
Police Body Cameras: What Good Is a Video You Can't See? - pmiller2
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/04/what-good-is-a-video-you-cant-see/391421/?UTM_SOURCE=yahoo&amp;single_page=true
======
lotharbot
I was impressed by the way this article introduced the relevant issues without
getting caught up in trying to give simple solutions.

Because body cams will capture footage of victims and associates and
bystanders, as well as perpetrators and officers, there's an inherent tension
between protecting the privacy of everyone in a video and allowing those in
the video to see the captured footage of themselves. Every "simple" solution I
can think of (including all of the ones described in the article), I can
easily envision scenarios where that proposed solution would seem to be
inappropriate.

I suspect the way we handle police body cam videos will be a point of
contentious debate for another decade or more.

~~~
higherpurpose
That doesn't make any sense to me. Video of bystanders? So what? Shouldn't we
be outraged about other public cameras as well that the police use to catch
criminals then? Don't people who film the police also film "bystanders"?

I think at the very least if the videos are kept secret until judicial review,
then the police officers should be _forced_ to keep them on all the time
during work hours. The videos should also be automatically uploaded somewhere
where that police department can't control what happens to the videos.

~~~
bigiain
This is important.

There was a case here a few years ago where someone accused the police of
assaulting them when they went in to report something (misconduct by a police
officer from my vague memory). The police station had cctv cameras, but when
the court asked for the video, the 20mins around the time claimed by the
victim was "missing due to technical difficulties" \- curiously the _only_
missing video in the preceding 18 months or any subsequent time.

If the police get to collect and only use the video when it suits them, I'd
like to see "presumption of innocence" not apply (to police) when normally
expected bodycam footage is missing.

~~~
jrs235
I posted this link else where in the comments too:

[http://thefreethoughtproject.com/police-cadet-turns-cop-
turn...](http://thefreethoughtproject.com/police-cadet-turns-cop-turning-body-
cam-pummeling-victim/#Xf7oUQvQH1rdESvr.99)

------
rasz_pl
Police body cameras dont, an wont matter as long as old corrupt judges LET GO
murderers recorded killing people.

I mean what does it take to put a cop in prison when a video of him strangling
someone to death is not enough?

~~~
Shivetya
Welcome to the world the public employee unions have created; where once your
employed its damn near impossible to fire you, let alone get you charged with
a crime.

A great article on how hard it is to fire a cop because of the rules police
unions have managed to get into place.
[http://reason.com/archives/2012/10/19/how-special-rights-
for...](http://reason.com/archives/2012/10/19/how-special-rights-for-law-
enforcement-m)

~~~
KMag
I agree that public servant unions generally have too much power. However, I'd
like to hear more about your theory about how police unions have leverage over
judges.

Firing someone is much different from not throwing out a court case against
them. I can see how police unions have a lot of leverage over the executive
branch, but I'm not sure how they extend that leverage over the judicial
branch.

~~~
Shivetya
Well lets return to the Atlantic for an article on how.

[http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/12/how-
poli...](http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/12/how-police-
unions-keep-abusive-cops-on-the-street/383258/)

You have to be accused of a crime before a Judge gets involved. That was the
whole point I was making. The unions do their best to keep the officer from
ever being charged. Got to love the down votes on my previous post, ignorance
is of the power of these unions are why we have the problems in the police we
do today.

Even politicians run scared as some city unions have put up billboards next to
homes of politicians who dare challenge them.

~~~
fnordfnordfnord
How does the union have any control over who gets charged? They don't other
than through the fact that the union reps are also police officers and can
exert influence over one another.

It would be far better if a completely independent quasi-citizen/law
enforcement organization were required to review use of force by police, and
empowered to charge them. Also, having local DA's prosecute cops looks to be a
disaster, as well as having the normal grand jury in the loop. Maybe a second
grand jury is needed, but made up of poor people instead.

Unions may be far from perfect but your arguments aren't convincing or even
particularly relevant. Crying about the downvotes just makes me want to use
mine. Maybe the downvotes are because your tone is too trollish.

------
tomohawk
This illustrates exactly why having the gov't do something is a much different
thing than when private citizens or groups do something, and why the gov't
often ends up with a solution that "doesn't make sense".

I have to wonder if, in the end, what what we'll end up with is universal
surveillance, not imposed by police, but imposed on ourselves. It will just be
assumed that everyone and every building will be recording video all the time.
At that point, it won't matter if police are recording or not.

------
slimsag
Is there good reason for the videos to be public record? Why not have our
judicial system decide/review police video on a case-by-case basis, rather
than having them be public records?

A defendant should be innocent until proven guilty -- and those videos apply
just as well. Is the police video for or against you? The court should decide.

If the video is "missing", a outside authority should investigate and weight
should be given to the possibility that evidence was tampered with by the
police. The public should demand this just as we have body-cameras.

~~~
nowarninglabel
There's a real-world problem seeking a solution, video that is verifiably
stored (in multiple places) and encrypted but accessible via the judiciary
when a court order allows it. It's not that the pieces aren't there, but
rather that someone would need to package it well and sell it to local
governments.

~~~
josephpmay
I can say as a matter of fact that the body camera system being implemented by
the LAPD works exactly as you suggest. This is one of the reasons why it's
taking so long to implement. Many people don't realize how important it is for
a system like this to be implemented properly the first time.

------
marze
A lot of police work takes place in public areas, where there is no
expectation of privacy and anyone is able to take pictures and video.

There doesn't seem to be any reason not to make all footage from public areas
generally available.

~~~
sdrothrock
What if you were being raped in a park and policemen came to assist you.

Would you want that footage to be publicly available?

Likewise, would you want everyone who ever hated you to have access to that
footage to use however they want? Once the cat's out of the bag...

Edit: Other fun situations:

1\. You're attacked by someone and can't run, but have enough
experience/training to subdue them; the cops show up later and the video
doesn't show you being attacked, so you look like the aggressor.

2\. You're attacked and can't defend yourself or fail to such an extent that
people would look at the video and laugh at you.

3\. You're on video doing something incredibly out of the norm for you,
whatever the reason.

4\. You're on video in a PLACE that you wish other people didn't know you
frequented. A strip club, a gay bar, a church, a vegan grocery store, a pot
dealer, etc.

5\. You're on video doing something that your friends/family would react
negatively to. Let's say you're a doctor and someone has a heart attack at
Political Rally Green. You're up front and on camera for everyone else to see,
including your family, who are all diehard Red supporters.

~~~
brc
All of those scenarios can happen with ubitiquos CCTV, and whether or not it
is released is entirely up to the owner of the camera.

~~~
notahacker
Ubiquitous CCTV would be a lot more unpopular if people looking to build
general purpose people-tracking databases, create hit-lists of visitors to
abortion clinics, gay bars or synagogues or make thrilling real-life-rape
compilation videos found it easy to persuade owners of the footage to share it
with them though.

CCTV would also be even more unpopular if it came with sound and instead of
recording largely uninteresting ongoings in public spaces, it was used to
record intrusions into other people's houses at particularly stressful times
and record their stuttering non-answers to very intimate questions and
accusations they're often ultimately proved to be entirely innocent of.

------
jeffdavis
Nice, balanced article on an emotional topic.

I think most people would agree that the video should come into evidence if
someone ends up dead. Also, most people would agree that videos should not all
be released publicly. But there are a lot of difficult situations between
those two extremes.

Even if the rules about releasing footage are quite restricted, I think body
cameras will influence the behavior of police. Not always for the better
necessarily, but I think they will reduce the number of fatal police
shootings.

~~~
thaumasiotes
How do you envision body cameras making police behavior worse?

~~~
TheCondor
Fundamentally, they are people. Maybe even more importantly, crime doesn't
just happen nonstop all the time everywhere. How many of us spend time at work
not working? If every one of your smoke breaks, trips to hn, and other
assorted breaks were recorded, I'm sure a damning case could be made against
you the next time you're up for review. You don't think that would have
political implications? I can't think of all the out comes that could have.

Likewise, I'll tell a personal story. I tend to drive fast. I've not had many
tickets but I've had a few. Two really cool police gave me warnings a handful
of years back instead of tickets; not just a warning but they reminded me of
the car seat in the back, my family and suggested I slow down to be safer. It
had a dramatic impact, I'd just get pissed off and pay a ticket but the
warning, that they chose to give, stuck with me more and I've slowed down.
Could that be done by a robot police officer that never takes breaks and
follows the law literally and letter by letter? What if those cops had a
record of giving certain races warnings but came down hard on other races?

im not against body cameras, especially in the current world of paramilitary
style police, but it seems like there is a need for some human wisdom on a
case by case basis here. Simple fixes could easily have some bad outcomes.

------
poqi
This is a much better article:
[http://www.salon.com/2015/04/24/we_must_disband_the_police_b...](http://www.salon.com/2015/04/24/we_must_disband_the_police_body_cameras_arent_enough_only_radical_change_will_stop_cops_who_kill/)

------
jrs235
And if officers can turn them off when ever without accountability then what's
the point? We won't have accountability, we'll have accountability theater.

If this cadet (not an officer) hadn't (probably) thrown his career chances out
the window, the officer involved would never have been held accountable and
probably would continue to do it again in the future:
[http://thefreethoughtproject.com/police-cadet-turns-cop-
turn...](http://thefreethoughtproject.com/police-cadet-turns-cop-turning-body-
cam-pummeling-victim/#Xf7oUQvQH1rdESvr.99)

And, as others mentioned, as long of departments just hand out paid vacations,
prosecutors refuse to press charges, and judges let officers go, video cameras
won't matter.

------
lorddoig
If the victim/complainant/whatever was the one with the camera, you'd still
get most if not more of the benefits of accountability. So how can we make
that happen instead? Simple - have the police there in two distinct roles: 1)
a cop; and 2) your own personal film crew. They'd film it and perhaps even
hold it "in trust", but you'd own it. Such a system would empower citizens a
lot and contribute almost nil to the scary mega-state.

We're currently experiencing a shift to authoritarianism by the backdoor with
NSA and friends, and in such times cheap and effective solutions such as this,
which achieve the stated goal and no more, should be championed I think.

------
greenjellybean
I only skimmed the article but the discussion on how police body cam footage
is released should be had.

On the one hand, I would like the footage to be fully released but what about
instances similar to people being swatted[0]? Surly there should be limits in
place but can we really trust police to be ethical?

Hopefully more people comment but surely there will be more of these types of
articles written in the future as body cams continue to roll out.

[0][https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=swatted](https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=swatted)

------
anonbanker
this is what subpoenas are for. Let the court force them to provide it.

and if the camera "turns out" to be on the fritz, they can provide the IT
support ticket, complete with dates and times entries were made.

~~~
bigiain
My approach? If the cop's camera suspiciously turns out to be "on the fritz,
your honor", all the cops evidence loses it's "magic cop assumption of
reliability", and they fail to establish any "balance of probability" in a
purely he-said/she-said situation. (even _with_ backdated IT support ticket
claims - make it in the individual cop's interest to have working, reliable
gear - penalise him personally/professionally if he "lets it slide", just like
he and his colleagues penalise you if you let your licence or insurance
renewal "slide".)

------
sblom
I think this made the HN front page the other week, but Seattle PD actually
hosted a hackathon with the goal of getting good auto-redaction technology in
place so that they could default-release body cam footage:
[https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20141222/14345929507/seatt...](https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20141222/14345929507/seattle-
pd-holds-hackathon-to-solve-body-cam-footage-redaction-problem.shtml)

------
nevinera
>“If you just put a swirl blur on somebody’s face, it’s not very difficult to
unswirl that blur, and then all of a sudden it’s un-redacted,” Shaw said.

Then use a REAL BLUR.

------
thejrk
HN turning into Reddit one post at a time.

~~~
greenjellybean
Straight from the HN Guidelines: "If your account is less than a year old,
please don't submit comments saying that HN is turning into Reddit. It's a
common semi-noob illusion, as old as the hills."

A lot of the posts here end up on Reddit and vice versa. Big part of this I
suspect is due to the fact that most people here use both sites pretty
regularly, I surely do.

