UK Police Begins Deployment of 22,000 Police Body Cameras (thestack.com) 65
An anonymous reader writes: London's Metropolitan Police Service has begun a roll-out of 22,000 Body Worn Video (BWV) cameras to officers over the city's 32 boroughs after ten years of country-wide trials. The device, which records video only when the officer decides, has a 130-degree field of view and a 30-second buffer which permits police to begin recording even after an event has started. The makers of the camera also provide an Android/iOS app which can allow a remote viewer to connect to an officer's camera, effectively turning police operatives into walking CCTVs. Academic research has suggested that use of BWV cams can reduce complaints against officers by 93%, and the Met contends that the new technology, whose cloud-based systems erases unwanted videos after 31 days, is particularly effective in domestic violence cases.
Nearly useless (Score:4, Insightful)
"The device, which records video only when the officer decides"
That says it all. If it doesn't record all the time, there's no point to deploying them at all.
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Not 100% true.
a) If a camera isn't activated during an incident then the officer puts his own word in doubt.
b) Police need privacy too. They have to pee and stuff, just like other people.
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"It was a fluid, dangerous situation and I didn't have time to be fumbling with a camera when my life was potentially at risk!"
"At the time it didn't seem worth recording"
Either of those will work quite well in court to the types that worship the ground cops walk on.
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Believe it or not, there are total gobshites who need to take those falls - people who spit in policeman's faces, etc.
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So you record the fact of them spitting in the officers face, and you book them for it.
Policemen deciding to beat up people is never, ever the right answer.
Especially when their actions may not be what they appear on the surface.
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Believe it or not, there are total gobshites who need to take those falls - people who spit in policeman's faces, etc.
And there are people who deserve molten iron enemas, too.
That's why we have the rule of law, not just someone who is pissed off at someone dispensing instant justice.
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While the idea is tempting, the problem is the impossibility of even enforcement and the whole judge/jury/implementer problem.
As an example, say your best friend gets a little drunk and a cop comes up to him to try to get him to go home. He's not having any of it and spits at the cop. So the cop takes out his baton and clocks your friend across the head to "tune him up a little" and then takes him in. Your friend sits in the drunk tank with a pounding headache and is released in the morning with a bump o
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"It was a fluid, dangerous situation and I didn't have time to be fumbling with a camera when my life was potentially at risk!"
Yup, that pretty much sums up going to the toilet as far as I'm concerned.
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"It was a fluid, dangerous situation and I didn't have time to be fumbling with a camera when my life was potentially at risk!"
Not gonna happen. Police need to arrive at incidents.
Plus there's no reason to think they won't have the camera on by default most of the time. Your assumption is that it will always be off and they need to turn it on when something bad happens. Who's to say it won't be the other way around - switched on by default?
This rule sounds to me like they just want to give officers the illusion of control. Officers might find it's in their best interests to leave it on all the time, just so people believe them.
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The camera needs to be activated by the officer using their radio. Dispatch can then switch off the camera upon request of the officer. Officers should also carry a phablet with all the laws searchable, so they can substantiated their claim with the citizen, that the citizen, that the officer claims they witnessed the citizens breaking a law and there is the law as proof and video evidence. So use the radio, switch on the camera and dispatch then switches it off (should be two cameras, a higher resolution
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"It was a fluid, dangerous situation and I didn't have time to be fumbling with a camera when my life was potentially at risk!"
"The Court is grateful that you were not hurt, but considering the importance of your actions to this proceeding, and the rampant lying the Court has experienced when lacking video evidence of Police actions, the Court rules for [the other party]."
"At the time it didn't seem worth recording"
"Considering the importance of your actions to this proceeding, and the rampant lying the Court has experienced when lacking video evidence of Police actions, the Court rules for [the other party]."
Problem solved.
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If courts worked like that now we wouldn't need police cameras. Do you seriously think there's going to be a sea change in their attitudes? Doubtful.
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b) Police need privacy too. They have to pee and stuff, just like other people.
Since when are Body Worn Cameras pointed at the officer's crotch? At best it will show a picture of the urinal or stall door. I doubt the police would release video of bathroom breaks. Unless the officer is facing a mirror, nothing will be on video.
--
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Maybe that will be step 2. Firmware update.
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b) Police need privacy too. They have to pee and stuff, just like other people.
It should be a 2 minute long off switch that beeps to warn it's about to reactivate. The action to stop recording needs to be an explicit recorded choice and made difficult to do for long periods of time so an officer can't claim to have "forgotten" to activate it. I'd rather have an accidental piss take than a convenient lack of recording when an officer is accused of excessive force.
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Not 100% true.
a) If a camera isn't activated during an incident then the officer puts his own word in doubt.
b) Police need privacy too. They have to pee and stuff, just like other people.
I'm not certain how it works in GB, but here in the states, the policeman's word is golden unless there are some pretty serious reasons to believe otherwise.
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The makers of the camera also provide an Android/iOS app which can allow a remote viewer to connect to an officer's camera, effectively turning police operatives into walking CCTVs
is it just me or does this sound like a hack waiting to happen... if they take the time to change the default password and actually secure them.
Actually, it's ALWAYS ON (Score:2)
Read the story: the camera is actually continuously recording into a 30-second buffer. When the officer starts recording, the previous 30 seconds are uploaded as well as any ongoing video. This actually has serious privacy implications:
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Err - no.
It will be likely recording into an internal buffer, not streaming.
Streaming would be quite expensive for 30000 officers.
The problem is that the officer has privacy against internal affairs.
Supervisors should not get routine access.
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Cops are just digging their own graves if they don't record everything.
Bystander takes some cell phone video of an incident, maybe even edits it down to show a more anti-cop version, and what's that? ... the cop wasn't recording at the time??
Well doesn't that all seem rather suspect.
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With better 3d like facial recognition a side on or more direct image can match a face that could have been lost to a gov database.
To get a legal voice print.
The classic big camera of what was a Forward Intelligence Team https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] would often stand out and might not get that face image needed.
A lot of smaller cameras covering a group of protesters at a closer range might jus
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http://spectrum.ieee.org/consu... [ieee.org]
("... the problem seems to arise mainly when officers are allowed to turn cameras on at times of their own choosing.")
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You know you are perfectly entitled to wear a body camera of your own that records only when you want it to?
Should be compulsory everywhere (Score:3)
Should be compulsory everywhere, and subject to checks by independent reviewers. Helps prevent police abuse AND false accusations against the police.
Should be recording all the time (Score:2)
If it has a 30 second buffer to let the camera capture events that have already passed, then it must be recording all the time.
So why not save recorded video all the time? A GoPro can record 4 hours on a 32GB flash card, so a 128GB card would hold 12 hours of video -- more then enough for a shift.
The video doesn't need to be saved forever, it can be held on a storage system for 2 weeks (which is only around 1TB of storage per officer) to allow requests for video to be held for investigation.
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> only around 1TB of storage per officer
so with 30000+ officers that's "only" 30 petabytes of storage they'll need.
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Even with what government pays: About 2 days pay for the force of 30,000.
I think they could drop the frame rate a bit as well.
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> only around 1TB of storage per officer
so with 30000+ officers that's "only" 30 petabytes of storage they'll need.
Right. Is that a lot of storage these days? Anything times 30,000 is a large number, if a police officer's badge costs $100 to make, it costs over $3M just to outfit the force with badges.
A TB of enterprise storage, including backups costs around $500 - $2000/year these days (Amazon will rent you 1 TB of triple replicated storage for around $300/year) -- just a few percent of an officer's salary, and if the camera keeps the officer out of court just once for a false claim of abuse, it will have more than p
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point being that if it's not in the original budget then getting an extra couple of mil isn't an "only" thing.
otherwise "a few percent" salalry increase for the cops wouldn't be an issue now would it?
Point being that it should be in the budget -- having police cameras that the police can decide when to turn on protects the police more than it protects citizens.
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It could quite easily be required to be kept for 2 / 6
Oh and they need to be managed, so you can search for the time/date/officer/location.
That 1TB per officer per fortnight could end up being a billion dollar information management system...
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The video would be an official record, which means retention schedules kick in - you can't just delete it because no one has asked for it yet. /10 years.
It could quite easily be required to be kept for 2 / 6
Oh and they need to be managed, so you can search for the time/date/officer/location.
That 1TB per officer per fortnight could end up being a billion dollar information management system...
They are already discarding the videos after 31 days:
The new cameras are turned on by officers as necessary during dealings with the public or attendance at crime scenes, and automatically upload stored video when reconnected to a dock later at the station. Videos saved are discarded after 31 days unless earmarked as evidence, and any affected member of the public may request a copy of the video within that time-period.
Under their control is too soft (Score:3)
>> The device, which records video only when the officer decides,
I realise no-one wants to watch them in the bathroom, but having it totally under their control is too soft.
There at least needs to be a way to ensure they can't just turn it off then give someone a beating or whatever.
Maybe a rule that says they HAVE to have it turned on whenever they are dealing with the public, and that any arrest made without camera coverage is illegal/invalid.
It's actually worse than you think (Score:2)
On the one hand, the story makes it clear that the camera is always on and viewable by authorities; the officer just has control on whether it is locally overwriting a 30-second buffer or keeping a complete record. So even if the officer "keeps it off" in the bathroom, his supervisors can still snoop on him (no sound is transmitted though).
On the other hand, I agree that there needs to be a rule requiring officers to turn the cameras on -- but I don't think that arrests without the camera on should be inva
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>> if the camera really failed, for example (say it was damaged during the altercation)
Need to be VERY careful about ruling around this otherwise there WILL be a spate of officers "accidentally" damaging/disabling it.
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> Police have been making valid arrests without cameras for a long time.
Sure but this technology wasn't really available. You could make a similar argument that people have been driving relatively safely for hundreds of years, but you can bet that won't stop the government from making humans driving cars illegal (on safety grounds) the moment that self-driving cars are perceived to be able to reliably take over.
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On the other hand, I agree that there needs to be a rule requiring officers to turn the cameras on -- but I don't think that arrests without the camera on should be invalid. Police have been making valid arrests without cameras for a long time.
Over time, that may take care of itself. When judges and juries become accustomed to always having footage of the arrest, often from multiple angles, they may begin to consciously or unconsciously discount the officer's statements if not supported by video evidence.
Also, unless they have a very specific reason to turn it off, most cops will realize they're better off having it on because the fact that they're not recording doesn't mean someone *else* isn't, and that someone else may well produce carefully
sooner or later, Rule 34 (Score:2)
Utterly. Fucking. Pointless. (Score:3)
"...The device, which records video only when the officer decides..."
"...the new technology, whose cloud-based systems erases unwanted videos after 31 days..."
Well, I'm certain court cases will be delayed just long enough for the cloud retention rules to take care of any issue that might arise against the police department.
Seems we've forgotten about the entire fucking purpose of these things.
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Huh?
The entire fucking purpose is to get police officers getting off the hook?
I was being a bit sarcastic here, but yes, the purpose of police officers wearing cameras stemmed from illegal acts of aggression towards citizens, which we are now able to see and address when it occurs. The issue I have with the cloud retention rules is it tends to open the door for other questionable tactics to delay complaints against officers, and could easily allow evidence to essentially vaporize in the cloud after 31 days before the evidence can be presented or properly flagged and retained for a t
In addition to (Score:2)
Pointless (Score:3)
Straight from the Henhouse Investigation Committee chaired by foxes.
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Here's three straight off the top of my head, and that's just the Met:
Harry Stanley [wikipedia.org]
Jean Charles de Menezes [wikipedia.org]
Stephen Waldorf [wikipedia.org]