,000 you find each camera costs $1,500)...
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Because missed / excused local PD work? (Score:3)
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ShanghaiBill: you da man! Obamacare is about to go flop, his illegal orders concerning illegal immigrants will be overturned, and the Great Fuhrer can't leave any room for his opponents to take credit for anything.
Obama hasn't got the money for this: it would have to be authorized by Congress. This is just another invitation to the Congress to tell him "no" and for him to whine that the Republicans are against his version of progress.
corporate win fall? (Score:2)
time to buy some gopro stock?
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TASER International [fool.com]
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Most likely outcome is some big shot company will develop some special super deluxe government must have for security safety reasons, that doesn't do a quarter of what it promises to do. Like you said, huge windfall, bunch of fat cats robbing from the people all in the name of "security". And 5 years down the road will prove to be a huge failure, but government will keep forcing it down our throats. In the mean time, people will prove it doesn't work, and government will counter whatever they can to shut t
50K....like, one state? (Score:2)
And from where... (Score:2, Insightful)
Will that quarter-billion dollars come from?
As a question, why is this a federal problem?
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One simple question for another: ever take remedial civics? There's this thing called the Bill of Rights, which state and local authorities have proven themselves incapable of enforcing.
Wow you have to give 10cc a lot of credit. (Score:2)
They foresaw the extensive used of rubber bullets forty years ago.
Order 537 more for Congress+Biden+Obama? (Score:4, Interesting)
The Circle [wikipedia.org]: Meanwhile, the Circle continues to develop a range of sophisticated technologies, including SeeChange, light, portable cameras that can provide real-time video with minimal efforts. Eventually, SeeChange cameras are worn all day long by politicians wishing to be 'transparent', allowing the public to see what they are seeing at all times.
obviously we all need our own drones... (Score:2)
*footage - we all know what that means, right? Like "dialing" a phone...
Why not fund cameras using civil forfeiture funds? (Score:2, Insightful)
Cameras wont make a difference.. (Score:2)
Re:hail hitler (Score:4)
Fortunately, you don't have the sense God gave a piss ant to find your way to a voting booth.
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Re:Ok the simple math. (Score:5, Insightful)
Individual hardware is the cheap part--although it does also need to be pretty goddamn ruggedized.
Departments need new infrastructure: Servers, docking stations, stuff like that. No it's not as easy as plug it in with USB and drag and drop your files--you want this to be a lot more secure than a mountable media drive. Infrastructure is an ongoing cost too, especially with public record requests.
Training isn't zero, either. Not only do you have to teach people how to operate them (and these aren't all technical people, which means that either training is nontrivial or that docking station really is fancy and expensive), but you also need to teach them policy, really drill it in there. Call it four hours of education and training per user, and the number of users is pretty close to the number of cameras. It's paid training time, so you're covering their salary, management, the organization per-department of those training sessions, hell probably research to make sure you're giving effective training... Look, training and meetings suck, but doing them _right_ is important and it's _expensive_, and you get what you pay for.
The cost sounds realistic to me.
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From a news report of ITWire from the 17th of September this year.
Privacy, resourcing hurdles for Brisbane 'robocops'.
Queensland Police’s chief commissioner remains unconvinced about the benefits of cameras pinned to the chests of police officers, despite his southern counterparts pledging $4 million to the technology.
Qld chief commissioner Ian Stewart yesterday told Fairfax radio he still wasn’t fully satisfied that privacy, resourcing and value-for-money issues had been ironed out to the exten
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Also here is a link to a photo of the Aus police ones - they look pretty well reinforced.
http://resources2.news.com.au/... [news.com.au]
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"Individual hardware is the cheap part--although it does also need to be pretty goddamn ruggedized."
"goddamn" ruggerized? Why? I understand they can't be too cheap that they break every week but I don't see why they should be much more ruggerized than the cop's shirt.
"Departments need new infrastructure: Servers, docking stations, stuff like that."
Yes, that's true.
"It's not as easy as plug it in with USB and drag and drop your files"
Why not? In fact, it should be that easy or you risk too high failure ra
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A GoPro is probably overkill. The purpose is just to record the events around the cop. A low resolution such as 640x400@10fps in B&W is probably sufficient.
Such a device could record hours of videos a day per GB and its electric consumption would only be a fraction of the GoPro.
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"if it is SAVED, and something "goes to trial" or something the news media will chop, splice it to fit their agenda, as well as the police, for their agenda."
Make such a behaviour illegal and support the law with technical means (checksuming the footage).
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Cops are trained to hit center of mass. Most handgun fights are within 10 feet and over within seconds. You don't have time to overthink "Should I wound him or kill him?"
If you tried for a wounding shot like the legs or arms, you'd likely miss. And even if you shot to wound and hit their legs, who's saying you wouldn't hit the femoral artery and have them bleed out faster than an ambulance could get there?
The rest is just tl;dr. The cops collectively are out of control with their authoritarianism, civi
Hollyweird called (Score:2)
They missed your script proposal. They were too amazed at how you shot the pen out of their fingers.
Sorry, I can't get past the concept "of shoot to wound" or "Let the assailant get closer to you" fallacies. What the hell is "toughed up" even supposed to mean? Get into a physical confrontation and possibly get your weapon taken away, etc? And if it was a female cop should she have "toughed up"?
You aim for the biggest part of the target, not the smallest that moves in unpredictable patterns.
Like police offic
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Brown was hit with 4 non-fatal shots that would have stopped probably 95% of attacks, and kept coming. Remember, he was high as a kite at the time on weed and adrenaline. He didn't stop his attack until he took a round in the brain. Pistols are not really that effective at putting someone down quickly if they aren't afraid.
No amount of training would change the outcome in this case.
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