
Not One New York Police Officer Has a Body Camera - kyleblarson
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/04/nyregion/despite-national-trend-new-york-police-are-slow-to-adopt-body-cameras.html?smid=tw-share&_r=1
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phusion
I was so excited when police body cameras became a thing. I figured that some
kind of beureucratic oversight would stop most, if not all funny business--
BOY WAS I WRONG!! They 'accidentally' turn them off, don't bother wearing them
or don't give the public access to the footage.

These cameras are completely worthless until they start working for the public
and not abused by corrupt police depts. All cops need to have these and they
need to be uploaded to a third, impartial party at the end of the day, every
day, or abuse will be commonplace. I guess I did read somewhere that police
complaints dropped 97 (??) percent since the use of body cameras, but where?
Certainly not nation wide.

~~~
seanp2k2
The police departments have nothing to gain and everything to lose from this,
so these shenanigans make some twisted sense to me. One could argue that they
stand to gain [back] the trust of the public, but I honestly doubt that they
even really care about that, since at the end of the day their paycheck is
written by the government and not the population, and they're the ones with
the guns and the license to kill.

~~~
steveeq1
Sure they have something to gain - proof against frivolous lawsuits, for which
they are often the target of.

~~~
jrs235
Of which the city [residents] pays to defend against and pays for any damages.

~~~
steveeq1
Yes, and this is a good thing for everyone involved.

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SCAQTony
Los Angeles is going large on the concept of body cameras:

[... The LAPD already has about 860 cameras, purchased through private
donations. Last year, the LAPD negotiated a contract with Taser International
to provide thousands more as well as replacement equipment, digital storage of
the recordings and thousands of Tasers. ...]

[http://www.latimes.com/local/crime/la-me-lapd-body-
cameras-2...](http://www.latimes.com/local/crime/la-me-lapd-body-
cameras-20160417-story.html)

Perhaps there is a SAAS opportunity in there somewhere?

~~~
mey
That's part of Taser International's business. They basically are providing a
lifecycle solution from replacement to cloud storage for their body camera
product.

Edit: Although I have no idea if they are doing it "well" and there may be
pain points to fix in the day to day. So yeah, probably an opportunity there.

~~~
avs733
I imagine that the classification or definition of 'well' is somewhat specific
to the role in this discussion.

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chishaku
Key quote:

“What do you expect to happen when the N.Y.P.D. sets the terms and the pace of
police reform?” Councilman Torres said in an interview.

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Shivetya
Well some cities that have had them are actually losing them because retention
rules keep changing and beyond thirty days it becomes very expensive to manage
all that video. Think of just the storage requirements then go beyond that to
determine providing usable queries of the video along with proper protection
of the video until expiration

~~~
filoeleven
Once we get all this NSA dragnet nonsense stopped, we will have two shiny new
zettabyte-capacity data centers that we can use to store all the video.
Simple!

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RangerScience
Does anyone know more about the current common retention rules?

Seems to me an easy way to cut down on the amount stored is to detect for
interactions (say, other voices in the recording, definitely gun shots, etc),
and then save an amount before, after and during. Maybe twice the response
time for a call, for the before? The after may be harder. You can then pair it
down from there. Or, could dispatch control it? Start recording when
dispatched / called, stop recording when the situation is resolved, according
to dispatch.

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minikites
>department’s approximately 35,800 officers

>a company had been chosen to supply up to 5,000 over the next five years.

>The Police Department says it is committed to outfitting officers with body
cameras

So the plan is to equip a whopping 1/7th of officers in the next five years? I
must be thinking of a different definition of "commitment" than the one the
NYPD seems to use.

~~~
wavefunction
I will say that not all of those 35,800 are patrol officers, though I share
your sentiment about the NYPD's level of commitment.

~~~
timmaah
And not all patrol officers are on duty at the same time.

I wonder how much current equipment is checked out daily and shared?

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helloworld
In the recent Charlotte police shooting incident, it was disappointing to see
how unhelpful the body-camera video was. I'm not sure whether that was an
anomaly, or whether it's just very difficult to get useful footage from a body
camera.

~~~
scsilver
Maybe they need additional 360 cameras deployed on an extendable periscope
above a cruiser.

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vkou
Why not focus on something that can be fixed without need for extra budget,
like, say, ending stop and frisk?

You don't need a police body camera to observe that abuse of power.

~~~
minikites
Why not both?

~~~
vkou
Because we have massive police abuse right there in the open, and nothing is
done about it. And not for lack of evidence!

If the city won't deal with this problem, what makes anyone think that of all
things, cameras will remove any roadblocks?

Without serious interest in tackling police abuse, cameras are a feel-good
placebo.

Eric Garner was killed on video. Exactly what has been done about that?
Nothing and nothing?

~~~
jonlucc
Last night, the candidates for Vice President had a minutes-long discussion
about community policing and implicit bias. To say that nothing individual
incidents had no effect is to miss the forest for the trees.

~~~
vkou
Eric Garner's death certainly had an impact across the country - but one place
where it didn't was the NYPD.

This is precisely why we can't have both. I have the feeling that body cameras
are used as a smoke-and-mirror diversion, by organizations that aren't
committed to change.

