Police Department Charging TV News Network $36,000 For Body Cam Footage (arstechnica.com) 186
An anonymous reader writes with news that the NYPD charged a local television station $36k to view police body camera footage. Ars reports: "As body cams continue to flourish in police departments across the nation, an ongoing debate has ensued about how much, if any, of that footage should be made public under state open-access laws. An overlooked twist to that debate, however, has now become front and center: How much should the public have to pay for the footage if the police agree to release it? News network NY1, a Time Warner Cable News operation, was billed $36,000 by the NYPD for roughly 190 hours of footage it requested under the state's Freedom of Information Law (FOIL). Now the network is suing (PDF) the police department in New York state court, complaining that the price tag is too steep. The network said the bill runs 'counter to both the public policy of openness underlying FOIL, as well as the purported transparency supposedly fostered by the BWC (body worn camera) program itself.'"
Public Cam Footage? (Score:5, Insightful)
Isn't that Cam footage from tax payer bought cameras worn by city employees who receive their salary from tax funds? How the hell do they justify charging that kind of money?
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Isn't that Cam footage from tax payer bought cameras worn by city employees who receive their salary from tax funds? How the hell do they justify charging that kind of money?
Same way my company charges $160 an hour for me. Video has to be redacted. Privacy laws yo.
This is a fishing expedition and the media should pay up.
too much $, but no, 3 months pay (Score:5, Interesting)
> the people doing the editing/redacting are already getting paid by the taxpayers. The only additional cost is the physical media
The charge does seem a bit high, but there absolutely is some additional cost to NYPD. We can estimate that finding, ccopying, and redacting all the pieces of video might require about 400 hours. At 40 hours per week, that's 10 employee/weeks. 10 weeks of actual work is about what you'll get for three months of salary, with vacations, holidays, and sick time. So one video tech (and a lawyer?) can do this job in three months.
NYPD didn't already hire a video tech to sit there and do nothing for three months. To get this job done, they'll need to hire someone, perhaps the new won't be the person doing the work, but the new hire might do a job that would otherwise be done by the person pulled away to do this.
The salary of the new hire is about 65%-75% of the total cost of having them- there's also extra insurance and benefit costs, the employer's payroll taxes, unemployment taxes, worker's comp, etc. So the total cost to NYPD should be roughly equal to four months of pay for the person doing the work.
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We're not talking about video of specific incidents that result in legal proceedings. We're talking about a lot of video to be used by a private party for commercial gain. We don't know what the NYPD would charge for video for trials right now (or if the video will be found at all).
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I doubt they'll take any cops off the street to edit video. That's too silly even for the government. $100 an hour would surely be enough to edit video. I'd damn sure do it for less than that. $36,000 is way too much. In reality it should cost more like 3 or 4 grand. It's a ploy to try to get people to quit looking over their shoulder.
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C-SPAN provides a valuable service, mostly because they decide in advance what to cover, and then just sit back with the cameras rolling and the stream flowing.
NPR, not so much. If you don't think NPR isn't biased, it is because they are on your side.
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Bill the city/state? Are you an idiot? The police department doesn't just "fix crime" and send a bill to the tax payers. They ask for more and more funds all the time, so that would get lost.
Whether or no 36k is reasonable or not, the courts can decide. It sounds a little high, but not extraordinarily high.
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"Years ago, it could cost you as much as $10 per page for a copy of a police report or any other document from a government office. This was, allegedly, to cover the time spent by the employees making copies. Lawsuits were filed and the courts agreed -- public employees are already getting paid by the taxpayers and there is no justification for charging anything above and beyond the actual copying cost"
Devil is in the details.
When you say "it could cost you...", d'you mean me? Then, yes: I already payed my
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...but they're limited to 1-for-1 time reviewing video...
Why should this be the case? youtube lets you view most videos at pitch-corrected stepped-up speed, with the right hardware you wouldn't even need to drop any frames, and the vast majority of the video will be boring stuff that shouldn't require a ton of attention. If face- and speech- detection get good enough perhaps many of the boring bits could be skipped over automatically.
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And the public cannot charge private enterprises that will use this footage for profit?
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See what has happened with mug shots, it's turned into almost a blackmail situation.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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And the public cannot charge private enterprises that will use this footage for profit?
That's implying there's at least $36k worth of material in the footage.
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Sure, it's a gamble, they need to find 5-10 seconds of somewhat interesting footage for it to pay off. They are taking the risk, and they are the one shifting through the footage, so it is only right that they pay a tiny fraction of what they normally pay for footage and that they are the ones to hit ot big if they find anything interesting.
Re:Public Cam Footage? (Score:5, Insightful)
First off, in this case, the cost is just under $200/hr of footage.
You have to pay someone to retrieve the data and burn it to DVDs. NYPD has roughly 30,000 cops, so it's likely not entirely trivial to track down the correct video. Someone will have to review each hour of the requested footage to ensure that it includes nothing that would violate the privacy or safety of anyone involved in the video. If there's a lot of requests, you'll probably have to hire someone to do this job full time. Otherwise, you're taking a cop away from more useful work.
I cannot tell you whether $200/hr of footage is fair but I would not be the least bit surprised if it barely covers the costs incurred by the NYPD.
For what it's worth, and before you ask, there are definitely privacy and safety issues associated with body cam video. Imagine for a moment the home of one of your local TV anchors (say, the cute chick) is robbed. Police respond to her home, review the scene, take her statement, etc. Video from the police cruiser cam might be useful for a stalker to figure out where she lives. If you've any imagination at all, you can easily come up with other scenarios.
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If you're a serious stalker at all, you already know where she lives. You followed her home, or you searched for her on any one of numerous public databases or websites. Or you just request the police report which is usually also part of public record anyway.
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If it's that onerous to get footage from a particular officer or from a particular day, the problem is with the filing mechanism. It should take seconds to retrieve all the available videos spanning a well-defined set of criteria. "I need all the bodycam footage from these three officers on this day and that day, around 2pm."
If a report was filed because there was some sort of incident, it should be cross-indexed with the date and time and the officer. So even if you just know the person involved in the rep
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Isn't that Cam footage from tax payer bought cameras worn by city employees who receive their salary from tax funds? How the hell do they justify charging that kind of money?
It is.
Can the tv station demand that a certain street be re-paved?
Can the tv station expect that traffic lights be installed and timed so they can leave their motorpool in all directions quickly?
Can the tv station expect to be able to plug into public power sources anywhere and any time they need to set up a bunch of electronic stuff?
If the answer is no to any of these, then they can justify "charging that kind of money."
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I would go a bit further
In any case where the Video is the Key Evidence if the video is for any reason not available the case is decided against the Officer/Police Department.
and any bad shoot/misconduct IA ruling should immediately be followed by a criminal case.
You shot that guy BECAUSE he is/was Not White?? Welcome to your Hate Crime trial we will be reserving your gallows shortly.
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This.
Keep the footage on file for 2 years, then release it to the general public. Want it before then, file a request.
After 10, the requirement to keep it on file goes away. If someone else wants to archive it, go for it.
Footage get lost? Officer forget to turn on their camera? The information on footage and on the paperwork is public, so if the cops aren't doing their duty, then it becomes a big news item that they are hiding misconduct.
Now that's just way too reasonable and sensible to ever happen.
Freedom of the Press (Score:5, Interesting)
Thus, access to the videos, at rate not restrictive enough to prevent its distribution, is a requirement fair play cannot do without.
If a viewing tax restricts the footage from being released, then cameras are worthless except to protect the innocent law enforcement officers.
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No, they are not useless. When a specific event occurs, usually just a few minutes of recording is needed to better understand what happened and, just a few minutes worth need to be cleared for release. This was a broad request for almost 200 hours of video - the fact that such a request is quite expensive to fulfill does not mean that the cameras are 'useless'.
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No, they are not useless. When a specific event occurs, usually just a few minutes of recording is needed to better understand what happened and, just a few minutes worth need to be cleared for release.
Clearly, we can trust the police to release just the pertinent pieces of video.
This was a broad request for almost 200 hours of video - the fact that such a request is quite expensive to fulfill does not mean that the cameras are 'useless'.
When quite expensive = unreasonable restriction on access, then the government must err on the side of information release to avoid even the appearance of impropriety.
Re:Freedom of the Press (Score:5, Insightful)
When someone, say "Big Mike" Brown, is shot by police, it's known when and where it happened. Releasing five minutes of video in response to a specific incident once the investigation is done would cost little and would still be extremely useful. One does not have to "trust the police" to release the video. One does have to trust them (or those related to them) to not redact stuff that is relevant but such redaction will be obvious and can be dealt with by the courts if needed.
Seriously, if you had kids and some pedophile was raping one of them and a cop wearing a body cam came across it, would you want the video of your kid being raped to be on the internet forever because someone "has the right to bodycam footage"? How about video of the body of a loved one who died in your house in a horrible accident?
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If it is true that the request is expensive, then the NYPD *really* screwed up their media & document archive system, and red to be taken to task for it. It's not like body cams have been around for thirty years and there's legacy VHS tape to deal with. These cameras have been all-digital since day one. Fetching the requested video snippets should have been nothing more than feeding in a .csv file with camera numbers and timestamps into whatever query language the NYPD's media archive uses and writin
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A qualified person has to review every bit of the video and redact as needed.
When an officer enters your home and has the bodycam on, it's nobody's business what's in your home unless it's part of a criminal investigation (vs. just a fishing expedition by reporter or by a thief casing houses with the help of the police video). If a child rape victim is being interviewed in the field, the audio and video of that interaction should not be made available "just for the asking" (except, as necessary, as part of
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At a minimum, one trusted person (not just an admin) would need to review the entire video once even if nothing was found to redact. This person may have to research ongoing investigations or determine if releasing a specific portion would compromise an investigation and may have to determine if someone is an at-risk informant. If something needs to be redacted, there's additional video editing required (perhaps by another person).
It seems reasonable that each hour of video released would require a minimum
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But I have a big problem with this that's unrelated to the price. The "trusted person" that you specify means trusted by the police, not by the requestor, or by anyone who would count as an impartial investigator. I do not believe that the films should be in police custody, but should instead be held by a totally independent agency. And that the police should be able to impose only reasonable conditions on the release of the information. And that "reasonable" should not be determined by the police depar
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However, police must be consulted and have input into the process. How would a third party,without consultation with police, know that a particular person talking to a police officer (perhaps just by their clothing or stature et al even if the face is obscured) could cause that person to be identified (rightfully or wrongly) as the "snitch" whose information resulted in three gang thugs being convicted and sentenced to life without parole for killing a child in a misdirected drive by shooting?
If we don't ha
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If a viewing tax restricts the footage from being released, then cameras are worthless except to protect the innocent law enforcement officers.
The video would also be very useful to a falsely accused defendant, who would be able to subpoena relevant video without paying a fee.
So to summarize, these people benefit from body cams:
1. Innocent police officiers
2. Innocent defendants
3. Crime victims
These people are worse off:
1. Guilty criminals
2. Crooked cops
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"The video would also be very useful to a falsely accused defendant, who would be able to subpoena relevant video without paying a fee."
One thing is asking for footage about an incident one is directly related to. A very different other a company on a for-profit fishing expedition. I don't see why them both should be managed the same.
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Rather have a guilty man walk free than an innocent man sent to prison.
Perhaps because of the settling of the wild American West (or maybe the American Hollywood western), our law enforcement has evolved into Cowboys bent on vigilante justice or a lone wolf bending the rules for the greater good.
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If a viewing tax restricts the footage from being released, then cameras are worthless except to protect the innocent law enforcement officers.
Demanding 190 hours of footage is a fishing expedition. In most cases requesting the video for a known incident, such as police harassment, would be a few hours at most. Maybe the press should restrict requests to relevant video instead of fishing.
189.47$ per hour...totally fair! (Score:2)
And besides, if the money funds better police work like better education for the officers (how to handle public incidents better), better material for proper investigations instead of improper funds to get the crimes solved, well - then I'm all for it.
What worries me though is: where does that place US - your average citizen in this picture? What say do we have in this? Do I get a
Re:189.47$ per hour...totally fair! (Score:5, Interesting)
And this here is part of the question around costs. I doubt we are talking about raw dumps of data here. Instead I suspect that someone has to go through every second of video, make sure that there is nothing seen by the camera that shouldn't be seen, ie police data on a computer screen. Then do they go through and blur the faces of uninvolved people, number plates etc? They probably don't need to if the recording was made on a street and there could be no reasonable expectation of privacy, but what about when the footage is in a private premises, particularly a multi-dwelling building such as an apartment.
Ugh, now that I think about it there are huge amounts of issues around releasing any video that shows anything interesting at all. To the point that I wonder if sealing them with out a court order isn't a better place to start.
It's a complex thing (Score:2)
I think it's a complex thing.
There's the nominal privacy angle, ie, of showing people or situations in private settings that weren't part of any kind of police action. Then there's the abuse-of-public-access privacy angle, like those web sites that show mug shots unless you pay to take them offline.
Then there's the bigger questions of whether relentless databasing forever of every possible police interaction with the public and using it to make all kinds of really arbitrary decisions based on it, like HR m
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Someone has to go through every second of video [...]
Yes. All 684,000 of them. And for what purpose?
Look, I'm all for body cameras. I'm all for freedom of the press. But 190 hours? For what purpose? Basically, so some reporter can look at all of it and decide whether or not an officer behaved in a way that a reporter might think would make a good story.
No, I'm sorry. If I'm a defendant and I need that video for my defense, there shouldn't be a charge. But I can't imagine there's a particular "story" involved when they need 190 hours of police video.
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"What if something got out that shouldn’t have"
That's why it costs $200/hr for video, not because of the commercial value of the film. We presume that someone has to reasearch the location of the files, pull the, edit the files to the length requested, and package them. That may take 5 hours or 50 hours - it depends on how many clips there are.
Except that that's only the very first step. Next, someone has to review them for privacy laws (accused and bystanders) and limitations on any ongoing investig
can they try that in court? make the defender pay? (Score:2)
can they try that in court? make the defender pay a fee to have there legal team view it on there own?
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All material has to be handed over to the defense team so -- no there would be no cost.
The TV station is just doing a fishing exercise if they are asking for 190 hours of footage and I don't see why the public should be on the hook to make sure that no-ones privacy is being violated. You have to have someone (possibly more than one person)actually watch 190 hours - select out outtakes that should not be released an
GOOD (Score:5, Insightful)
Go ahead and charge them. The media preys upon the misery of others and wants a direct free live feed with 24/7 coverage of cops hassling the public. I can't count the amount of times some traffic cop has pulled me over, given me a full field sobriety test plus breathalyzer despite not having had a drop to drink, and continued to harass me before letting me go. Now imagine I was a public official or celebrity (even worse imagine if I was a republican in a liberal-leaning city) and the TV station had full access to the cop's body cam footage. Despite my innocence it would be plastered ALL OVER TABLOIDS and other sleazy outlets as only the media could to slant and paint it in a bad light.
No thanks. You charge them out the wazoo NYCPD. Good on you for making journalists actually have to hunt down stories and do their jobs.
Printed the video? (Score:2)
$36,000? What did they do, print the video, one frame per page?
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Haven't you already paid for it? (Score:2)
Of tax payers and FOIA (Score:2)
No local finding, act, law, debate, twist gets to take away press freedom.
US tax payers are paying for the footage and its their bureaucracy and officials using equipment paid for by tax payers.
The "police" do not get to just internally "agree" to block a FOIA request from the media.
The body worn camera is a feature to ensure public servants are interacting with the wider public and local, state
CJI (Score:2)
The FBI maintains databases containing what they call "Criminal Justice Information" (CJI). Police departments access it using "Criminal Justice Information Systems" (CJIS) over a "Criminal Justice Data Network" (CJDN).
For your state to get access to these things, the state's top law enforcement agency has to enter into an agreement with the FBI. Part of the agreement involves providing access to local police departments, and getting them to agree to follow the same rulebook.
One of the rules is that "Crim
The NYPD.... (Score:2, Insightful)
Proof that Corruption in the Police is still alive and well in 2016.
Honestly they are no different than a street gang..
Well except for one, they have far better funding than a street gang.
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FOIA allows to charge for costs, but... (Score:2)
The Freedom of Information Act does allow a government body to charge for the cost to produce the information requested. This was originally intended to recoup the physical costs of producing photocopies or microfilm. However, since the the footage in question is digitized, how does one come up with a cost of $36,000 to turn it over to the media? I wonder if the prosecuting attorney requested the footage, would the police department had charged the DAs office $36,000? If the answer is no, then neither sho
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Because NYPD would only provided edited footage and someone had to view all 304 hours to deal with "exempt portions" of the recording.
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I am sure they could have hired someone for much less than $200/hour to do the reviewing...
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Camera footage that is released to the public for public broadcast has very different than what lawyers get or can request. The privacy of everyone in the video has to be taken into consideration when releasing a video to the media. That requires the video to be reviewed and redacted as required by privacy laws. This takes time and money. Demanding 190 hours is a fishing expedition and the public should not have to pay for it. Video released to lawyers are not redacted so the fee does not apply.
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That might be true if these were surveillance tapes, but they weren't. They were body cams. There shouldn't be anything to redact as they are recorded in the public. While I agree 190 hours seems like a fishing expedition, charging $168/hour seems a bit excessive, too.
Turn the Tables? (Score:3)
Let's ask Time Warner Cable News for 190 hours of specified short segments of their raw video material with perpetual, unfettered rights to republish, for profit, and with no ongoing royalty. If you could get them to to agree the conditions (unlikely) then I bet they would charge way more than $36k for the privilege. Somehow though they expect the State to do just that without even cost recovery.
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Yes, lets treat private companies exactly the same as publically funded civil servants.
If the po-po can charge for their footage like a corporation, then I guess a corporation can arrest, lay charges, and enjoy other benefits reserved to police services.
Next up, The Shiawase Decision: Good Idea, or Bad Idea?
Privacy? What privacy? (Score:2)
Bonus: regular people get body cams, too, if they want them.
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And the police informant who appears on a police body cam and gets killed because of it is not a problem?
Time warner is abusing the situation (Score:2)
For me the idea is that if you are somehow implicated in a situation with the law enforcement, you can have evidence of what actually happened.
Not a way for journalists to get free footage so they can exploit it. $200/h is peanuts for them, $200 is what a friend got paid for a few minutes of crappy cell phone footage of a skilift that stalled for a couple of hours.
I'd like the result of the judgment to be : here, have your footage for free, CC BY-NC-SA licensed. But I doubt it will be the outcome.
Re:Let's see... (Score:5, Insightful)
How many workers does it take to do this?
As many as it takes to discourage requests from the citizens.
Re:Let's see... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Let's see... (Score:5, Interesting)
How do you identify people who can be trusted not to reveal confidential information that, if revealed, may cost someone their lives?
Just being 'TV folk' does not mean that someone can be trusted.
Balance to society (Score:5, Interesting)
How do you identify people who can be trusted not to reveal confidential information that, if revealed, may cost someone their lives?
I don't have an opinion at the moment, but would like to be more informed of the situation.
Just exactly how can first-person video of what a cop sees cost someone their life if revealed?
Also, can you comment on how *likely* that scenario would be?
Being able to monitor police actions is a very real benefit to society with huge value. We can determine whether the policeman is lying, whether the plaintiff is lying, whether the department's investigation is honest, and whether - as a whole - we should modify existing procedures based on irrefutable evidence.
We need to balance the value to society with the privacy of the individual.
Re:Balance to society (Score:5, Insightful)
Just exactly how can first-person video of what a cop sees cost someone their life if revealed?
Seriously? Because - and this is easier to stomach once you get away from the view that ALL police are corrupt bastards(*) - police are involved in dealing with vulnerables victims as much as they are involved dealing with nasty perps and innocent bystanders. For example, a potential victim of domestic abuse who has invited the police in when his/her partner is out does not want an excerpt of the interview released on prime time news. An undercover cop involved in monitoring a people trafficking operation (idk if that's a big thing in the US, but it's certainly a SIGNIFICANT problem in Europe, attracting some of the most evil individuals) does not want to be shown interacting with a uniformed officer, because someone whose business is to make slaves of others does not have much regard for human life.
(*) Some are. So are some computer programmers. So are some bankers. So are some charity workers. Even among politicians, you find the worst and the best (right up to President, who is taking one of the statistically greatest risks a person can take in assuming office). Turns out everyone's human.
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Confidential informants could also have their lives put at risk by released footage of what a cop sees. Some criminals are known to kill people who snitch.
Heck, it could be as simple as someone snitching on who doesn't pick up poop after their dog.
Someone has to go through all 190 hours of video (and not just someone, a knowledgeable police officer) and delete all the stuff not relevant to the request, and that might compromise someone's safety or that is part of an ongoing investigation.
Sorry, not seeing a problem here.
Before you snot nosed "everybody wins a trophy" trash respond, you are asking for the police to release what would be the equivalent o
Review board, judges, etc - not TV personalities (Score:5, Insightful)
Just exactly how can first-person video of what a cop sees cost someone their life if revealed?
If the cop talks to a person who is then considered an informant or snitch by the wrong people.
If when talking to another cop an informant or snitch is referred to.
If anything said to a cop can wind up on TV what do you suppose will be the impact with respect to people coming forward with information? Even reporting a crime?
If disclosure of raw unreacted video identifies a person coming forward with information and that person is killed in retaliation don't you expect that victim's family to file suit against the police?
The public has a right to know if a cop is being honest, truthful, etc. But that is something quite different than seeing every minute of the cop's day, hearing every conversation.
Being able to monitor police actions is a very real benefit to society with huge value.
Absolutely, but that monitoring is not necessarily best done by TV personalities. It may be best done by review boards, judges, etc.
Re:Review board, judges, etc - not TV personalitie (Score:5, Insightful)
Not to point out the obvious, but you are saying that:
1) The police review board can *say* that the officers were talking about an informant, and suppress releasing the video of a police shooting.
2) The police can begin talking about informants *on purpose* as they drive up to a crime scene, so that a video of them shooting someone can be suppressed.
That's what you're saying - right?
We have a federal policy with classified information that's just about what you said; ie - the government can classify anything without a detailed reason.
How has that worked out for us?
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Not to point out the obvious, but you are saying that: 1) The police review board can *say* that the officers were talking about an informant, and suppress releasing the video of a police shooting.
Review boards often involve civilians. The conversation with/about an informant can be deleted, its unlikely to affect the portrayal of events in a shooting. Note that the TV station is requesting about 200 hours, not the minute or two leading to a shooting.
2) The police can begin talking about informants *on purpose* as they drive up to a crime scene, so that a video of them shooting someone can be suppressed.
Why do you think the entire video needs to be suppressed rather than simply remove the conversation?
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What he's saying is that they can't be trusted to not use that as an excuse to censor the film, even if it never happened. (If you can't look, you don't know it didn't happen.)
If we look as past analogous circumstances, this is a valid concern. This doesn't mean that it can't be dealt with, but it means that if you don't deal with it, you are likely to be unhappy with the results. And while I think $200/hour is unreasonable, I also think that a reasonable fee might be $50-$100/hour. (OTOH, I also think
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If the police shoot someone, that video is going to be reviewed. It's possible to bleep out names, and to verify that what's being bleeped out is the names. We're talking about general release when nothing exceptional was happening.
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Do you want a gang banger killing you and your family because a police body cam caught you telling a cop you could identify the robber if you saw them again? How about even just threatening you of that if you say anything else or identify the right person?
Do you seriously think that all this footage is going to be live streamed where anyone can just tune in or access a depository of all footage with a handy little search footage feature? Just take one department, How many hours of footage do you think they'll create in a single day with an average sized force and then you'd have to go through all of that just to find a possible mention of someone saying they could identify you. And if that was even a remotest possibility do you not think that a new measure m
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The footage would be tagged by incident and date/time. Its how it is done here. Suppose you were pulled over, the initial officer generates an incident report. If two other officers show up, they are added to the report. You get a warning -verbal for not using a turn signal long enough and it is noted. You can later get a copy of the incident report along with the footage (I'm familiar with dash camera footage ) by request. All you need is your name and date and it will pull up the incident where everythi
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The public has a right to know if a cop is being honest, truthful, etc. But that is something quite different than seeing every minute of the cop's day, hearing every conversation.
It's not like they're public servants or anything. If they have nothing to hide then they have nothing to fear and all that.
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"Just exactly how can first-person video of what a cop sees cost someone their life if revealed?"
Cheating husband/wife/etc.
Undercover police/agent/wire wearing informant
I don't have statistics to answer the 'how likely' but certainly such people do end up occasionally getting killed so the risk is real.
With a warrant (Score:2)
That's the way we handle information that may end up as evidence in court.
That's the way we should handle police body cam video. ALL OF IT.
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General public - should be free to view.
Do you really think it's appropriate or helpful for anyone who feels like it to have access to vast amounts of audio/video footage that will often be recorded in sensitive environments?
Keeping an eye on public servants is one thing (though even there I think there are boundaries) but using a tool intended to serve justice as a means of playing creepy voyeur with everyone those public servants come into contact with or discuss during their day is an entirely different thing.
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If you want the public to be able to view all footage, all the time, at no additional cost, then the police department is going to have to spend the money to make all of that video available.
That costs money.
So the city will need to:
A: Raise taxes to pay for the program
B: Cut other parts of the department (likely officers)
C: Cut other city services
There is no such thing as free. If nothing else, there's always opportunity cost.
You pick. Me, I'd rather pay for just the
Re: Let's see... (Score:2)
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How many workers does it take to do this?
As many as it takes to discourage requests from the citizens.
Well, what if that 190 hours is actually ~800 specific 15-minute segments? Suddenly it's less than $50 each. Still seems a bit high, but I can imagine requests like "the footage of X event," where they have to go figure out whose camera, exactly what time, etc. for each segment.
Just "all the footage for this day from these 8 officers"... yeah $36k is crazy.
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How many workers does it take to do this?
As many as it takes to discourage requests from the citizens.
You are ignoring that this request isn't coming from citizens, but from a company that tries to fill its programming with COPS like footage without having to pay a film crew to do it.
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Body webcams have less than one hour storage. The 190 hours must have required at least 250 or more human interventions. They didn't just drop flashdrives or whatever to the news site, but had to catalogue and fetch the information from multiple precincts. I think the price charged was reasonable, and not padded.
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Interesting, I hadn't factored film length in, and I already thought the price which quite excessive what not exorbitant. That reduces it a lot. So perhaps it only a trifle steep (i.e., less than twice what I think it should cost...with a large variance).
Its not just an IT guy, its cops and lawyers too (Score:5, Insightful)
190 hours, at 36,000 dollars. ~200 dollars an hour to produce. How many workers does it take to do this?
Its not just some IT guy making copies of files. Its probably cops and lawyers reviewing the video to make sure victim privacy rights are not infringed and that classified information is not disclosed (identity of people disclosing information privately, references to ongoing investigations, etc). Some things a cop sees or hears should not be on TV; only review boards, judges and juries should see or hear it.
Its not unreasonable to expect the for profit media corporation that wants a copy of the video to pay for the lawyers time to review it. Its part of the "processing" in the processing and handling fee.
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No it is unreasonable. In the past police departments used to charge $10 per page for xeroxing. The courts overruled it. The public needs to pay for the cop salary anyway and they also need to pay for the person who reviews the footage. the networks should only have to pay for the videotape sent over. Its part of the public right to know. So the public (in this case PD) needs to foot the bill since the PD gets paid via taxes anyway.
Re: Its not just an IT guy, its cops and lawyers t (Score:2)
This. Additionally, many of the public records laws in place across the country establish standards and procedures that often involve curation of records before release -- which in turn can involve multiple agencies/bureaus/jurisdictions beyond the PD that "owns" the video. The various policies and procedures that have evolved to meet these often myriad and byzantine policy frameworks are often barely able to scale to textual, digital records. When you expand them to accommodate frame-by-frame review and
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It's actually not $200 an hour.
Reading the article, it will take about 304 hours, at $120 an hour.
This is for an office to review all of the video and make the proper privacy redactions (probably blurring children's faces, license plates, stuff like that).
$120 an hour does still seem excessive, though. Seems like you could hire 2-4 other non-officer people with the appropriate experience and education to do the work, and keep that officer on the street instead of behind the desk.
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It's actually not $200 an hour.
Reading the article, it will take about 304 hours, at $120 an hour.
This is for an office to review all of the video and make the proper privacy redactions (probably blurring children's faces, license plates, stuff like that).
$120 an hour does still seem excessive, though. Seems like you could hire 2-4 other non-officer people with the appropriate experience and education to do the work, and keep that officer on the street instead of behind the desk.
If the police force was a for profit organisation maybe. Basically, it cost the police whatever the hourly rate of the guy who's job it is. Which I highly doubt would be an officer. Most of them barely have the technical skills to operate their guns never mind video editing.
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Suppose we need an average of two competent people per hour of processing, and that each makes $30/hour. In accounting for such things, doubling the amount paid is reasonable to account for additional expenses, including additional benefits, the share of a supervisor's time, etc.
Alternately, they may have to have the final version checked by a lawyer, in which case $120 sounds reasonable.
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What if it doesn't. What if 150 of those 190 hours are cops sitting in the car eating donuts? Does a lawyer have to watch all those 150 hours? If they claim they do, then what the fuck was the point of those body cams?
This is SOLELY a way to stop body cams being used against the police. The only ones that come out are the edited highlights of those incidents that support the police.
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At least one technician has to review the footage and redact portions that would create a privacy issue for the folks caught on camera. And that's after identifying the correct 190 hours amongst a much vaster archive of footage.
$200/hr is government rates (which are always out of whack) but $100/hr is probably not unreasonable.
Is there any particular reason Warner needs 8 24-hour days of video? If they wanted 2 hours of video they'd only be out $400.
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And that's after identifying the correct 190 hours amongst a much vaster archive of footage.
So you're not expecting any kind of time stamping or organisation of digital files? These aren't like video tapes shoved in box pushed into an overflowing room of boxes of videotapes. It should be fairly trivial for someone to get the footage from officer x at time y on date z.
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If a FOIA request is something that isn't indexed, for example, "all video taken with minority and at risk populations", or "all footage that shows handcuffs being placed on an individual", or any number of other, non-indexed, criteria, the existing indexes are useless.
Compare an indexed SQL lookup to a SQL full table scan... only vith video, and manual indexing.
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They probably charged them for the time of the policemen carrying these. I think this should be criminal behavior and have someone land someone in really hot water.
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$36,000 seems like a small price to pay for a Pulitzer prize fishing expedition. These media companies are private companies, and they ought to pay the city back for the services they use and the time they waste on fishing.
You mean the companies (and individuals therein) that pay tax which goes towards paying for the police?
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Sure. I'm a property owner, so I pay property tax, some of which goes to the police department. In return for that, I get some level of police protection. If the police are busy doing something for somebody else, I don't get that level of police protection. If the somebody else is a private organization looking to make money from the recordings, why shouldn't they pay for it?
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The private officer rate is based on the officers' fee, insurance, pension, equipment use, etc.
The officers' fee is not the baseline for an officer's salary.
Likewise, those guys you might hire to sit in a car or make sure underage kids don't drink and the adults leave quickly when the event closes are not the same guys that do video review in some tech booth somewhere. Just like you don't have the skills to manage to make a proper paragraph on Slashdot, not everybody has the same skills to do all thing