Researcher Says Police Body Cameras Are An Insecure Mess

from the internet-of-cop-things dept

The promise of transparency and accountability police body cameras represent hasn't materialized. Far too often, camera footage goes missing or is withheld from the public for extended periods of time.

So far, body cameras have proven most useful to prosecutors. With captured footage being evidence in criminal cases, it's imperative that footage is as secure as any other form of evidence. Unfortunately, security appears to be the last thing on body cam manufacturers' minds.

Josh Mitchell, a consultant at the security firm Nuix, analyzed five body camera models from five different companies: Vievu, Patrol Eyes, Fire Cam, Digital Ally, and CeeSc. The companies all market their devices to law enforcement groups around the US. Mitchell's presentation does not include market leader Axon—although the company did acquire Vievu in May.

In all but the Digital Ally device, the vulnerabilities would allow an attacker to download footage off a camera, edit things out or potentially make more intricate modifications, and then re-upload it, leaving no indication of the change. Or an attacker could simply delete footage they don't want law enforcement to have.

This is already bad news. We've already seen some evidence that officers have altered/destroyed footage. This attack vector allows almost anyone to do the same thing, all without leaving a trace of intrusion. But the flaws run deeper than this. According to Mitchell's research, some cameras can have their signals intercepted, allowing criminals to locate law enforcement officers or simply eavesdrop on recordings as they occur. It's not just a matter of criminals eluding cops. Hijacking signals obviously has a serious impact on officer safety.

And this is only the problem created by the cameras themselves. Every camera has to interact with another computer system to upload footage. In many cases, they're linked to cloud services as well, which introduce further vulnerabilities. Attackers could use body cams to deliver malicious payloads to law enforcement computer systems or the cloud services used to store recordings.

But underneath everything else runs this crucial part of the justice process: footage is evidence and evidence must be kept intact. Cameras and camera services simply aren't doing enough to prevent evidence tampering. The chain of evidence is relied on to ensure its integrity, but until these vulnerabilities are removed, body cam footage may as well be hearsay.

The bodycams don't have a cryptographic mechanism to confirm the validity of the video files they record either. As a result, when the devices sync with a cloud server or station PC, there's no way to guarantee that the footage coming off the camera is intact. "I haven’t seen a single video file that’s digitally signed," Mitchell says.

The good news is companies were alerted before Mitchell went public with his Defcon presentation. Most are implementing fixes, although a couple of smaller manufacturers refused to comment on the issues. The bad news is these fixes shouldn't have been necessary. The cameras and the services they rely on were put into service without many of these considerations being taken seriously. It appears they're no more secure than an off-the-shelf $30 webcam, even though they're only being sold to law enforcement agencies.

Filed Under: accountability, body cameras, police, security, transparency

After Repeatedly Failing To Document Stops/Frisks, NYPD Ordered To Record All Encounters

from the 'unpossible,'-says-department-unwilling-to-try dept

The NYPD's stop and frisk program was declared unconstitutional in 2013. As deployed by the NYPD, the program involved high numbers of suspicionless stops disproportionately targeting the city's minorities. Judge Shira Scheindlin heavily modified the program to steer it back in the direction of the Constitution, resulting in claims of a criminal apocalypse that completely failed to materialize.

One of the modifications was the deployment of body cameras. These were supposed to record stops, preserving a record of these incidents. Officers were also given additional paperwork to fill out for each stop/frisk to provide evidence of the perceived suspicion supporting the stop.

Neither of these mandates worked out particularly well. The number of stops was already decreasing rapidly before Judge Scheindlin issued her order. The stops that were still being made, however, weren't by the (new) book. A court monitor report suggested plenty of unconstitutional stops were still being made by officers without filling out the mandated form.

That's where the cameras could have helped, theoretically. The NYPD's body camera program is in full effect, but it appears officers believe certain stops don't need to be recorded. Once again -- a decade into this litigation -- the stop and frisk program is being modified, as Zuri Davis of Reason reports.

[T]he court wants to bring "the NYPD's stop-and-frisk policies and practices into compliance with federal and state law." To that end, [Judge Analisa] Torres has ordered both the NYPD and those who have brought suit over the practices to design a "pilot program" that would record "low-level" police interactions, referred to as "Level 1 and 2 investigative encounters."

Until this modification, the NYPD's body cam mandate only required recordings of Level 3 and 4 stops. Those are stops in which a person is detained (either by force or suggestion) and/or an arrest is likely to occur. Since the NYPD's documentation of the stops central to the lawsuit (low-level stops based on minimal -- if any -- suspicion) has been subpar, this order should result in at least some form of documentation for these stops.

Or not.

The plaintiffs in the stop-and-frisk case have largely supported supported the facilitator’s recommendations, with some minor tweaks, while the NYPD has rejected them, saying that they are “neither practical nor feasible.”

That's the initial reaction: the pride of US law enforcement finds camera deployment during most police/citizen interactions unfeasible. The NYPD has issued this same reaction to almost every modification of its stop and frisk program: everything's impossible until the department actually starts to make an effort to comply.

It may be difficult to record every stop initiated by an officer, but it's not unfeasible. If the NYPD finds it burdensome, perhaps it should have made sure its officers kept up with their stop/frisk paperwork back when it was only paperwork. Instead, NYPD brass didn't make this a priority for low-level officers so now their body-mounted ride-along buddies will have to provide the documentation officers have avoided filling out for much of the last two years.

Filed Under: 4th amendment, body cameras, civil rights, nypd, police, stop and frisk

Cop Costs Taxpayers $60,000 And One (1) Drug Bust After Lying About Almost Everything Related To The Traffic Stop

from the blowing-it-like-pro dept

Oh my. What fun it must have been for this officer to find out his lies were contradicted by his partner's body camera footage. Thanks to these lies, Officer Joshua Bates of the San Jose Police Department is now former officer Josh Bates, target of a federal civil rights lawsuit. But his troubles began during the traffic stop, culminating in this (first) judicial vindication of Cosme Grijalva.

Saying he was “troubled” by the testimony, Superior Court Judge Eric Geffon threw out the drug case in October against former suspect Cosme Grijalva, after the prosecution dismissed the charges. The City Council on Tuesday agreed to settle a civil-rights lawsuit filed by attorney Jaime Leaños on Gijalva’s behalf for $59,900.

No charges and a cash settlement. That's the way things break when officers lie. And lie Bates did. Several times

First, he trapped himself in a lie during cross examination. While seeking to obtain consent to search Grijalva's car, Bates used his phone to contact a translator to help bridge the language gap. Pushed for details on this mysterious translator -- one that had changed sexes during the course of his testimony -- Bates finally settled on calling the translator "she." Then he admitted it wasn't a department translator, but rather someone named Lilia... who just happened to be Bates' wife.

Body-camera video recorded by Bates’ partner, Ian Hawkley, who is also named in the suit, shows Bates telling his wife over the phone: “So what you’re going to do is you’re going to tell this person that I know there is methamphetamine in the car — crystal, and you are going to tell him that I’m going to get a dog who’s going to come over and is going to sniff and tear their car apart.”

Hawkley's video came as a surprise to Bates. Not a complete surprise, though. At one point in the recording, Hawkley let Bates know he was "in the red" (recording) and had been "for awhile." By that point, too much damage had been done. Bates had already called his wife to translate his threat for Grijalva and was engaged in a warrantless search of Grijalva's van without his consent. Bates did not activate his camera, violating PD policy. He also admitted to trying to get Hawkley to deactivate his body cam.

Bates apparently had an ongoing aversion to complying with the Constitution and PD policies.

There is evidence suggesting this might not have been a one-time instance for Bates. According to court documents filed by Singh, the week before Bates’ encounter with Grijalva, he and another officer stopped and arrested a bicyclist on suspicion of alleged marijuana possession. Body-worn camera footage reportedly showed that Bates omitted mentioning a pat-down search in his police report on the incident.

Other video from that case also shows Bates having a conversation with another officer about how to come up with probable cause to make an enforcement stop when there is nothing readily apparent.

Bates also fudged the paperwork in this case. He tried to align his testimony with his bogus police reports but got tripped up by his own faulty memory and his partner's recording of the incident. And that has netted him two lawsuits and an early exit from his law enforcement career. Bates resigned shortly after this disastrous courtroom performance. With any luck, he'll be employed by another law enforcement agency before too long. You know how it is with bad hombres like this. They get sprung on technicalities and are back on the streets (in uniform) within days or weeks of an unceremonious sacking/resignation-tendering.

The only thing in this story that makes it an anomaly is the resignation. Other than that, it's par for the course. Cops lie. And the reason they do it so frequently is that they almost always get away with it. Cameras are changing that… slowly. But they're only slightly better than nothing at all at this point. The sad thing is, we'll just have to take what we can get because law enforcement agencies clearly aren't interested in upsetting the apple cart and letting all these "bad apples" roll into the nearest gutter. Change comes from within and law enforcement has proven itself highly resistant to change.

Filed Under: 4th amendment, body cameras, civil rights, cosme grijalva, ian hawkley, josh bates, san jose, traffic stop

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.

Filed Under: accountability, albuquerque, albuquerque pd, body cameras, malfunctions, mary hawkes, police
Companies: taser

Report On Milwaukee PD Body Cams Show Fewer Complaints, Fewer Stops, But No Reduction In Use Of Force

from the better-than-nothing,-but-how-much-better? dept

The Milwaukee PD is (or was) staring down the barrel of a DOJ consent decree for its unconstitutional policing (mainly stop-and-frisk) and routine deployment of excessive force. This is among the many concerns brought to light last year by the DOJ's draft report on the department.

The Milwaukee Police Department fails the community and its own officers by not communicating clearly, making too many traffic stops and applying inconsistent standards when disciplining officers, according to a draft of a federal report obtained by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

The draft report offers a particularly damning critique of Chief Edward Flynn's reliance on data, a signature component of his strategy since he took over the department in 2008. Federal evaluators found this approach is having a damaging, if unintended, effect on police-community relations.

“MPD’s attention to crime data has distracted the department from the primary tenet of modern policing: trust between law enforcement agencies and the people they protect and serve,” the draft report states.

The DOJ also found officers had no idea what community policing entailed, suggesting it only applied to other officers officially designated as community liaisons. The DOJ highlighted the disconnection between the MPD's statements and actions on community policing using this depressing anecdote.

[T]he Milwaukee Police Department doesn’t have a strategic plan for community policing or a set of guidelines regarding it, the draft report says. And department-wide training on how to implement the strategy has not been offered in years.

Federal evaluators highlighted one example of an attempt at community engagement that fell flat.

Officers held a roll-call, or shift change, outside a Milwaukee school. The stated purpose was to let kids know officers wanted them to have a safe summer. The problem? There were no kids in sight, not even student leaders.

The evaluators noted the event may even have sent the wrong message: That the students on summer break were a problem, and the police planned to deal with them.

This draft may never coalesce into an official report. AG Jeff Sessions' full-blooded support for law enforcement includes allowing them to be a law unto themselves by killing off DOJ investigations of misbehaving police forces. What's in the draft report is damning, but it will probably remain a draft in perpetuity.

The PD's responsiveness to community unhappiness did at least result in one change: a pilot program equipping officers with body cameras. Unfortunately, the cameras appear to have done little to address one community complaint.

Milwaukee police officers with body cameras made fewer stops and were less likely receive a citizen complaint, a new study has found.

But when it comes to use of force — the primary reason residents clamored for officers to use the cameras — it didn't matter if officers had the cameras or not. They used force at roughly the same rates.

The PD claims this report [PDF] vindicates officers and the department itself, at least in terms of accusations of excessive force deployment. According to the PD, the conclusions make it clear officers have applied force in accordance with policy. But that's stretching the findings a bit much. It could also mean the deterrent effect one assumes the cameras would have simply hasn't materialized. Officers may feel footage is at least as likely to clear them as damn them and are willing to roll the dice.

And the dice come pre-loaded: officers are given weeks or months to make statements when accused of deploying excessive force. And while statements from witnesses are recorded, those made by officers are not, allowing them to retcon narratives if body cam footage refuses to align with the official narrative. The body cam footage may be a new twist, but the internal investigation process has been an issue for a long time. It, too, receives criticism in the DOJ's draft report.

When it comes to officer-involved shootings, the cases reviewed by the Justice Department were inconsistent and the documentation was inadequate.

In both non-fatal shootings and other uses of force, information about officers’ training, prior use of force, complaints and discipline were not included in internal affairs files.

That information also does not seem to have an effect on whether officers are promoted.

One number that did drop in the wake of camera deployment is street stops. Officers wearing cameras performed far fewer stops than officers without them. This suggests the stop-and-frisk program the PD is currently being sued over tends to make the Constitution an afterthought. Documentation of unconstitutional stops isn't going to help the PD emerge victorious in this lawsuit and the simplest solution is to leave those stops to officers without cameras.

It's not all negative, however. As noted above, officers with cameras received 50% fewer complaints, suggesting the presence of another "witness" causes both parties to treat each other with a little more respect. Camera use can result in de-escalation, which is something rarely willfully practiced by officers.

But we can't read too much into that either. The drop in complaints is tracked by a drop in stops, which may suggest the cameras aren't "civilizing" interactions so much as fewer of them are taking place.

Body cams are band-aids, at best. They can never be a panacea, but they're far from useless. Things do change when law enforcement operates under additional scrutiny. But they don't change as quickly or dramatically as proponents of cameras hope they will. A seismic cultural shift is needed in most departments and body cameras will only incrementally increase the speed in which bad apples are expunged from the barrel. But the barrel will still be filled with slightly-less-rotten apples. That being said, cameras should be a requirement as should the presumption that missing footage weighs against a cop's statements. Just because they're not working as well as many of us thought they would doesn't mean it's without its merits.

Filed Under: body cameras, milwaukee, police, use of force

Attorney General Says Texas Cops Can View All The Camera Footage They Want Before Being Questioned

from the no-reason-to-trust-them-then dept

Body cameras on cops are, generally speaking, a good idea. Anything that opens up law enforcement to a little more scrutiny is better than the alternative, even if body cameras contribute more to accountability in theory than in actual practice.

But just as soon as some cracks appear in the wall of opacity, legislators and government officials rush in to patch them. Multiple state legislatures have discussed bills making body camera footage immune from public records requests. In other states, the recordings are presumed untouchable until the legislature says otherwise.

Public access isn't the only issue to be considered, however. Just as important is officer access to camera footage when faced with accusations of misconduct or abuse. The Dallas PD already took the state's lack of firm guidelines to grant its officers privileges it would never extend to citizens accused of criminal acts. Dallas police are given 72 hours to get their stories straight before being questioned about officer-involved shootings. They are also given access to all video recordings of the incident before being questioned.

The state attorney general has now expanded the Dallas PD's ad hoc rule to every law enforcement agency in Texas. [h/t Grits for Breakfast]

[AG Ken] Paxton’s opinion follows a September request by Dallas County District Attorney Faith Johnson to clarify the sweeping body cam law the Texas Legislature passed in 2015, which entitles officers “to access any recording of an incident involving the officer before the officer is required to make a statement about the incident.” As Johnson’s office told us at the time, some Texas police departments interpreted that to mean officers could review only their own body cam footage before going on record, which civil rights groups like the ACLU still criticized as “poor investigative practice” that police would never use on other suspects. Others, including the Dallas Police Department, put that policy on steroids, allowing cops to also review the body camera footage of every other officer who was on the scene before giving a statement, according to Johnson’s office.

This interpretation -- which gives law enforcement officers access to all recordings of an incident before questioning -- was supposed to resolve a supposed prosecutorial dilemma. According to Johnson, prosecutors dealing with accused officers were having problems with testimony, considering it all could have been made up on the spot once the footage was reviewed. The dilemma was that cops were considered less trustworthy with a policy like the Dallas PD's in place. Even if officers weren't recalibrating their reports to match viewed footage, the public perception was that they were.

Instead of recognizing the problem and addressing it, AG Paxton has made it worse. Every officer accused of anything gets a few days and all the footage they need to address allegations. No criminal suspect has ever had the luxury of viewing all available evidence before even being charged. Cops, however, are special. So special their testimony should be viewed as suspect in cases where they're accused of misconduct. AG Paxton may think he's protecting cops, but he's actually undermining the public's steadily-diminishing faith in their public servants.

Paxton has chosen to make this a legislative problem, assuring it won't be addressed for several months. When it is finally addressed, lawmakers will be besieged by police unions and law enforcement reps who are willing to sacrifice officer credibility to protect them from accountability.

Filed Under: body cameras, police, texas, transparency

LAPD Finally Starts Fixing Its Awful Body Camera Policy, But It's Not All Good News

from the chipping-away-at-opacity dept

It appears the city of Los Angeles is finally going to revise its terrible police body camera policy. Nearly $60 million was spent outfitting officers with cameras, but the end result provided little value to taxpayers. As it stands now, the only way to access footage is to engage in civil litigation with the police department (over violated rights, not rejected records requests) or be a defendant in a criminal case. Even then, a judge still has to be convinced you have a right to see the footage, even if you're one of the subjects.

The proposed law change would flip the situation entirely around, putting the burden on law enforcement to show why footage should remain out of public view.

Under the proposal drafted by Richard Tefank, executive director of the Police Commission, video shot during critical incidents -- which includes shootings, in-custody deaths and other major events -- would be released within 45 days. The new policy would apply to body cameras, in-car video, police facility surveillance video, drones and video, in the department's possession, that was captured by third parties.

That very last bit is concerning as it gives police control of third-party footage, which will incentivize the seizure of bystanders' phones and nearby businesses' surveillance video. This might work if law enforcement only makes copies of this footage, leaving third parties free to release their footage whenever they want.

But it would definitely dial back the restraints on police-generated footage. It creates a presumption of release that must face review every 14 days if law enforcement agencies wish to continue withholding footage. Unfortunately, this process will still be mostly an inside job. Review of requested delays will fall on the police chief and two selected commissioners from the LAPD's Board of Police Commissioners. While the Board is composed of five "civilian" commissioners, its independent power will be somewhat weakened by its limited presence during footage release reviews.

The single bright note in all of this is that it appears the Board is generally responsive to citizens' concerns and complaints. According to the NBC Los Angeles story, this small step towards openness was prompted by public input on body-worn camera policies.

The commission last year retained the Policing Project at New York University School of Law to gather public input into a new policy regarding the release of body-worn camera video. According to a report it released last September, a majority of members of the general public who responded to a Policing Project survey said video shot during critical incidents should be made publicly within a short period of time.

It's not as good as it could be. And the land grab on third-party video hopefully only limits the release of copies maintained by the LAPD. While it would be all but impossible to make the current situation worse, the hesitant step in right direction shows LAPD officials are starting to realize running a closed shop only further alienates the communities the department serves. Hopefully, additional public input will continue steering the agency towards more openness in the future.

Filed Under: body cameras, lapd, police, transparency

Kansas Legislature Introduces Two Bills Mandating Speedy Release Of Police Body Cam Footage

from the thinning-the-blue-line dept

Two new bills have been introduced in the Kansas state legislature with the intent of forcing law enforcement agencies to turn over body camera footage in a timely manner. They appear to have been prompted by the family of a man shot and killed by police officers late last year. It took police 11 weeks to turn over footage of the incident. Even then, it wasn't as though the footage was given to the executor of Dominique White's estate. Instead, White's father was "granted access" to the the body cam footage, which means he was able to watch the video on police equipment at a police station by himself with no other surviving family members.

This is the state of Kansas' current laws regarding body camera footage. Very few people are given access to footage and, with rare exceptions, the footage remains completely in the hands of law enforcement. The only people granted access to footage at this point in time are subjects of recordings, parents of minors who are subjects of recordings, attorneys for a recording subject, or a person's heir.

These bills aim to change that. The Senate bill [PDF] would require law enforcement agencies to produce footage for these recipients within 24 hours of a request. It would also add to the list of viewers, albeit with an additional delay. Anyone requesting video footage would have access to it within 30 days if the recording contains use of force resulting in injury or death. Agencies would still be able to redact footage in certain instances (mainly to remove the name/face of an officer currently under investigation) but would have to remove redactions once this investigation concludes. And slow-rolling an investigation won't help police keep footage at least partially buried: the law says all redactions must be removed within 270 days.

The House bill [PDF] speeds up that timetable. Both require a 24-hour turnaround for subjects of body cam footage, but the House bill would force law enforcement agencies to turn over video to anyone requesting it within five days of the use of force incident.

Needless to say, law enforcement agencies aren't happy with the proposed laws. Critics from affected departments spoke up against the bill by insinuating citizens were too stupid to handle unredacted footage of use of force incidents.

Body cameras don’t have the same perspective as the officers, said Greg Smith, a special deputy/sheriff’s liaison with the Johnson County Sheriff’s Office.

“If you’re looking for this to be some kind of panacea to fix police and community relations, this is not the bill,” he said.

Olathe Police Chief Steven Menke said a body camera is a tool but “rarely tells the entire story.”

“We cannot lose sight of the fact that police officers have the same due process rights as every other citizen,” he said.

Shorter law enforcement: trust cops, not your lying eyes. Yes, body cameras "rarely tell the entire story," but that objection is never raised when footage clears officers of wrongdoing or shows subjects apparently engaged in criminal acts. And cameras are not a panacea. But burying footage behind legislated barriers is about as far removed from a "panacea" as law enforcement can get.

It's true a 24-hour turnaround time is extremely tight, especially if the responding agency doesn't have much practice handling camera footage and/or applying redactions. That being said, too long of a grace period for redaction just invites stonewalling, even when footage is edited and ready to go. Without hard limits on production, everyone's still going to be subjected to interminable waits to access body cam footage.

The complaint by the local police union is even more nonsensical.

"If this bill becomes law, law enforcement agencies would be forced to disclose the video long before their criminal and/or administrative reviews are completed," said Blaine Dryden, president of the Kansas State Lodge of the Fraternal Order of Police. "Unquestionably, the disclosure with this much haste is not accompanied by any substantial factual context that a complete investigation provides."

Law enforcement agencies are Johnny-on-the-spot when it comes to delivering rap sheets, surveillance footage, questionable social media posts, or whatever else puts victims of excessive force in a bad light. But they're oh so reluctant to turn over footage showing officers engaged in questionable behavior. Somehow we're expected to wait for everything to get sorted out over the next several months-to-years before we're allowed to take a look at footage officers captured in public while performing their public duties.

The clock is ticking on these bills and legislators pushing for the new laws claim they're being met with law enforcement stonewalling.

Sen. Molly Baumgardner, R-Louisburg, a supporter of the bill, said the issue of providing access to police recordings has been around the Legislature for at least three years, and she said opponents of the measure have so far been reluctant to negotiate.

If they can wait it out, the legislative deadline for bill passage will come and go with the bills still in the starting dock. That's only a few days away. Without forward progress, the bills will idle until the next session and may not be picked up again until next year.

It's unrealistic to think the release of footage will single-handedly reform law enforcement agencies. But allowing them to maintain the opaque status quo will result in zero change whatsoever. Hopefully, at least one these bills will move forward before the deadline and start making its way towards the governor's desk.

Filed Under: body cameras, kansas, police, transparency

New York Police Union Sues NYPD To Block Public Release Of Body Camera Footage

from the PBA-not-interested-in-having-public-servants-serve-the-public dept

The route to equipping the NYPD with body cameras ran through a federal courtroom. As part of the remedies handed down in a civil rights lawsuit against the NYPD's stop-and-frisk program, body cameras became required equipment for officers.

NYPD officials seemed to support the plan. Not so the ostensible representative of the NYPD, the Patrolmen's Benevolent Association (PBA). The NYPD's union fought the cameras much as they have fought anything with a hint of accountability. A report by the NYPD's internal oversight found officers much less concerned about body cameras and access to footage than their supposed union reps.

A long-delayed camera policy finally rolled out, making it clear cameras would serve officers and prosecutors much more than they would the general public. Now, the PBA is going to court to block the release of camera footage to the public. The PBA hopes the court will read public records laws the way it does, tossing body cam footage into the gaping hole of New York public records exemptions.

The union points to a New York statute, Civil Rights Law Section 50-a, that declares "all personnel records used to evaluate performance toward continued employment or promotion" must be "confidential and not subject to inspection or review," permitting their release only with the consent of the police officer or a court order. According to the union, body camera footage should be considered such personnel records.

The exemption is already awful, distancing officers from accountability by ensuring the public cannot access anything related to disciplinary actions or internal investigations. If a court finds in favor of the PBA, footage captured by officers while performing their duties in public would suddenly become internal records the NYPD would be forbidden by state law from releasing.

This would completely subvert one of the key public benefits of body cameras. As the ACLU points out, denying access to footage to the public turns body cameras into spywear.

A win for the PBA would turn body cameras, paid for with millions of dollars in taxpayer funds, into yet another NYPD mass surveillance tool to be used against vulnerable New Yorkers. Public support for body cameras will not last if the police accountability aspect of the devices is erased and they simply become public surveillance devices.

This would be a devastating blow for holding officers responsible for their actions and would negate the potential value body cameras could add to improving police-community relations.

The PBA is taking an extreme stance on this issue, which places the union in apparent opposition of the officers it represents. The lawsuit also names the NYPD as a defendant. The department has argued body cam footage is not a "personnel record," but is documentation of an event. According to the NYPD's arguments, it retains the right to release footage at its discretion after making any redactions necessary to comply with New York privacy laws.

The NYPD is finally trying to do something to repair its relationship with the communities they serve by releasing footage of controversial incidents. No sooner does the NYPD take a small step towards transparency and accountability than Pat Lynch and the PBA arrive on the scene to sue this urge into submission. The public isn't being served by this public sector union. Considering the PBA is suing the employer of the officers it represents, it could be argued the union isn't doing much to serve its members either. This lawsuit pit officers against the public at a crucial time when taking a less antagonistic stance would be far more beneficial.

Filed Under: body cameras, nypd, public records, transparency

Prosecutors Benefiting Most From Police Body Cameras

from the not-the-sort-of-accountability-we'd-envisioned dept

Touted as police accountability tools, body cameras haven't lived up to that reputation. Camera roll outs have had mixed results. In some places, departments have experienced declines in complaints. In others, the data shows nothing conclusive -- except, perhaps, that the cameras can be manipulated as easily as dashcams and audio recorders.

The one place cameras are definitely paying off, it seems, is in courtrooms. And it has nothing to do with civil lawsuits and everything to do with locking people up. If there's an entity benefiting directly from the explosion in body camera use, it's the nation's prosecutors. The stated fears about body-worn cameras being used by department brass to play "gotcha" with the rank-and-file haven't materialized. More often than not, footage is being used to put people behind bars.

A George Mason University survey [PDF] of prosecutors shows a majority of them have used body-worn camera footage as evidence.

Most state prosecutors’ offices (almost two-thirds) are already working with BWC evidence. Of these offices, a full 42.1% have used the evidence for longer than one year. Yet, a significant number (almost one-fifth of those using BWC evidence) are still very new to working with it (one month or less).

Nearly all prosecutors’ offices in jurisdictions with BWCs (92.6%) have used BWC evidence to prosecute private citizens. In comparison, 8.3% of offices located in jurisdictions with BWCs indicated that they have used BWC evidence to prosecute a police officer. It should be noted, however, that many more total citizens than police are prosecuted each year, so these percentages are not directly comparable.

Prosecutors also found camera footage to be far more useful to them than their defensive counterparts.

Very high numbers of respondents (79.5%) indicated that prosecutors in their offices support BWC use. Additionally, large majorities believed that BWC evidence will help the prosecution more than it will assist the defense (62.7%) and that BWCs would improve prosecutors’ overall ability to prosecute cases (65.8%). Fewer than 10% of lead prosecutors disagreed with these statements. Taken together, these results suggest that lead prosecutors view BWC evidence as a powerful prosecutorial tool.

[...]

A majority believed that BWC evidence would increase both rates of conviction (58.3% agreement) and the frequency/likelihood of plea bargains (62.3% agreement).

Considering the advantages camera footage has given prosecutors, it's surprising there are still complaints about the tech. Most seem to indicate prosecutors aren't happy the tool that's helping them secure more convictions might also require them to do a more work. Beyond concerns about logistics (storage, retrieval), prosecutors cite the time needed to review footage as a potential downside. This complaint, however, goes right to the heart of the issue -- something that needs to be addressed by law enforcement agencies.

66.9% of respondents feared that jurors might come to expect BWC evidence and that a lack of footage might lead jurors to question an account given by an officer or witness. Indeed, almost half of the sample (44%) agreed the BWC evidence would produce minor discrepancies between officer testimony and the videos. Additionally, 48.7% worried about the potential for BWCs to produce videos that do not fully or objectively capture events in a case.

When cameras are deployed and policies are clear on when they should be activated, it should indeed damage the prosecution's case if footage isn't recorded by officers. Since few departments are willing to hold officers accountable for selectively recording incidents -- and since courts have yet to make broad determinations about missing footage -- it's up to the public (jurors) to greet officers' assertions about unrecorded incidents as more dubious than those where footage exists.

There's another thing that surveys of law enforcement officers and officials has uncovered. Attempts by officials to calm officers concerned about body cam "gotchas" often contain assertions the recordings will be used to train officers and correct observed issues, rather than used to run them out of a job. But this assertion is mostly false. As former police officer Greg Prickett pointed out at Fault Lines, there's simply too much footage and too few hours in the day.

In 2013, “Mitch” Brailsford was a police recruit in Mesa, Arizona, and was one of thirteen officers being equipped with an Axon body camera. He was one of the first officers so equipped and told the media at the time that it would help him be a better police officer by letting him review his actions and correct his mistakes.

That is BS, although I have no doubt that Mitch believes it. It is common for rookies to believe this, but in practice, video is very rarely reviewed by patrol officers or their supervisors. There just isn’t time to do so.

Prickett's assertion is borne out by more George Mason University research [PDF].

[T]he largest effect of the implementation of BWCs was on accountability, which had increased in scope to cover a range of aspects of policing, including training, reporting, discretion, and police-citizen interactions. At the same time, the intensity with which officers’ experienced accountability had not significantly increased as BWC footage was not systematically used to monitor, review, and/or evaluate police officer conduct and quality of performance.

This continues to be true, even though this is one of the reasons given by agencies for the deployment of cameras.

BWCs were implemented primarily for training purposes and to protect patrol officers against groundless complaints rather than as a mechanism for identifying officer misconduct, for failing to comply with departmental policies, and for poor street-level performance. Although Users initially feared that BWCs were going to be used to get them into trouble for minor instances of misconduct or rule violations, their frames changed over time as they realized that BWCs were not going to be used by Managers as a “gotcha” mechanism.

When footage is reviewed, it usually exonerates officers. Day-to-day improvements in officer behavior just aren't happening because no department has the time to review hours of footage in search of training opportunities. Given this lack of oversight, it's hardly a surprise some research has shown almost no improvement in officer behavior following a body camera roll out.

What has been sold to the public as a new era of transparency and accountability has instead become just another closed shop run by law enforcement and prosecutors. The main beneficiaries of millions of hours of footage are police officers. Footage that helps secure convictions makes its way to prosecutors immediately. Footage showing possible misconduct or exonerating evidence remains in law enforcement agencies' complete control until forced to relinquish it. While there have been positive developments here and there, the best accountability tool still seems to be cameras, but mostly those wielded by citizens.

Filed Under: body cameras, police, prosecutors