
Police Body Cameras: What Do You See? - danso
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/04/01/us/police-bodycam-video.html
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kbenson
> Not exactly a fight, is it? We silenced the pounding dance music, but you
> get the idea.

Yes, I do. You intended to obscure relevant information to purposefully
misconstrue or obfuscate the event.

The point of the cameras is that they are _additive_. That video, even without
audio, as an addition to a statement that says something to the effect of "we
danced with each other" would be viewed in an entirely different context. If
it was in addition to one party stating "we never got close to each other"
then it means something else.

In the end, it's additional information. If you have no information about the
event whatsoever from the parties involved, just some footage without sound,
then you have much larger problems.

~~~
sammermpc
One of the author's here — you're nailing the exact point that we were trying
to emphasize. In real cases, we often have incomplete or obscuring
documentation, and draw conclusions from that. The addition of another
perspective can radically change our perception of an encounter. Granted, it's
artificial to the point of absurdity in this case, but the point is made.

~~~
brebla
Reasonable person standard. A civilian does not typically get that close to a
police. If I got that close to a traffic cop, I would probably be in jail.

~~~
simoncion
A few things:

...do you live in the US?

> A civilian...

Police _are_ civilians. Some people see this as hair-splitting, but it's a
_very_ important distinction.

> If I got that close to a traffic cop, I would probably be in jail.

In the US, if you're jailed _just_ for being in close proximity to a police
officer, then you've been jailed illegally. (If, however, you refuse to give
the guy some room when he asks for it, then you _can_ be detained and (
_maybe_ ) jailed.)

~~~
woodman
> Police are civilians ... it's a very important distinction.

The misuse of the word is a symptom of the real problem, it is deeply
ingrained in police culture that they are fundamentally different. I think it
was one of Dave Grossman's books, an author that enjoys a military and LEO
following, that put forward the idea that they are sheepdogs - protecting the
flock from the wolves. So that is a big problem, as the idea has gotten picked
up in popular culture.

I don't really mind cops insisting that they aren't civilians, because I agree
with them to a point - the root word doesn't seem to apply anymore. That is
unlikely to change without a major overhaul in the standard escalation of
force model, where the officer is taught to control a situation by being one
level of force above everybody else - making them aggressors by default.

~~~
simoncion
> The misuse of the word is a symptom of the real problem...

Agreed.

> I don't really mind cops insisting that they aren't civilians...

 _I_ do. ;) Because...

> [Police use as a] standard [situation control mechanism the] escalation of
> force model, where the officer is taught to control a situation by being one
> level of force above everybody else - making them aggressors by default.

 _Military_ police use _de-escalation_ of force by default when interacting
with non-combatants. It is _drilled_ and _drilled_ and _drilled_ into their
heads that the very _fact_ that they are armed and/or armored _automatically_
escalates the situation, so they _MUST_ _continuously_ work to de-escalate the
situation from the _microsecond_ that they arrive on the scene.

Civilian police would be _so_ much more competent and _so_ much more
reasonable if they had the same training that actual _military_ personnel
receive.

~~~
woodman
The only difference between what I said and what you said is that you've added
that MP training emphasizes deescalation. Both MPs and civilian police observe
the same force continuum, but it seems to me that MPs are simply more
disciplined. I don't think it is realistic to try and bring regular cops up to
that standard of discipline, it would be much easier to simply provide a less
flexible justification for violence. Many years ago when I was in USMC
security force I remember being trained on actions that nudge the escalation
of force - which was likely the first time I heard the phrase "furtive
movement". While I'd seen a fair amount force applied subsequent to that
period of instruction, I never heard that justification used. It seems to be
the go to justification outside of the military.

My point is that giving cops the latitude that the escalation of force
provides is like giving the CEO's 15 year old nephew the commit bit and
letting him write safety critical software in non-MISRA C.

~~~
kelnos
_I don 't think it is realistic to try and bring regular cops up to that
standard of discipline_

Why is that? I can understand if you think there's a practical problem with
doing so (but would still lament that), but I think that ideally "regular
cops" should absolutely be held up to that same standard. I mean, look...
these people are literally given life-and-death responsibility over the
general populace. They should be held to a _ridiculously_ high standard.

~~~
woodman
> Why is that?

It is a practical problem. The military has an extremely long institutional
memory and has perfected the process of mental conditioning over hundreds of
years, to the point where 18 year olds can be given the power to kill and
dropped into situations with little to no supervision - and it generally
doesn't result in an x-rated version of Lord of the Flies. The methods that
the military uses to accomplish this would not work for police without a
costly tear down and slow rebuild. The list of methods is far too long to list
here, but they include a culture of self policing enabled by a meaningful
shared experience (basic redefinition of family), and a mythology that
requires a carefully managed narrative of history (Gen MacArthur's farewell
address at West Point is full of examples).

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jobu
They don't mention what I think is the biggest benefit of body cameras -
deterring bad behavior (by police and civilians).

When the Orlando, FL police department did a 12-month trial with body cameras:

 _In the 12 months from March 2014 through February 2015, use-of-force
incidents — also known as “response to resistance” incidents — dropped 53
percent among officers with the cameras. Civilian complaints against those
officers also saw a 65 percent decline._
([http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/police-body-camera-
study...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/police-body-camera-
study_us_561d2ea1e4b028dd7ea53a56))

~~~
PantaloonFlames
Exactly. What is the point of NYTimes running this kind of piece, except to
court favor with police unions.

It only serves to cloud the issue, by encouraging people to forget that
bodycam video and dashcam video are strictly additive evidence.

A preponderance of the evidence shows that police will do anything they can to
suppress information that makes them accountable. Hence dashcam audio that
gets disabled, nearby security camera footage that gets deleted, and so on.

Maybe NYTimes is just afraid that they will alienate the police unions if they
state the truth: that all law enforcement and the general public alike are
protected and constrained by low-cost video recording.

~~~
Maxious
> Hence dashcam audio that gets disabled

"Chicago Police Department officers stashed microphones in their squad car
glove boxes. They pulled out batteries. Microphone antennas got busted or went
missing. And sometimes, dashcam systems didn’t have any microphones at all"
[https://www.dnainfo.com/chicago/20160127/archer-
heights/what...](https://www.dnainfo.com/chicago/20160127/archer-
heights/whats-behind-no-sound-syndrome-on-chicago-police-dashcams)

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specialp
While cameras will never be the whole story, it does not hurt to have an
additional piece of evidence. Something I noticed while watching the videos
was that the wearer of the camera did not even have it properly strapped down,
so it was flapping all over the place attached to a t-shirt making the video
even worse (which is what the makers of these videos wanted). I think if the
camera was properly secured to a normal police uniform or vest it would be
much clearer what is going on.

~~~
CoreSet
I appreciate your comment, but couldn't it also be the intent of the police
officers wearing the camera _not_ to secure it, because shitty footage is sort
of more the desired effect than an unintended consequence?

I took this video as being an investigation of that very possibility.

~~~
kelnos
Possible, but the intent of the article seems to be to cast doubt on the value
of body cam footage as a matter of its inherent limitations. Police
intentionally not securing the camera to their body properly wouldn't be in
service of that.

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jimrandomh
To me, this article proved that body-camera evidence is extremely valuable,
you just have to be methodical when interpreting it. I watched the videos
carefully, frame-by-frame, and only made one error (I didn't identify the
taser in one of the videos). Re-watching that video while knowing what I was
looking for (as I would if comparing testimonies), it was easy to see that was
what had happened. I see how someone who wasn't really thinking about it would
be fooled, but if you think about what the videos show, they're excellent
data.

In the first one - the camera was bouncing around a lot, and the main question
was whether the guy was punching the guy wearing the camera. I looked at the
angle his arms were at in still frames, and concluded that they couldn't be
punches. The same works for both angles of the traffic stop video: you have to
pause and think through some geometry, but you can figure out that the officer
and suspect don't touch with reasonably high confidence.

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pluma
I'm not sure what the stats are supposed to show, but I suspect they live
updated stats don't quite prove the bias the author was intending to show.

At the time I'm writing this, both the majority of those who trust and those
who distrust the police saw the situations as non-threatening. The difference
between the groups is about 9% points, but that is hardly the kind of
difference you'd expect from how it is phrased.

That said, the point of body cameras is to help prove or disprove claims by
those involved in an incident about what happened. The use of the tazer is not
directly visible but even in the shaky body cam you can see the officer
grabbing the tazer and hear a distinctive clicking noise as the suspect falls
to the ground. It doesn't fully refute the claim that the suspect is reaching
for the gun, but as far as the hands are visible, it certainly doesn't support
the claim either (and the cop's aggressive behaviour while the suspect is
standing still certainly makes the claim more dubious).

It's also important to realize that when these are treated as evidence they
won't just be shown once. They will be scrutinized frame by frame, repeatedly,
down to the individual pixels if necessary.

There is no perfect evidence. Even crystal-clear, unobscured video footage of
a crime doesn't tell the whole story. But court cases are not about proving
what happened -- they're about merely eliminating all reasonable doubt about
whether a suspect did commit the punishable crime they are charged with.

As with all "facts" in life, court cases only deal with degrees of
probability. You don't have to _know_ because you _can 't_ actually know.

~~~
sammermpc
Yeah, have to admit — we really had no idea what the spread would be. In some
ways, it's surprising that there's much of a difference at all—or perhaps
gratifying.

A point of clarification for the curious—the majority of both groups actually
found the situations threatening. The 'serious' threat percentages in the
larger numbers, is confined only to the those who chose 'Very threatening' in
the questions.

From what you've observed, it sounds like we should revisit that choice
(earlier drafts displayed 'Somewhat threatening' and 'Very threatening'
choices grouped together, in which case a strong majority of both people who
trusted and distrusted the police, found the situations threatening.)

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deedub
You mean showing a couple seconds of a clip without any sound or context is
how these cameras are going to be used?

~~~
lukevdp
Yeah that's exactly what I thought. The guys dancing at the top of the article
was a 3 second clip. You don't see the lead up or hear the sound, how are you
meant to judge from that

~~~
SOLAR_FIELDS
The scary part in that is the line of what is admissable in a courtroom; what
if a jury is provided the same video without the surrounding context?

~~~
Retra
The defendant's lawyer would say "this is footage of the officer dancing with
my client" and context magically appears in the courtroom. But now we have to
wonder why anybody is in a courtroom with a jury at all, if that's what the
footage actually shows.

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Kenji
_It showed that the suspect fell because the officer shot him with a taser.

These details were not captured by the police body camera, though, revealing
another important point: Body cameras prioritize the officer’s point of view._

The tazer, including the officer aiming, was clearly visible and it causing
the fall was very obvious from the body camera.

Same with the other videos. You don't even need software to analyze frame by
frame, the web player is enough to see what is going on.

Cameras protect the innocent because they do not lie.

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jmckib
Anybody else watched the video and thought they were dancing? It occurred to
me but then I dismissed it because it seemed so disingenuous to use that as an
example of the footage being unclear.

~~~
PuffinBlue
Yes. But I didn't see it as disingenuous, I simply saw it as a test of
determining the action that was occurring.

The point of the article seemed to me to be about whether you can reconstruct
the true narrative of a situation from fragmented and incomplete data. So It
seemed valid to me to use any scenario to test that ability, dancing included.

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paddy_m
This article misses the point. The benefit of body cameras isn't for the gray
areas, the benefit is to remove the egregious (on both sides) edge cases.

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dsfyu404ed
The point of the body cam isn't to provide an all seeing narrative it's to
increase the chance that if any party does anything flagrantly unreasonable
it'll likely get caught on camera.

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ck2
Two things:

1\. Police purposely buy and insist on camera models that have very limited
vision, range and abilities because they want it to be as bad or worse than a
cop's limited observation ability

2\. Police have learned a new trick - they do not legally have to release the
camera footage at all - it is essentially for their own purposes only - so if
it helps them, they release it - if it works against them, they don't release
it and nothing you can do about it

If we want to change this, the same lawmakers that give police millions of tax
dollars for cameras needs to set higher standards, better cameras and full
release of videos to all involved parties in a very timely manner or face
criminal penalties of their own.

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mbfg
i had a reasonable interpretation of the videos, not 100% i missed the taz,
thought he just stumbled, but other than that i thought it was relatively
useful to see those body camera shots.

~~~
orbitingpluto
I had to watch each video twice before answering. And if I hadn't been given
the possibilities in a multiple choice format, I may have gotten something
wrong.

I found the car stop the most threatening for the officer. Seriously, if
you're stopped by the cops, hands on top of the steering wheel... reaching for
insurance papers looks hella scary.

~~~
pluma
Well, you can clearly see a lot of commotion happening inside the car. It's
clearly not a good idea to just walk next to the driver's side if you already
see flailing arms and get no reaction from announcing your presence.

I would have expected the officer to pause for longer before approaching the
door and to be a lot more vocal about what he is doing -- precisely because he
can't tell what is going on from a quick glance. You don't want to get stabbed
but you also don't want to taze or shoot an innocent person to death.

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merraksh
_Even if the camera was on the officer’s glasses or hat, the up-close footage
would be confusing._

The original footage was _not_ confusing, in my opinion. It was fabricated to
look like a violent interaction faced by an officer, and that is the most
likely situation. The audio off is necessary for the fabrication.

A camera mounted on the officer's glasses/hat would only make it even clearer
as there'd be less jerk. Perhaps a larger viewing angle would be useful too.

~~~
peteri
I worked here in the UK with body worn video. Cameras attached to heads are
really awful, while they're normally pointing in the right direction as
officers move around the video is virtually unwatchable as the view slews
around.

Most of the videos linked to are a bit artificial, in my experience video
taken while an officer runs isn't normally all that interesting.

The biggest bonuses we found were: Just telling someone it was being recorded
often made things less aggressive. Drunks & disorderly offenders would plead
guilty once they'd been shown the video from the previous night which means an
officer doesn't have to go to court. Less complaints and often there is a way
to sort out the truth. Domestic violence was a lot easier to prosecute, my
favourite tale was a drug den with a small child where within 24 hours the
parents had somehow managed to repaint / get fresh furniture when the social
workers went back the following day.

Most of the UK officers I've met have been good folks trying to do a difficult
job, although the US officers I spoke to do did seem to be a bit more military
in their attitude.

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dahdum
In an investigation, I wager these videos would be analyzed frame by frame,
seeing them like this makes it far more difficult to figure out what happened.
Just looping them several times it becomes much clearer.

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iconjack
65% "tend to trust the police" Are people living under rocks?

~~~
PuffinBlue
Some people don't live in the US.

I live in the UK where we have a completely different approach to policing.

I trust the police. They work hard in our communities to gain that trust. They
don't always get it right and they have their issues (some very big) but on
balance they are a trusted part of (most of) our communities here.

I really don't want to get into a flame war or anything, it's just that lots
of different place in the world have very different police forces.

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imh
I wonder what it would look like if the videos were stabilized. It could
dramatically decrease how wild they seem and make it easier to understand
what's going on.

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lbarrett
Moral of the story: we should all wear body cameras, just in case we're
involved in some sort of altercation, involving the police or not.

~~~
tracker1
I can see a point in time where police are accompanied by a couple of drones
that give different perspective to go along with body cameras.

~~~
vrfcodf
That sounds very helpful and frightening at the same time.

In the future where everything is recorded the records should be sealed unless
a warrant for those recordings is presented. The warrants should be made
public.

Recording everything is alredy happening in some cities, like London, but the
control is on the side of law enforcement.

