Another Police Accountability Miracle: Five Officers, Zero Body Cam Footage, One Dead Body
from the back-the-blue...-into-a-corner dept
We know body cameras haven't been the police accountability godsend some imagined they would be. (I admit I saw a far rosier future when they first started being put into service.) So far, the research jury's still out on the effectiveness of cameras in deterring misconduct and excessive force deployment. And, so far, they've been far more useful to prosecutors than plaintiffs in civil rights lawsuits.
You can put a camera on a cop but you can't change the system that leads to abusive behavior and practices. Nothing's changing much for officers other than the attachment of a lightweight ride-along. Policies may require officers to activate their cameras in nearly every situation, but if no one's willing to hold them accountable for refusing to do so, then nothing's going to improve.
Since law enforcement agencies maintain control of equipment and recordings, there's not much the public can do when critical footage goes missing. Cops learned early on device tampering can reduce discrepancies in paperwork and shore up lies delivered as testimony. What went unpunished when it was just dashcams and body mics has continued forward to swallow the accountability body cams seemed to promise.
For the Albuquerque PD, destroying recorded evidence is allegedly just part of its daily duties. A former contractor employed by the department claimed officers and supervisors routinely altered or deleted body cam footage. It's a serious allegation. And it assumes there's even footage to alter. In the case of the Mary Hawkes, a 19-year-old woman killed by an Albuquerque PD officer in 2014, there was no footage to be had when her family's attorney Laura Ives asked for it.
The narrative provided by the PD when asked what happened to the footage that could possibly have been captured by the five officers on the scene is literally unbelievable. It's a chain of coincidences the world's worst novelist would have been ashamed to hammer together to hold a flimsy story together. Five officers. Zero useful footage of a shooting by police officers that resulted in a person's death.
The sergeant on scene, Brian Maurer, said he believed he turned his camera on during the incident, but the department later said he hadn’t recorded anything. In his deposition, the sergeant testified that his camera had never malfunctioned like that before.
"Never malfunctioned like that before." Unlucky that. But that leaves four officers…
There was another officer who was standing nearby when the shooting happened. He originally said he hadn’t seen the shooting at all. But when confronted with the only images of the shooting that we have — very vague footage from an officer’s lapel camera who was parking his car at the time of the shooting — it was clear that this officer lied about not seeing the shooting.
What did get recorded by this officer (who can be seen pointing a gun towards the shooting victim in the 10 seconds of captured footage) wasn't even enough to fill the camera's default buffer. Taser body cams create a rolling 30 second buffer that's retained when cameras are activated. The reason this officer only had 10 seconds is because he shut his camera off. That's according to the APD itself. Rolling buffer defeated and 20 seconds of footage that would have captured the shooting is now nonexistent.
That leaves three officers.
Yet another officer could have captured important footage of the shooting, but his recording was so heavily pixelated it was impossible to glean anything from the images. No one in the department had ever seen footage corrupted like this before, and APD claimed that this was the result of yet another malfunctioning camera.
Two officers.
The fourth officer said he was recording on his Scorpion camera at the time of the incident, but there was no video on his camera’s SD memory card.
The official excuse here? Another "malfunction" right during the critical moments of a shooting. The APD kept the "malfunctioning" camera in service which went on to live a full and useful life capturing random cop events without another malfunction.
One officer left. And this is the one who actually shot Mary Hawkes.
He claimed that his cord had come unplugged. The department sent his camera off to Taser for analysis, and Taser found that the camera had been powered on within 8 minutes of the shooting, but was powered off in the moments before.
Taser examined the camera and said it was possible a loose cord could have powered it down. It also said it could have been turned off with the power switch. The cord was damaged but did not affect the camera's functionality.
Only a couple of the cameras that mysteriously malfunctioned during the shooting were examined by the PD or Taser. None of the cameras were preserved so they could be inspected by experts to see if the issues could be duplicated or if any footage could be obtained from the "faulty" cameras. The cameras all went back into service despite having proven to be utterly useless when it mattered most.
So, is it likely all of these officers conspired ahead of time to ensure there was no usable record of this shooting? Of course not. These events unfold quickly. And what likely happened is far more nefarious than a conspiracy. All of these cops -- independently -- recognized the developing situation to be the sort that might result in damaging recordings. And they all acted independently to ensure nothing of value to anyone outside of the force was saved.
These five simultaneous "malfunctions" are the product of a corrupt system that values the lives and careers of cops above all else, even the lives of the citizens they're supposed to serve. This is an ingrained mindset that circles the wagons whenever officers' actions might be called into question. When a citizen gets killed, it's a cop's word against the victim's. And the victim can't say shit. The only thing that might leak some inconvenient truths are the body worn tattletales. They might upend the official bullshit scrawled across department paperwork after everyone involved has agreed on a narrative.
That's the way it works. That's the nastiness of US policing. It's the uncanny ability of multiple officers to act defensively in support of their careers while in the middle of a situation so very dangerous they need their guns drawn. They'll defend questionable decisions in court by claiming they had no time to think about what they were doing, but they obviously have enough of a self-preservation instinct to ensure nothing but the official narrative survives an officer-involved shooting.
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Filed Under: accountability, albuquerque, albuquerque pd, body cameras, malfunctions, mary hawkes, police
Companies: taser
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Butchers in blue
Five 'malfunctions' and multiple lies in a situation that resulted in a death? Yeah, that positively reeks of knowing that someone was about to be murdered, or at the absolute minimum five cops who realized that what was about to happen wasn't something they wanted recorded and took steps to ensure that the only record was their (completely untrustworthy) word.
'Destruction of evidence'/'obstruction of justice' should have been the lightest charges all five of them faced, though I suspect the worst they faced directly(the ACLU article says the case resulted in a $5 mil settlement) was a slap on the wrist and a wagged finger for being too obvious in the cover-up of a murder.
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Re: Butchers in blue
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Now, if the five cops suddenly turn up dead, I'd guess she was DEA...
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No damage done.
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Response to: Anonymous Coward on Jun 26th, 2018 @ 4:29am
Your Anti-police Bias is clear as is Techdirt's, and your smear-in-advance precludes any rational agreement. SO, just to fulfill your prediction: YES, I'll lean toward supporting the police over YOU lying pirates and dopers.
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Re: Response to: Anonymous Coward on Jun 26th, 2018 @ 4:29am
As an example, in the Obama era there was a lot of hubbub about the CIA torturing people and how it has been rationalized away and hidden. With Trump, the topic rather is how much more torture is wanted. Constitutionality, legality, humanity, self-respect or even effectiveness: all defiantly yesterday's news.
It's not just the government that is going fascist. It is public discourse as well.
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Re: Re: Response to: Anonymous Coward on Jun 26th, 2018 @ 4:29am
Bravo. Government and the governed are not as separate as it often appears.
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Re: Response to: Anonymous Coward on Jun 26th, 2018 @ 4:29am
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Re: Response to: Anonymous Coward on Jun 26th, 2018 @ 4:29am
"Your Anti-police Bias is clear as is Techdirt's..."
At this point I'd have to question why anyone wouldn't have an anti-police bias, or at the very least a presumption that bad behavior is quite possible. This was five cops who all had the same corrupt and abhorrent idea at the same time. Not only that, every senior officer who was involved is equally complicit. Explain to the class how the theory of "a few bad apples" applies here. Tell us why we shouldn't have an anti-police bias.
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Re: Response to: Anonymous Coward on Jun 26th, 2018 @ 4:29am
[I'll lean towards supporting pirates and dopers. There's almost zero chance they'll kill anyone and destroy all the recorded evidence.]
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They tell us the cops job is hard & dangerous...
Yet more citizens end up dead than cops during encounters between the two.
We give them cameras to remove any doubt they acted responsibly... magically they break down, fail, erase things, accidentally record cops creating video evidence, record cops bad behavior... but its the techs fault not that some departments had cameras that were broken, fixed, and less than 1 day later dead again.
Perhaps it is time to stop giving cops an inch, cause they've just about finished the run to Marathon from all of the passes they've been given.
Cops say if citizens don't follow the little laws (which they always use as a pretext to get the drug dog so they can steal your car) bigger crimes follow. Perhaps no one considered when you let the little rules slide for cops they are more likely to behave like a gang, terrorizing people at will.
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Yet they were unable to comply with the DoJ rules about providing data on citizens dead at the hands of cops (once again).
Everyone knows being a cop is dangerous... except thats not actually true. A few incidents are portrayed as a massive invading horde declaring war on law & order yet the millions in property stolen from citizens never charged with a crime are downplayed b/c the property was criminal!
We have medical tests forced on citizens, that at every stage did not support the cops intuition, yet they did more & more b/c there is no way a cop is wrong. People sue over these clear violations of their rights & bodies... courts say nope, you can't sue them & the hospital is suing you to be paid for the procedures you never agreed to.
If they want us to treat them better, perhaps they need to do a hell of a lot better & clean out those few bad apples rather than demanding we accept them. Cops panic when they pull over a black driver because this could be the one out to get them... Have they ever considered this is how black people feel when pulled over on a pretext, that this might be the cop who is going to kill them & then tell a jury they powered up like a character on dragon ball z & coudl have hurt the cop.
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cops are killer thugs
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Re: cops are killer thugs
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How do we get to a world where officers are in deep shit if they don't have a recorded record of what happened at the end of the day?
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In a police incident, the first victim is the footage.
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No camera footage, no pay.
They only get paid for the time that there is camera footage to cover.
Next, I'd say that without camera footage to back up their statements and reports, that they will be treated as lies, and damned lies and be rejected, all charges against anyone arrested dropped.
Any suspects injured or killed will mean assault or murder charges against every officer involved that does not have full camera footage.
Yes that means a cop that actually does have a broken camera could be charged, but that's the only way to be sure.
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Re: No camera footage, no pay.
If a cop gets killed in a violent encounter with a private citizen, and the cop's camera isn't running, let's make a presumption of self-defense on behalf of the cop-killer automatic.
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Re: No camera footage, no pay.
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Re: Re: Re: No camera footage, no pay.
Do you really want body camera footage of cops taking a dump?
Do you want footage - publicly accessible to anyone who files a FOIA request - of police interviewing a rape victim?
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Re: Re: Re: Re: No camera footage, no pay.
But yeah, it's unreasonable to have someone carry an active camera into a bathroom (even if you somehow think the officer doesn't deserve privacy, what about the poor guy using the urinal when the officer walks in?) So either you need an off switch (which we have now) or the officer takes the camera off and maybe "forgets" to put it back on. And even if it's always supposed to be on, the camera might still "malfunction".
I don't think the cameras can necessarily take 8 hours of footage at a time, either. You run into issues with battery life and/or storage capacity. I'm looking at the specs for one, and it can only do 400 minutes with a fully charged battery and the IR and high-resolution features off. And now you're either throwing all that footage away at the end of the day unless you know something happened, or finding a secure place to store multiple gigabytes per officer per shift.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: No camera footage, no pay.
Agreed, though I would make a distinction between evidence in a criminal trial that both sides have the right to, and Joe Random being able to obtain hundreds of hours of body camera footage through a FOIA request. I think there are situations where individual privacy has to be respected, and that may mean that some body camera footage just isn't available to the general public. You should be able to put a legal structure in place that addresses both public accountability and personal privacy, but I feel like the law just hasn't caught up with the technology yet.
"And now you're either throwing all that footage away at the end of the day unless you know something happened, or finding a secure place to store multiple gigabytes per officer per shift."
Yeah, that's one of the things about body cameras that fascinates me as an IT guy: how is all that body camera data stored and how long? What are the default retention settings ? What does the physical infrastructure for that look like? And what's the UI for retrieving and managing the footage?
Unfortunately, I haven't found the guys who do that in either department I volunteer with. Yet.
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"Do you really want body camera footage of cops taking a dump?"
Given the current state of affairs that's the price we may all have to pay.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: No camera footage, no pay.
Whenever an officer is interviewing victims, witnesses, suspects- any member of the public- the officer would use this same app to note the person they are speaking with, and indicate "sensitive" status if necessary.
I'm not a UI designer- but I think everyone gets the general idea. But no doubt cops and their unions are interested in such a logical "solution"....
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Re: Re: Re: No camera footage, no pay.
An unholstered weapon is a sign we definitely need to be recording; it shouldn't happen when interviewing a victim or using a toilet.
It's true that a holstered weapon doesn't tell us much, but I'm suggesting we start with something easy. Any instance of weapons drawn without video being recorded should be detected in realtime and result in disiplinary action if not criminal charges (unless the camera got damaged after an incident started, and the cops didn't damage it on purpose).
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I'm with the police on this one.
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Re: I'm with the police on this one.
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Re: Re: I'm with the police on this one.
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Kinda begs for a quality snark button.
More angry and sad than funny, but well said. Yes.
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Here's a way to fix things...
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I'm pro GOOD cops.
I've been through two citizen's police academies (one in a large municipality, the other in a smaller city) and do volunteer work with the police departments. I've had the change to hang out with and talk to some of the officers.
The one thing I hear regularly from my local officers is "Good cops LOVE body cameras. If you get into trouble, the body camera will prove you were in the right." Here in Texas, we had a recent case where a state trooper was accused of sexually assaulting a woman he had arrested: the department released all of the body camera footage (with only her personal identifying information redacted) which proved definitively that the alleged sexual assault never happened. Her lawyer actually publicly apologized to the officer.
With all that said and my biases stated: five body cameras failing? That's unpossible, in my opinion.
"The cord was damaged but did not affect the camera's functionality."
You're supposed to check your gear before you go out on the street. If I was a cop, I wouldn't go out with a gun or a Taser that was damaged: why would I go out with a body camera that was damaged?
I work in IT. If I had FIVE different pieces of equipment from the same vendor fail at the same critical moment, I would be on that vendor like a fat man on an all-you-can-eat Chinese buffet for a damn explanation, and I'd be releasing the vendor's explanation and plan for corrective action to every newspaper, TV station, and blogger in the area once I received it.
Given what I've seen elsewhere, even with my own biases, I'm not inclined to give the Albuquerque PD any slack here. And I agree with the other commenters who suggest this constitutes spoilation of evidence.
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Re: I'm pro GOOD cops.
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Re: Re: I'm pro GOOD cops.
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Re: I'm pro GOOD cops.
I'm pro GOOD cops.
I'm anti BAD cops
Despite what some commenters might claim on articles like this I imagine most people here fall into the same category, where we/they're not anti-cops, we/they are anti-corrupt cops.
The 'problem' with that is two-fold:
First, by the standard of 'any cop who covers for a bad cop isn't a good cop' most cops, with a few exceptions, would likely not be in the category of 'good cops'. Whether you're putting someone into the hospital or morgue because you can directly, or you're looking the other way for someone who is, there's very little difference from the public's perspective, and neither of those can honestly claim to be a 'good cop'.
Secondly, and this is what seems to get people to claim that TD and various people here are 'anti-police', there seems to be a common grossly dishonest conflation between going after police corruption, and going after the police, such that one is treated as the other.
If you have a problem with police corruption then clearly you have a problem with police in general, and the funny thing is the ones making this conflation don't seem to realize that the only way that even begin to work is if corruption is so widespread, so ingrained into the police as a whole that the two are indistinguishable, such that it's impossible to go after one without hitting the other.
(Now, this does seem to be the case, but I rather doubt it's something they'd care to admit to.)
As I noted in a comment a few years back(the more things change huh?), I'd like to be able to trust the police, to feel safe around them and believe that they are truly devoted to the public's welfare as opposed to their own, but as it stands it would be incredibly stupid, potentially suicidaly so, for me to do so.
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Re: Re: I'm pro GOOD cops.
It can be very hard (effectively impossible) for a "good cop" to even remain a cop, once they are known to have broken the "thin blue line" of police officer solidarity. And it's more likely than not to have no impact on the actual problem.
I don't know what the solution is -- but I'd say that simply dismissing all the cops as complicit and therefor bad cops, seems a little over-simplistic.
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Re: Re: Re: I'm pro GOOD cops.
Which kinda highlights my point. Good cops exist, it's just they tend to end up ex-cops(as both of those did, one of them nearly fatally), because the majority rather like the system as it is, and are willing to take steps to keep it that way.
The kind of actions displayed in this article and those two stories do not come about by 'a few bad apples', they are the result of systemic, widespread corruption, top to bottom.
(Reading the Serpico wikipedia entry right now and it seems pretty clear they tried to get him killed, and Schoolcraft they tried to frame as mentally unstable.)
I don't know what the solution is -- but I'd say that simply dismissing all the cops as complicit and therefor bad cops, seems a little over-simplistic.
Are all of them complicit? No, as you pointed out and I agreed to there are some who actually prioritize serving the public over CYOA(though again the former tend to end up ex-cops), but I feel safe in saying that it appears that the majority, if not the overwhelming majority are, if not directly then by their indifference/willingness to look the other way.
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So if I'm an armed and dangerous criminal planning a crime, I invest a little money upfront in a signal jammer. Then if it comes to a shootout, I can shoot at the police and not worry about return fire until my battery runs out.
(Yes, I know, signal jammers are illegal. Which I'm sure is going to stop my hypothetical armed and dangerous crook: "Oh, my God! I don't have a problem with shooting at the cops, but don't turn me in to the FCC!")
Even if you think that's a crazy hypothetical, everyone who has a cellphone knows there are places where the signal stinks on ice: do you want a police officer to be unable to defend herself and innocent civilians because AT&T's 5G service isn't working at her location?
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Well, worth a try. So far nothing else has worked to make politicians hold telcoms to their hugely subsidized promises. Accessory to murder charges might be the incentive needed.
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At the absolute minimum, it would require police officers to plant their own (illegal) signal jammer on the corpse of any non-criminal they decide to just kill for fun.
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Techy service weapons
Currently, law enforcement are allowed to own their own array of weapons, and commonly do as upgrades and customizations from their service pistols.
The point at which we have all the additional tech we want to add (which is also reliable, such as biometric locks) is way off, and in the meantime we approach an age where 3D printing will allow police (and civilians!) to home brew weapons with ease, that skirt around these limitations.
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Yes there is...
Yes there is... they can refuse to convict defendants facing nothing but the sworn testimony of lying officers, or convict the officers involved with at least some form of negligence if officers are being sued.
There is no question of guilt here, just a question of if guilty party was performing properly or improperly and if any punishment should be dealt in response to a bad acting cop.
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Warner Bros Calls Press Conference
CEO Kevin Tsujihara told reporters that the leporine star of many acclaimed short films disappeared en route to Las Vegas. Credit card receipts indicate that Bugs made it as far as Albuquerque, where he was supposed to make a left turn, but there is no record of him proceeding further.
Albuquerque PD Chief Elmer Fudd issued the following statement: "We awe devastated to heaw about this twagic woss, and we pwomise to devote evewy wesouwce to finding evewyone's favouwite wascally wabbit. Unfowtunately, awe body camewa footage duwing the time that Mr. Bunny was hewe has been cowwupted, deweted, ow wost. Ouw fine offices wiww be wesuming the seach aftew wunch. Twy the hasenpfeffer, it's dewicious!"
This is a developing story and will be updated as further details emerge.
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To get YOUR slant must omit any cause for police being there.
Mainly, you don't KNOW what happened, are simply ASSUMING, which is yet worse. You wouldn't be allowed on a jury.
Again: where's your "innocent until proven guilty beyond reasonable doubt", and "better ten guilty go free than one innocent be jailed" phrases? You apply those only to thieves and drug users?
Techdirt is now blatantly showing it's utterly biased against police, because you're basically criminals: pirates and drug users. -- What? You object to unproven assumptions? Without those above, is no STORY.
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Re: To get YOUR slant must omit any cause for police being there.
"Better ten guilty go free" and "beyond a reasonable doubt" are legal ideals. Have any of the cops been charged for their actions?
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Re: Re: To get YOUR slant must omit any cause for police being there.
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Re: To get YOUR slant must omit any cause for police being there.
You object to unproven assumptions? Without those above, is no STORY.
Tell me, what happens if a car with 5 passengers is stopped, searched, drugs are found, and no one admits to owning them? What happens? They're all charged.
Until that changes, I'll be fine with saying that at least one of those pigs tried to cover up a fuck up on purpose.
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Re: To get YOUR slant must omit any cause for police being there.
Four of the officers claimed malfunctions. The other one apparently decided to totally power off the camera, and apparently lied about not seeing the shooting. What are the odds of a camera malfunction - one in a thousand? Even if you don't count the officer who powered off as a coincidence, the odds of a one in a thousand coincidence happening 4 times is one in a trillion.
The thing about reasonable doubt is, it has to be reasonable. I don't know where exactly the line is, but wherever it is, one in a trillion is clearly on the wrong side of it.
Plus when it comes to the civil suit, the standard isn't reasonable doubt anyway; it's preponderance of the evidence, and failure to preserve evidence pretty much results in the the court assuming the evidence was not in your favor.
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Re: To get YOUR slant must omit any cause for police being there.
"...because you're basically criminals: pirates and drug users."
I'm used to be falsely accused of piracy by you loons but drug use now? Where the hell does that come from?!
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Re: Re: To get YOUR slant must omit any cause for police being there.
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"you don't KNOW what happened"
Nor do you. Though I'd think in a sane world we'd have some sort of judicial review any time that shots were fired or aggressive action taken by law enforcement. But history going deep into the twentieth century demonstrates that isn't the case, or when there is, that it conflicts with what is shown on private cameras.
In the meantime, we have the highest incarceration rate in the world here in the US, and a conviction rate of 90% (And an indictment rate of nearly 100% -- except when it comes to law enforcement and state officials). I, too, ask whatever happened to beyond reasonable doubt and better ten guilty go free... when it is evident we are funneling warm bodies into prisons, and may have an over-fifty-percent false conviction rate.
(And then, when an imprisoned party finds exonerating evidence, Hell and high water will rise to stop him from presenting it to prove his innocence and secure his freedom.)
So no. Corruption in the DoJ is so systemic that all cops are bad (if by no other reason than their tolerance of and comfort to the killers).
No law enforcement system at all would be better than the profiteering system we presently have.
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Bottom of the fourth paragraph:
there was no footage to be had when her family's attorney Laura Ives asked for it
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Accountability
Officer was fired, and the city settled with her family for $5 Million. The family is donating a large ammount of the money to "organizations that prioritize crisis intervention training for law enforcement".
https://www.krqe.com/news/family-of-mary-hawkes-settles-lawsuit-with-city-former-office r_20180305063256974/1009429404
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Re: Accountability
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'Well, if we HAVE to...'
From the article apparently he had a history of 'camera malfunctions', failing to turn the thing on numerous occasions, and this was the last straw.
(Given what was conveniently unrecorded this time one has to wonder what other acts of his went unrecorded those other times.)
A city board of course tried to get him re-instated with backpay, though as of a January 11th ruling at least that had been refused.
So that's one of those involved with a slap on the wrist('kill someone, lose your job' is not 'accountability'), now what about the other four?
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Optimistically
Incidents like this miracle serve to demonstrate that the system is obviously failing. That bodycams that the police can control (and disable without consequence) is not enough to stop corruption and brutality, both of which are epidemic.
This won't make too much of a difference right now, because the corruption epidemic has spread through the courts as well, who have forgotten that proper procedures protect the public way, way more than convictions.
It may take a while for this worm to turn.
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Surveillance
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Assuming those officers and their commanding officers haven't already stolen and destroyed such video evidence.
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Re:
...I guess the whole point I'm trying to make here is:
I
HATE
SAUERKRAUT
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- Sheriff Buford T. Justice
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