Militarized police
Obama wants to avoid that. So, he’s asking for funding for body cameras for police officers.
Remember, I do this to entertain me, not you.
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December 2nd, 2014 at 3:34 pm
They can get funding for the body cameras by selling the military equipment to the public instead of just giving it to local and state law enforcement agencies. I know, I know, that involves two things that are antithetical to our overlords in Washington: the free market and military equipment in the hands of the public. (Well, three if you include not finding more reasons to tax and spend.)
December 2nd, 2014 at 3:40 pm
C’mon Ken, that equipment may “fall into the wrong hands” if it’s sold back to the EMPLOYERS. That’s the usual impudent response of those with whom we have entrusted our delegated authority.
December 2nd, 2014 at 3:43 pm
This is a welcome development, but… the same issues that plague dashcam evidence are certain to plague bodycam evidence. Too often we see instances in which multiple dashcams on a given scene experience sudden and temporary technical failures. That’s no good for anyone. At a minimum there needs to be some statutory remedy for that, perhaps codifying in law that where bodycams or dashcams malfunction when they could have captured exculpatory evidence all charges against the accused are dropped.
December 2nd, 2014 at 4:23 pm
True. On the other hand, I think they exonerate (cops and non-cops alike) often enough to offset that problem.
I could get behind that, too. Or at least excluding all evidence that could not have been obtained without whatever happened while the cameras were out (something like the “fruit of the poisoned tree” doctrine).
December 2nd, 2014 at 5:34 pm
It’s not an issue of militarization but one of which side they’re on. Remember it.
December 2nd, 2014 at 6:36 pm
The President has NO delegated power over State or local police. He should focus his attention on body cams for FBI, BATF, DEA and DHS. It is these agents who for whom he is responsible to hold accountable. It is also these for which it would be much more difficult for wronged citizens to redress any grievances.
December 2nd, 2014 at 7:54 pm
Obola is just too damned good at his own job to worry about doing it, what with all those other people’s jobs to unlawfully micromanage.
December 2nd, 2014 at 8:56 pm
So he says he wants to demilitarize the police, but instead of eliminating the program that provides military equipment to the police, he creates a NEW federal program that gives equipment to the police.
And anyone else done the math? It’s $3000 per body cam.
December 2nd, 2014 at 9:29 pm
They should take down all the traffic cams and instead place them on some sort shoulder-mounted gimbal for the officers.
December 2nd, 2014 at 9:48 pm
How is a body cam gonna see the perp at the most critical time if the officer is using a Weaver or Isosceles stance?
(Referring of course to the Saint Michael of Swisher Sweets shooting.)
December 2nd, 2014 at 10:29 pm
Magic
December 2nd, 2014 at 11:01 pm
$3,000.00? Maybe $300.00 if you factor in an additional 100% markup for bribes and graft. S&W has one for around $130.00.
December 2nd, 2014 at 11:08 pm
Jurors are allowed to use negative evidence to impeach the credibility of the witnesses. I know that if the police testified to me that all of their cameras just happened to succumb to gremlins right at the time Mr. Accused supposedly did his crime requiring an insta-beat-down, I’m going to be more than a little incredulous.
December 3rd, 2014 at 12:12 am
I agree with Laura Ingraham: Put a camera on Obama instead. Yeah, I’ll chip in for that.
Hell, put one on Chip-on-Shoulder Holder, too.
It’s too bad Lois Lerner wasn’t wearing one…
December 3rd, 2014 at 1:53 am
Funny how the complaints against police go down when the cameras are present.
Is it the cops behavior that changes or that of the “public”?
December 3rd, 2014 at 2:21 am
Yes.
December 3rd, 2014 at 3:16 am
I’d like to have one for the next time I go to Hooters.
Just to know if I went or dreamed.
December 3rd, 2014 at 8:39 am
Has Obama ever proposed anything that didn’t cost taxpayers more money?
December 3rd, 2014 at 9:49 am
Hooters? If they looked better than average you dreamed it.
December 3rd, 2014 at 12:09 pm
It’s 2014.
There’s no excuse for police officers to not have body cameras.
There’s even less an excuse to have body cameras that don’t work very well short of kinetic impact damage…I understand it’s a man-made item and they break, malfunction, or whatnot every so often.
Get them on a maintenance program…its not that hard, work does it with the trucks and forklifts.
Sell me a couple M4’s with the toys aboard and I’m sure that’ll fund half a dozen of these things. Seriously, people wear, what is it, the GoPro, skydiving and racing and whatnot, its not like they resemble the first generation of cellphones where if it gets dropped, they may break.
December 3rd, 2014 at 1:34 pm
“Randall” in a Florida cop blog (thinblueflorida.com) brings up a point that’s been completely overlooked by everyone else in this debate: the costs involved in a FOIA request of body-camera images. Like Title III intercepts, body-camera tapes have to be “minimized” to delete images of innocent encounters and protect the privacy rights of noninvolved persons who may be on the tapes. Every second of every tape must be scrutinized, which may add up to hundreds of man-hours per request. Who will pay for it? The requestor? The police department (i.e., the taxpayers?)
Body cameras are a chic and trendy idea, but reality, as always, is a bitch.
December 3rd, 2014 at 2:18 pm
Actually Old that is what Fast forward is for. Skip to the perp scene ignore the rest.
December 3rd, 2014 at 2:20 pm
Well, they don’t use “tape” anymore; it’s all .mpg. You can go to the section in question by real-time stamp, narrow it down to the first and last video frames of the incident, and save that video section off as a new file.
For legal purposes, each frame can be numbered and checksum recorded by the camera to ensure it hasn’t been edited. This can all be done in a minute or so per request. You don’t have to examine any frames, or even look at any frames outside the incident.
December 3rd, 2014 at 2:50 pm
nk: I may have been misunderstood. $3000 is what fedgov is PAYING for the $100 cameras.
December 3rd, 2014 at 5:04 pm
Read the post.He makes reference a case in WA that illustrates the point.
December 3rd, 2014 at 11:08 pm
I am all for Police Body Cameras! Yes and cruiser cameras, and Motorcycle Cop cameras!
Why?
Cause it will be a super boon the IT department. Yes folks, the cameras may be cheap, but the servers, disk space, and personnel need to BACKUP ALL THE VIDEOS, ARCHIVE THEM, AND RESTORE THEM WHEN NEEDED will cost far more than the cameras.
See say 100 cops in the PD. Each day 100 videos, 1050 quality, with maybe 1/2 gig per video.
That’s 50 gb in JUST ONE DAY. 30 days later and that’s 50X30 1.5 TB. Now you need at least a years archive and that’s 1.5 tb X 365 = 547.5 TB (yes Tetrabytes) of data! Plus the geeks needed to upload and download (on request) any and all videos.
Yep, a boon for the IT department, but a real boo-hoo for the TAXPAYER.
December 3rd, 2014 at 11:11 pm
Ops.. I ment 1.5 tb X 12 = 18 TB. But then say it’s a 1000 man police dept. Now it’s 180 TB per year.
I’d say one server can take maybe 10 of those 2 TB drives (thus 20 tb) and one ends up with 9 servers for the PD.
And imagine Houston or Dallas. Yes a mini-IT department just dedicated for video.
December 4th, 2014 at 3:09 am
Data retention makes that 3k price tag an unnderestimate. This is COPS all over again. What happens in 5 years when the Feds stop paying?
December 4th, 2014 at 8:20 am
I can’t see that Obama wants to avoid that. The thing is that in certain areas, police has to be “boots on the ground” and cannot make e.g. a detention from an armored vehicle. That said, though, it seems never have also federal agencies been so “militarized” as under the Obama government.
December 4th, 2014 at 11:53 am
I know it’s not really tape, that’s just a useful term for storage media.
If a department or officer is sued, the subpoena won’t be for something you can fast-forward to, like “the incident involving Officer Smith on January 3, 2014.”
The big money is in establishing a pattern of conduct, so the subpoena will be for “all incidents involving Officer Smith involving persons of [pick one] descent from January 1, 2010, to date.” Someone will have to sit down and go through hundreds of hours of tape and minimize it to delete the time you got a speeding ticket from Officer Smith in 2011 (assuming you’re not a member of the affected class). That will cost a fortune. Have fun paying for it.
December 4th, 2014 at 12:12 pm
I think it would be “good” for *all* cops to *always* wear an operating camera — subject to several constraints. Data only kept for a “short” period of time, e.g., 7 days and then deleted if no requests are made for the data. If data is requested then the data shall be kept for a longer time period. *NO* analysis of the data by the government allowed without an explicitly made request for *particular* purposes — and the request and any data examined *must* be available to the “public” for a “longer” time period; “routine” or secret analysis being *strictly* prohibited. Loss of employment and jail time for violators — longer jail time for anyone who participates in a “coverup” of a violation.
December 4th, 2014 at 5:05 pm
bob r, when you say “all cops”, I trust that includes all federal agents like BATF, DEA, FBI, DHS and others who have arrest powers and are armed.
December 5th, 2014 at 2:34 pm
bob r–
Seven days is way too short a time. Most laws allow at least a 30-day retention for anything to give affected parties time to A) find out the information exists, and B) make a legally sufficient request.
If information comes out a year later and you say you destroyed the records after 7 days, congratulations, you’ve just become the new Lois Lerner.
No analysis? What if Officer Smith’s camera captures a guy on the sidewalk who is the subject of a warrant in another state? What if the subject inadvertently captured on Officer Smith’s camera is the subject of a conspiracy investigation? Do you want that information public?
There’s a lot more to police work than just thumping on people you don’t like.
December 8th, 2014 at 9:21 pm
To the people worrying about the enormous storage requirements… It’s really not that much data. Any moderately sized company will have storage requirements in excess of 20 TB. Most large companies exceed that by several orders of magnitude. Here’s a system that’s serious overkill for even a large police department:
http://www8.hp.com/us/en/products/disk-storage/product-detail.html?oid=5062117#!tab=features
I like the idea of selling toys to fund the cameras and the IT requirements that come with them. I have no doubt that most criminals the cops shoot had it coming, but I have equally little doubt that the police in the US are ill-trained in the use of their weapons, have many bad actors who abuse the public trust, and would have fewer misuses of their power if there was a way to review their true actions. I’ve had one officer lie to me and fabricate traffic charges because he could. They were later tossed (the idiot actually overwrite his prior charges with new, higher ones which could be easily seen on the citation), but I had to waste a good part of a work day to deal with it. If some officers are willing to be dishonest in minor things like traffic citations, how much more likely are they to be dishonest when their careers and reputations are at stake? We see too many documented examples of police misconduct to sweep it under the rug.
That said, I can’t see any reason or justification for using federal funds for this – it should be local.