
California police use of body cameras cuts violence and complaints (2013) - mercenario
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/nov/04/california-police-body-cameras-cuts-violence-complaints-rialto
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ggreer
I'm very much in favor of these cameras, but there's one extrapolation that
few have proposed: Why not encourage private citizens to record their public
lives? Most of the arguments for recording police apply to everyone:
Allegations are quickly discovered to be true or false. Everyone involved is
less likely to be violent. People are more cordial. Determining guilt or
innocence is much easier. Was a shooting self-defense or manslaughter? Did the
eyewitness really recognize the defendant on the night of the crime? Etc.

There are other perks to life-logging. Conversations could be transcribed and
searched, eliminating many disputes as to who said what. We already do this
with IRC and some types of video chat. You could even save footage that
becomes important only much later. For example, you could prove you sold
pencils to Vincent van Gogh before he was famous. Or you could record the
first time you met your now-spouse. Finally, there's the entertainment value
of life-logging. Think Russian dash cams on steroids.

This technology has the potential to drastically reduce crime and improve
quality of life. Yet I think most people would have an aversion to constantly
recording their own lives, let alone being constantly recorded by others. I'm
curious how people resolve this inconsistency.

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moultano
There are two primary argument for police to have them IMHO.

1\. Police have extraordinary power over others.

2\. Juries believe them by default.

This gives them much higher requirements for accountability than most people.

I do really like the idea though. Human memories are incredibly inaccurate,
but we believe our own memories and can't really do otherwise. If we had the
option of a surrogate memory that could be really transformational. Imagine
what that would do to your perception of time and your discount rate if you
could have perfect recall of your whole life?

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Mindless2112
> If we had the option of a surrogate memory that could be really
> transformational.

I'm inclined to believe that I don't want surrogate memory. You might be
interested in an episode of Black Mirror, "The Entire History of You", that is
premised around this.

~~~
khafra
The Reversal Test is a good thing to think about when examining the
possibility of Status Quo Bias: If you had the option to make your memory
_more_ unreliable, or to give up what videos, photographs, and other
recordings of your life that you currently have; would you take it?

If not, what makes you think that the current spot on the continuum from
"accurate/prosthetic memories" to "inaccurate/solely internal memories" is the
best spot?

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jrlocke
I'm 23. People younger than me (generally) do not have faith in the police. My
parents believe cops do no wrong. Neither belief leads to useful change. This
kind of program would moderate these thoughts into actionable ones while
bringing accountability into these asymmetric encounters. This seems like a
place where more surveilance is actually a good thing.

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iwwr
>This seems like a place where more surveilance is actually a good thing.

The problem here is the disparity of power. It should be legal for people to
record the police, but not necessarily for the police to do the same.

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btian
I don't think there's anything wrong with police recording the streets though.
At least in the US, anyone has the right to record in public places. Why
shouldn't the police be able to do the same?

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DanBC
What do they do with all that video?

Dump it out of a buffer? Or store it, and process it with number plate and
face recognition software?

Living in UK (bafflingly high number of CCTV) cameras makes me gently wary of
this kind of surveillance.

Having said that I'm in favour of anything that helps prevent abuse by police
officers. I used to trust police but recent scandals in UK prove that
corruption and blatantly illegal practices are common.

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gerbal
Ideally, store it for a set amount of time and then delete it. Or keep it in
perpetuity and only allow it to be used with a court order.

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LunaSea
But now you have a situation where the control of the data is out of you hands
in a black box. You never know if the law is applied or not.

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mikebo
I'm an engineer at Evidence.com (a subsidiary of Taser) which makes the
cameras (and accompanying software) used in this study. If you have interest
in working on technology that makes both the public and officers safer, get in
touch (see my profile)! We're based in Seattle and hiring in lots of areas:
mobile engineers, web engineers, UX designers, etc.

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jdreaver
I see absolutely no reason why police shouldn't wear cameras. It keeps all
parties honest. I just hope they don't "lose the recording" when it
conveniences the police the most.

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thrownaway2424
Hopefully some day the absence of these videos of police encounters will be
evidence in favor of the defendant. Police will be assumed to be lying about
any encounter without a recording.

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j2kun
Presuming someone to be lying is a huge presumption. Innocent until proven
guilty should be a rule used in all cases (in the case of a 'lying' police
officer, the charge is perjury).

If they can prove neglect of the evidence or deliberate tampering, of course,
that would be another story.

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thrownaway2424
Eh it's not about perjury, it's about due process and assymetry of power. The
police have the means to record everything at little cost and with no
reasonable excuse to not do it. The absence of recordings is a reasonable
indicator that the cops are hiding things.

We expect the state to follow processes strictly. The penalty for failure to
do so isn't personal incarceration for the prosecutors or police, but rather
failure of their case. This seems like a tradeoff that works in practice.

~~~
harywilke
i remember being on a jury in a case that involved child abduction, the police
did not record the interviews they conducted with the child after it had been
rescued. i talked to the prosecutor afterwards about it and they said it's to
easy over analyze every word said and twist it to appear as something else. to
easy for a defence to say they were leading the witness and therefore the
recording should be thrown out. remember there was video of the Rodney King
beating. the defendants slowed it down and pointed out on each frame actions
that King supposedly did that were threatening to the officers beating him.

recording everything is not a panacea. not having everything recorded a sign
of nefarious actions.

~~~
khafra
This amounts to the "you can't handle the truth!" argument. It may be true
that the average citizen, and thus the average jury member, is unaware of what
ethically-conducted police work looks like. But that doesn't seem to
constitute an argument that keeping everyone in the dark about what average
police work looks like is an _overall_ good thing.

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walru
Not only should the data be recorded, but it should also be 'live streamed' to
the public. I placed live streamed in quotes as I could see the need for some
sort of delay simply due to the sensitivity of the information - plus some
level of post-processing would need to be done to ensure innocent parties
faces are not being displayed.

Police behavior is such a broad ranging topic, simply having their actions
recorded does nothing to solve the root of the problem. One of the topics I'd
like to see addressed is their 12 hour work day. For what appears to be an
enormously stressful job, it seems like some form of torture to ask law
enforcement to always be on duty for such long stretches at a time. I really
think that to get back to the 'To Serve and Protect' mantra we need to start
treating policemen like humans first.

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talmand
No, I would disagree.

You can keep the data open to the public with some constraint. Such as, you
can request a copy of video from a certain timeline if you are on the video or
have the permission from someone on the video. If you can prove such
information, then they have to hand it over.

I'm more interested in how to handle the news media on this type of thing. It
would seem maybe the media cannot access the video unless they have similar
permissions or if the video has been submitted as evidence in some way.

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fsk
The biggest problem with police cameras is they "malfunction" or "forgot to
turn it on" whenever the camera shows evidence that the policeman did
something wrong.

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maxerickson
That isn't necessarily a problem, it creates the opportunity to ask the police
officer why he generates so many complaints about his behavior. After all, he
can make sure to turn the camera on and protect himself from a lot of
accusations.

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Einstalbert
Unfortunately, there isn't a person asking those questions. More often than
not, officers watch out for each other (read: The Blue Code of Silence) and
internal investigations are notoriously a joke. I'd love to see someone not
affiliated with police officers ask one of them why they generate so many
complaints, without also becoming a complaint.

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Andys
It also gives police no leeway when it comes to enforcing unfair laws.
Instead, even the most empathetic and genuinely helpful cop will have to
enforce it to the letter.

~~~
arjie
In practice, what this means is that everyone will be treated the same. With
leeway, policemen will treat groups of people they like better than they treat
others. This is not because they're particularly evil but because policemen
are human and rely on instinct (which is easily corrupted). Then you get
preferential treatment.

Now, an unfair law is exposed as unfair because all will suffer.

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marklubi
Serious question, how well has the policy of treating everyone exactly the
same to the letter of the law/rule worked for zero tolerance policies?

Seems to me that with zero tolerance policies where there is no individual
interpretation of the intent of the rule, too many people are unjustly
punished for honest mistakes (e.g., forgetting about having a knife in their
vehicle at school) or attempts to do well by someone else (e.g., taking a
knife away from someone that was trying to hurt themselves).

~~~
arjie
That's a fair point, but our opposition to Zero Tolerance stems from the fact
that punishment does not account for extenuating circumstances.

Policemen are not judges, nor should they ever be. The problem with Zero
Tolerance is that the judges are overly strict. We want policemen to enforce
the letter. We want judges to consider the spirit of the law, and interpret it
appropriately. Policemen lack the knowledge of the law and lack the time to
make these decisions in a rational manner. They are forced to rely on poor
heuristics. There is less immediacy to a judge's decision.

So, yes, I think it fair that someone who forgets he has a knife in his car is
removed from class pending an evaluation of the situation (with this taking
place in a reasonable amount of time). Then I believe it only fair if the
evaluation determines that if it was truly accidental, then he return.

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davidlumley
More recently, the Albuquerque police were involved in a shooting that was
recorded through the use of body cameras: [http://krqe.com/2014/03/21/apd-
officer-shooting-raises-quest...](http://krqe.com/2014/03/21/apd-officer-
shooting-raises-questions/)

While the outcome of the incident was negative (the man died of his wounds),
the fact that the footage exists and makes those officers accountable for
their actions is a good thing.

I've noticed some police officers in Brisbane, Australia wearing what appears
to be similar cameras. I don't feel much safer, but it's good to know in the
event of an incident occurring that there's a much higher chance that an
objective, irrefutable chain of events will exist.

~~~
girvo
Just a shame about our government being determined to turn QLD back into a
Bjelke-Peterson police state.

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kenjackson
I'm a big fan of public surveillance, especially if accessible to the public
with cause. I know privacy advocates hate this, but it seems like a net win to
me. In your private residence you have privacy but in public E should have
video record.

~~~
objclxt
> _I know privacy advocates hate this, but it seems like a net win to me_

As far as I know, many privacy advocacy groups are in favor of police body
cameras (I know the ACLU is, if they're accompanied with a suitable framework
and process).

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RankingMember
I think having cameras all over every public safety servant/location (e.g.
police station) would usher in a golden age of relations between the public
and public servants. Doing so would steamroll the potential for abuse (lack of
oversight, realization that you're unlikely to get caught, old boys club
protecting you) inherent in any position of power without oversight by
neutral/opposing (depending on your perspective on police) parties.

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dasmithii
If the ideal police officer is a mechanistic follower of written law, these
cameras are perfect. No right minded officer would stray from instruction
while their actions are recorded in plain sight.

But I'm not entirely convinced of their worth. While onboard cameras provide
concrete evidence in court, and undoubtedly solve problems in our society, we
might as well replace our officers with robots (this might not be a bad idea).

~~~
iLoch
I disagree with your robot sentiment - well, at least I don't think that's the
solution _yet._ If a robot is going to be lethal you've got a whole host of
problems that you didn't have before (ie. Someone steals it and hacks it to
terrorize) Also there are so many social queues in our day to day lives that
are hard or potentially impossible for a robot to understand (at least with
today's tech) - like someone jokingly saying "I'm gonna kill you!" to their
friend. Once we get those problems figured out then sure, that's yet another
job that we can automate.

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_nedR
I like this idea, but I propose a slight modification:

Do a rolling record system, so that when the officer hits record, the camera
not only saves footage from that point but also the 15 minutes prior to that.
Lets see how much their opinions of cameras change then..

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emcfarlane
Why have any difference between police and civilians? There seems to be so
much abuse of power as people stand by powerless. Why the difference?

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madaxe_again
I foresee an entire industry dedicated to "retouching" police videos so
they're "better" evidence.

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JoeAltmaier
What about the safety rate? Its hard to do a job right, with somebody
(everybody!) looking over your shoulder.

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wpietri
If this seems familiar to you as well, it may be because you read this article
when it came out 4 months ago.

~~~
talmand
Funny, it does seem familiar but I don't recall reading this article four
months ago. But since you seem to know that I did, I guess I won't bother now.

Thanks for the time saver.

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EGreg
I have one humble proposal, to make a FEDERAL law about this. Requiring law
enforcement officers to record and store video of their activities on duty
would improve the experience for both cops and the people they are dealing
with. One study showed a staggering decrease of 88% in complaints against
officers. We need federal laws to enable timely and straightforward access to
this video in court cases all around the country where people are facing
assault charges and years in prison. There is currently a White House Petition
to that effect.

Please sign it: [http://wh.gov/lEb2V](http://wh.gov/lEb2V)

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puppetmaster3
I think police act different when they have them on.

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kimonos
Great idea!

