CommanderFrank
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An initial testing on 60 of New York’s finest may lead to having body cameras become an everyday part of the uniform for NYPD officers. Good idea or not?
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NYPD to Start Testing Body Cameras on Police Officers
- Thread starter CommanderFrank
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jojo69
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should be mandatory
turning the statists logic back on them...if they don't have anything to hide they don't have anything to worry about
turning the statists logic back on them...if they don't have anything to hide they don't have anything to worry about
Parmenides
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Expect the unforseen ....
.... and it may end up being the cops who want them in the end
.... and it may end up being the cops who want them in the end
Parmenides
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Well.... as long as they can turn it off during donut runts, right? 
Parmenides
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ugg... edit
donut runs
donut runs
robble
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Well.... as long as they can turn it off during donut runts, right?
and just before the beat/shoot someone.
temujin987
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i wonder how much video footage is suddenly lost because the camera "malfunctioned". but good thing anyway imo
While I think it is potentially a good step forward there's definitely a "careful what you wish for" feeling to this as well.
flashoverride
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A lot. Ask the Settle Police Department. Especially when footage they claim was "lost" when requested by the defense later turns up.
http://www.komonews.com/news/local/130209878.html
Police are required and necessary for the functioning of a municipality, and by and large most cops are professional and operate within the bounds of lawful conduct. But never, ever, ever trust them. They are executing in their official capacity as agents of the State, and the State is never to be trusted.
The problem with body cams is that police that are forced to use them too often "inadvertently" cover them up by turning their bodies sideways and turning their heads or putting and arm in front of them.
They need to be required to wear caps, and have them head mounted with wide angle lenses.
Also, PLEASE people, I beg you to get yourself a dashcam. They are so inexpensive, and I've personally been the victim of a cop lying through his teeth supposedly writing "field notes" that work as ironclad evidence in court even though its just his word vs mine. A judge will never take your word over a 10 year police force veteran, unless you have a camera.
http://dashboardcamerareviews.com/
With the militarization of our police, encouraging greater and greater aggression in our police, its worth the tiny expense. Besides, it will protect you from insurance fraud and simple collisions and the like at minor expense.
BTW another good reason:
http://www.autoblog.com/2014/09/06/reaching-for-glovebox-not-suspicious-when-pulled-over/
Cliffs Notes: Woman is pulled over by police, but four other officers in a second vehicle in gas masks raced up along side her. They saw her reaching for the glovebox (duh, where do you keep your insurance papers?), then when they found she had a pistol in there (for which she was licensed to carry), they threw a huge amount of charges at her from using a weapon while intoxicated and more. Never count on having access to the police's cameras, and in fact its a good idea to go with a quasi-stealth install of your own equipment to be safe.
Dayaks
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My small town uses them...
So far police departments and unions have been fighting them tooth and nail.
Mayor Gimenez has been in a fight with police union over cameras he wanted to implement.
There has been a few cases I know of where LVMPD claims they don't have interrogation tape. It later came out in trial that all interrogations are recorded. They were simply lying to defense during discovery to cover up their mess-ups (ignoring a request for an attorney).
It's a shame that policing has become less about preventing crime and getting justice to more about winning cases and making money. Here in Vegas, the DA/police use every trick (some illegal) to win a case.
wabbitseason
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I agree with the general sentiment of the thread.
At the same time, Bloomberg seriously cleaned up NYC. A lot of that was from controversial policies like stop-and-frisk, which have dubious constitutionality but actually make some sense in low-income or crime-ridden areas. "Progressive" Bill de Blasio may seriously undermine the well-oiled machine (meaning the city as a whole, not just the police) that Bloomberg created. Hopefully he's secretly pragmatic and sensible enough to recognize that his rhetoric can't be implemented wholesale in the real world.
At the same time, Bloomberg seriously cleaned up NYC. A lot of that was from controversial policies like stop-and-frisk, which have dubious constitutionality but actually make some sense in low-income or crime-ridden areas. "Progressive" Bill de Blasio may seriously undermine the well-oiled machine (meaning the city as a whole, not just the police) that Bloomberg created. Hopefully he's secretly pragmatic and sensible enough to recognize that his rhetoric can't be implemented wholesale in the real world.
Just needs to go in combination with a return to Libertarian values where police simply can't barge into your home or vehicle with little to no grounds, or even ask to look at your cellphone or so much as ask for identification just because you're walking down the street.Security & privacy nightmare but I'm sure the NSA will love it.
Video of police sat at computers with the camera pointed at kbd & screen capturing everything.
Getting passwords will be trivial using audio capture of key clicks too.
If police are kept out of your home and you experience little interaction unless warranted for say typical traffic violations and the like, then there's really no expectation of privacy at that point once an officer does have reasonable grounds to be "up in yo face" with his camera. And at that point the camera protects both the police officer and the civilian as long as they are behaving themselves, and I think they are much more likely to behave themselves if their actions are recorded "in stone" so to speak.
It should hopefully quickly weed out lying bullies like this (provided we weaken the police unions that practically allow officers to get away with murder):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kassP7zI0qc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t583CR_XECA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-b-FZKULJMs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iKUOiZqUD-0
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Zarathustra[H]
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Yeah, should be mandatory for ALL law enforcement nationwide.
It helps not only the people, but it helps the good officers protect themselves from false claims.
It helps not only the people, but it helps the good officers protect themselves from false claims.
Not at all surprised.
Distraction for turning them on? Have them on all the time then. You're on duty, and your duty is protect and serve as a public servant. Considering the crap police have been doing with little regard, it's hard for me to sympathize. Especially know they basically get a slap on the left hand and a check on the right for abusing their power.
It's a high capacity, multi trillion dollar business. Plea bargains are the trap, mandatory minimum sentences are the leverage. It's a stacked deck, and the ones who really lose in our system are those who are innocent, lose their fight, and then serve every minute of their sentence. The stakes are so high that innocent people elect to plead guilty to lesser charges in order to avoid the risk of being sentenced to a lengthy mandatory.
Judge Eleanor Schockett regarding the Plea Bargain, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sItvhtS6fnQ
DeathCloud
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All footage should be recorded by a third party or made available online to the public.
MrGuvernment
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with systems this day in age all video can easily be streamed to storage servers in a data center, no reason for any of it to be local on the camera anymore, even storage systems IN the cop cars for faster closer range.
TechLarry
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Not sure what good it will do. There are clear video's of shenanigans now that don't seem to go anywhere.
MisterHipster
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Very, very good idea. All police should have to wear cameras.
As long as we have the tapes, at least it can get people off the hook after the fact. The most common trick of the police unions now whenever an officer does something BEYOND reprehensible is claim "post traumatic stress disorder". That way the offender cop instead of losing his job actually gets as much as a month of vacation... sorry "paid leave of absence" in order to recover. About the only way you can get fired is by pissing into the wind and aggravating the chain of command or have enough strikes on your record that it becomes too tedious to cover for you.
The MO officer who threatened to kill people (without actually doing anything) lost his job. And do you really think any officer given mandatory leave is going to have much of a career after that, at least within that department? You think after narrowly avoiding termination he's getting a pat on the back from the chief and a round of beers after work? No, he's humiliated, career shattered, and will probably be nothing more than a beat cop for the rest of his life.
I'm sorry you have such a low opinion of the police because you were offended by them on 1 or 2 occasions in your life. Would you like to hear the awesome stories I have of the police where they came through in flying colors?
I'm glad you bring that up, as with a little bit of research, you have reinforced EVERYTHING I have said.
He was fired only after repeat extreme and prodigious amounts of public pressure from all over the country after a very long period of time. Even then, the council defended the officer and said the problem is that private citizens are allowed to be armed.
It takes tremendous public pressure on politicians to get any action, otherwise these things are simply swept under the rug, and that's not a matter of opinion. William Bartlett is a perfect example of this.
This wasn't his first offense, that came up when they finally got him on trial for the death threats. In three prior incidents, he was found to have violated rules of conduct, and his partner also failed to report them each and every time showing the complicity of the "brotherhood".
And recall my comment about just how celebrities like to blame alcoholism anytime they do something idiotic and then simply go into rehab and all is forgiven, and how PTSD is the cop equivalent of that? BINGO!!!!
Harless was placed on medical leave and other officers donated their sick days to him when his paid sick-leave time ran out. The union had asked for an extension for the disciplinary hearing due to Harless being diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder.
The trauma? It was in 2003 when someone bit his finger... I'm not making this up, he was traumatized a decade ago from a finger bite, and even if that complete nonsense were true, he was allowed to terrorize people for a decade after without repercussions until finally a video went viral and the whole country was up in arms putting on so much pressure that something had to be done.
How does that have anything to do with what we are discussing here?
There are approximately 900,000 police officers on duty in the United States right now. If 2/3rds of them are either bad or complicit in hiding bad behavior for the sake of the "brotherhood", that leaves 300,000 good cops out there every year. So I take it that means that a story or two of yours is somehow going to change the fact that the police are becoming more and more aggressive and less and less accountable to the American people?
Everyone here understands the need for police. What most people are getting fed up with is how aggressive so much of the police forces around the country have become, and how little accountability they have to the people they are meant to "serve and protect". That's why the call is for cameras on the cops so that the bad apples can be weeded out and the other officers can't turn a blind eye if they too are caught on camera allowing the bad ones to get away with murder, not a disbandment of the country's police force.
BladeVenom
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They should be mandatory. Anytime a camera just happens to be off during an arrest, the officer's testimony should be thrown out and the officer fined.
Wierdo
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Agreed, public servants need to be held accountable for their actions, unchecked power will get abused, it's human nature.
Also this is good for both cops and citizens alike:
http://www.policefoundation.org/content/body-worn-cameras-police-use-force
Title: The Effect of Body-Worn Cameras on Police Use-of-Force
Because you are being unfair in your analysis of police corruption. This "discussion" is nothing more than a grand display of confirmation bias.
2/3rds? How about we just say 90% are corrupt. Hell 95%. Lets just pull numbers out of our ass all day long. Who the hell assumes a number like 2/3rds could ever remotely be realistic? If thats the case then you should have no problem sourcing oh lets say, 5000 incidents of police corruption alone today. Hell that should be easy if two fucking thirds of cops are corrupt. 2/3rds, lol... just lol if you really believe that.
In my old neighborhood, before I moved out of the city, a burglary suspect was fleeing from officers on foot. 6 officers pursued on foot through a residential neighborhood KNOWING the suspect was unarmed. One officer shouted "Freeze" and another just started unloading his gun.
7 shots were fired, the first 3 hit the suspect in the rear and leg, causing him to fall, the officer continued to fire, one of which went through a wall of a house containing a man with his 2 year old child asleep on his chest, hitting the man in the head and killing him instantly.
The officer was suspended with pay during the investigation.
Said officer was discharged for use of excessive force on an unarmed suspect, no charges were brought against him.
Said officer went a few towns over and got a job, doing the same god damned thing.
Right or wrong, once you're in the brotherhood you're covered and it takes an act of god to make an unruly officer face REAL disciplinary action.
7 shots were fired, the first 3 hit the suspect in the rear and leg, causing him to fall, the officer continued to fire, one of which went through a wall of a house containing a man with his 2 year old child asleep on his chest, hitting the man in the head and killing him instantly.
The officer was suspended with pay during the investigation.
Said officer was discharged for use of excessive force on an unarmed suspect, no charges were brought against him.
Said officer went a few towns over and got a job, doing the same god damned thing.
Right or wrong, once you're in the brotherhood you're covered and it takes an act of god to make an unruly officer face REAL disciplinary action.
Semantics
2[H]4U
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3rd party would absolutely work with police unions. Made available online to the public would not too many issues esp when you get to court cases.
Pretty sure state recording laws would complicate that would probably have to pass exceptions although in general non-civilians are except but i expect laws would have to curtail to private property recording. I mean without audio it's pretty worthless.Zarathustra[H];1041074111 said:
Anyways not a fan of lapel cameras way to often will get covered up because your arm blocks it when you do just about anything including holding up a gun. Along with things like leaning over the camera just ends up pointing at the ground etc, need a camera attached to the head to get the officers point of view. Lapel camera might as well just be an audio recorder because of how useless it is at framing the proper subject.
These tend to be great for officers, the only thing they fight on is who gets to view the footage for what reason. After all you wouldn't want to wear a camera at work so your supervisor could just mull over your footage to find a fire-able offense or something timeserver you piss them off.
Outside of that reports of police misconduct goes down with the cameras mostly because people who know they are being recorded tend to not make shit up and behave more on both sides.
It's one thing to be a public servant, and another to be a worker for a private company.
I don't think a camera will have a great effect on liars. Most probably would forget, and a lot of lies are made up on the spot because of agitation, and such things.
So to summarize officers fired upon an escaping suspect (although if he's running lets not bother calling him a suspect) whom they did NOT know what unarmed (how could they ever possibly know this if he's fleeing?), fired only enough rounds to subdue him instead of killing him, and a terribly tragedy that could happen ANY TIME you fire a weapon occurred. Since the shooting was justified and the father dying was purely an accident, he continues to be employed today, although not in his original district.
Semantics
2[H]4U
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Around shootings people never seem to realize how it works for an officer. They will always shoot a volley 3-5 rounds into the center of mass. Even with all their training an officer over their career will only discharge their weapon a hand full of times if even.
Although people complain about officer shootings more they have actually gone way down over the past 30 years, officers today fire their weapon much less than their predecessors did 30 years ago. This in part has been due to a change of training and more use of non-leathals such as pepper spray and tasers coupled with wrestling with suspects more.
Although people complain about officer shootings more they have actually gone way down over the past 30 years, officers today fire their weapon much less than their predecessors did 30 years ago. This in part has been due to a change of training and more use of non-leathals such as pepper spray and tasers coupled with wrestling with suspects more.
What you have here is called "results oriented thinking", otherwise known as hindsight. These police shootings arent some random occurrence by some blood thirsty cop who would otherwise be a serial killer if he didnt have a badge. They are all the result of training that specifically says this is how to handle these situations. If you think cops are too quick on the trigger then you need to look at their training and not the cop.