DOJ Handing Out $20 Million For Police Body Cameras

from the finally,-a-law-enforcement-grant-that-doesn't-involve-military-gear dept

The Department of Justice is looking to help equip more law enforcement officers with body cameras.

The Obama administration is spending $20 million on police body cameras, amid rising tension over police violence.

The announcement from the Justice Department on Friday would create a new pilot program to equip police in dozens of cities with the devices, as the first step in a $75 million three-year effort that President Obama requested from Congress in December.

“This body-worn camera pilot program is a vital part of the Justice Department’s comprehensive efforts to equip law enforcement agencies throughout the country with the tools, support and training they need to tackle the 21st century challenges we face,” Attorney General Loretta Lynch said in a statement shared with media outlets. “Body-worn cameras hold tremendous promise for enhancing transparency, promoting accountability and advancing public safety for law enforcement officers and the communities they serve.”

One-third of the first $20 million will be routed to "small law enforcement agencies" -- the ones least likely to adopt this technology due to the cost of acquiring cameras. While grants towards initial purchases are helpful, unless there's more money on the way, ongoing maintenance and video storage costs will still be stated as reasons to avoid equipping officers with cameras.

This is a good move forward, though, even if simply equipping cops with cameras isn't a quick fix for law enforcement misconduct. As it stands now, most camera-equipped officers still exercise a great deal of control over what actually gets captured. And police departments -- often aided by sympathetic legislators -- are working quickly to limit the public's access to body camera recordings.

While there have been reports that body cameras have lowered both citizen complaints and use of force incidents, there's still more than enough released body cam footage that indicates it will take more than realizing they're being recorded to deter certain officers' abusive behavior and excessive force.

For instance, here's some footage captured by a Utah police officer's body cam that shows he and his fellow officers unleashing a police dog on a person with both hands in the air (while claiming the suspect "might have had a weapon" [that he was going to pull with his feet?]). Knowing a camera was running didn't result in any additional restraint by the officers.


Then there's the matter of the "extra rights" many officers have secured through police union pressure and law enforcement-friendly lawmakers. In addition to maintaining control over the release of footage, officers in some cities are given up to three days to review evidence before making a statement -- or even answering questions about the incident itself.

The administration's decision to fund body camera efforts is an implicit criticism of the current state of American policing. Police officers are well aware of what message is being sent by the deployment of these cameras. Even though captured footage also holds the power to exonerate wrongly-accused police officers, this fact is seldom mentioned by those critical of these programs. Instead, officers and their representatives suddenly develop concerns about the public's privacy -- something they've never expressed much interest in over the past several -- and mostly unrecorded -- decades.

Filed Under: accountability, body cameras, doj, police

Seattle PD Hires Coder Who Demanded It Hand Over Every Video Produced By Its Body Cameras

from the we-need-more-of-this,-please dept

Back in December, an anonymous person requested pretty much every report the Seattle PD generates daily, along with all footage from its newly-instituted body camera program. Today, that man is no longer anonymous and was recently hired by the Seattle PD.

The Seattle Police Department is taking the unconventional step of bringing a programmer who bombarded it with public records requests in-house. Chief Operating Officer Mike Wagers has led efforts to hire 24-year-old self-taught programmer Tim Clemans—initially, at least, on a three-month trial basis to work on redaction and disclosure of data.

He'll make $22.60 an hour and start on May 6. If all goes well, Clemans will stay on as a full-time staffer.

Seattle's police department has been mired in bad news for a few years now, but it does seem to actively be trying to change its culture (read: being responsible for 20% of the city's homicides) and relationship with the public. Additional scrutiny from the DOJ has nudged it in this direction, but Tim Clemans' request almost killed the body camera program before it got off the ground.

Fortunately, some reconsideration of the issue resulted in the PD attempting to make transparency and technology its ally, rather than its enemy. It has started its own YouTube channel and uploads body cam footage frequently. It held a hackathon to address the issue of en masse redaction -- something no other police force seems to have considered when facing the same nexus between accountability and privacy. Most have simply opted to withhold the footage from 99.9% of the public.

But not the Seattle PD. Not only did it host a hackathon, but it hired Clemans, despite his admittedly vexatious FOIA request and despite him having posted dash-cam footage of an incident where he was hassled by one of Seattle's finest.

The police department is hiring Clemans despite a tense March 27 encounter with Officer Jason Bender at Westlake Center. Clemans said he was filming police that day and pointed his camera at the officer during a benign interaction with two young men—one black and one white. "My filming just demonstrates what the police are doing," he said when asked why he was filming them in particular. "Both the good and bad."

But, he said, Bender was annoyed at being filmed. A dash-cam video (obtained by Clemans and posted on his YouTube account, of course!) only recorded garbled audio of a lengthy argument that ensued. Bender, who identifies himself as a member of the department's Crisis Intervention Team, asks Clemans pointedly, "Do you videotape criminals? No, you don't. You know why? Because the criminals are not"—but here the audio becomes difficult to make out. "Enjoy your safety that's provided to you."

It should be noted that Seattle has been much more proactive in considering the concerns of its citizens, rather than in deferring to whatever law enforcement officials say is best for everybody. The mayor's office evicted the Seattle PD's two drones, citing the need to "focus" on "community building," rather than simply keeping an eye on as much of the community as technologically possible. (The drones ended up with the LAPD, which shares none of these concerns.)

The good news is that Clemans is viewed as someone who can help the Seattle PD reach its goals. He'll be working on more auto-redaction solutions -- targeting the removal of personally-identifiable information on citizens from police documents. His auto-redaction work for body cam footage is still being fine-tuned. Most of what's been uploaded to date is blurry and unintelligible, but this recently-uploaded video tries a new approach -- one that's visually striking, even if it's still mostly useless as a tool of accountability.


Considering how most law enforcement agencies value their privacy over that of the general public's, it's kind of nice to see an agency take a much more balanced approach to this sort of situation. Body cameras are headed towards being as ubiquitous as dash-cams, so there will need to be processes in place to prevent privacy violations. While most have opted at this point for maximum obfuscation, the Seattle PD actually seems to want to be ahead of the transparency curve.

Filed Under: body cameras, foia, redactions, seattle, seattle police, tim clemans, transparency

Minnesota Legislators, Law Enforcement Trying To Strip The 'Public Accountability' Out Of State's Body Camera Program

from the one-way-surveillance-and-zero-accountability dept

More cities and states are getting behind the idea that outfitting their law enforcement officers with body cameras will result in better policing and more accountability. Unfortunately, many of them then follow this moment of clarity by gutting the "accountability" part of the programs.

Los Angeles law enforcement agencies will only turn over camera footage if it's part of a criminal or civil suit. Florida legislators are pushing for additional exceptions in the state's open records laws specifically for body camera footage and specifically at the request of the state's police union.

Minnesota seems to be taking the same route. The state wants its law enforcement officers to wear cameras but some legislators don't feel the public should have access to the footage. A bill supported by the state's law enforcement aims to keep as many recordings out of the public's hands as possible.

The bill states:

[A]udio and video data captured by a portable video recording system that is not part of an active or inactive criminal investigation must be destroyed within 90 days of the date the data were captured, unless the data subject, or any peace officer identifiable by the data, submits a written request to the law enforcement agency to retain the data for possible use in a future proceeding related to the circumstances under which the data were originally collected. Any law enforcement agency that receives a request to retain data shall retain it for a reasonable time, based upon the likelihood of its future use and the agency's policies for retention. Peace officers who are identifiable by portable video recording system data shall have unrestricted access to the data while it is retained and must be permitted to make copies.

It seems reasonable... until you realize what it's allowing law enforcement agencies to do. Anything retained by these agencies will only be accessible to civilians in the recording, and then only by request. Alleged misconduct that is cleared by law enforcement oversight will move affected recordings into the "destroy" pile, which means agencies can start deleting potentially damning footage almost immediately, provided there are no current requests for the recordings.

The bill also exempts recordings from state public records laws by deeming nearly all recordings "nonpublic" by default.

Except for data classified as active criminal investigative data pursuant to subdivision 7, portable video recording system data is private data on individuals or nonpublic data at all times. Notwithstanding subdivision 7, portable video recording system data that are part of an inactive investigation remain classified as provided in this subdivision.

Subdivision 7 pertains to "criminal investigative data" -- which is also "nonpublic" and "private."

On the other hand, peace officers will have unrestricted access to any footage they appear in. This open-ended access is the sort of thing that can lead to tampering and deletion. Any officer should, at best, have controlled access to recordings involving them if the recording system is going to maintain any sort of integrity. Anything else is completely irresponsible.

If the bill goes forward, the body cameras willed be largely robbed of their deterrent effect. By removing the general public from the information flow, the cameras will no longer be tools of police accountability, but rather just another surveillance option for peace officers. The cameras basically become "one way" collections, wholly controlled by the officers who generate the recordings.

Those representing the law enforcement side are defending this bill by presuming to speak for the public they don't want to be accountable to...

Dennis Flaherty, executive director of the Minnesota Police and Peace Officers Association, said public access to body camera footage "really serves no public purpose."

… because it might make things a little tougher for peace officers:

Flaherty and other law enforcement representatives expressed concern about what wide public access would mean -- both for exposing citizens' private lives and, in their minds, spurring more complaints against officers.

"Complaints against officers" is exactly what's spurring so many states and cities to outfit their cops with cameras. Flaherty conveniently forgets that body camera footage can also exonerate wrongly-accused officers in his haste to portray body cams as somehow intrusive to public officers.

Video works both ways… theoretically. Public access is essential if the camera programs are going to have any chance at reducing complaints and misconduct. Drastically limiting the number of people who can access recordings makes it highly unlikely the goals will be met. The bill creates a cover system for abuse and allows for full narrative control by law enforcement agencies. And this is coming from a state where law enforcement already expects the public to perform its surveillance for it and turn over video recordings captured in private businesses whenever a cop asks for it.

That's not accountability. That's nothing more than a bunch of government agencies attempting to dodge their responsibilities to the public they're supposed to be serving.

Filed Under: accountability, body cameras, law enforcement, minnesota, police

Proposed Florida Body Camera Law Riddled With Exceptions At Behest Of Police Union

from the protections-that-only-protect-bad-cops dept

Florida's legislators are pushing through bills mandating body camera use by the state's law enforcement officers. So far, so good, except for the fact that law enforcement officers aren't really looking for greater transparency or accountability, at least not according to Florida Police Benevolent Association chief Gary Bradford.

Sen. Chris Smith was unable to slide his bill past the first panel review until concessions had been granted to soothe Bradford's "worries."

“Our concern is if the camera is on, and it’s required to be on through the entire shift, then it will capture video and audio when you have roll calls or when you’re walking down the hallway or just as you’re go through your day. You’re on a lunch break, you’re in the privacy of your own car with your partner, you’re having a conversation about having a fight with your wife in the morning, or something along those lines, and we just think those things are private, and they shouldn’t be part of the discussion,” said Bradford.

Except that's not the extent of the exceptions being granted to supposedly ensure the public won't be allowed to eavesdrop on officers' private discussions of their domestic disputes. Instead, the new language provides several options for law enforcement agencies to abuse to deny responses to public records requests.

PCS/SB 248 creates a public records exemption for an audio or video recording made by a law enforcement officer in the course of the officer performing his or her official duties and responsibilities, if the recording:

Is taken within the interior of a private residence;
Is taken on the property of a facility that offers health care, mental health care, or social services;
Is taken at the scene of a medical emergency;
Is taken at a place where a person recorded or depicted in the recording has a reasonable expectation of privacy; Shows a child younger than 18 years of age inside a school or on school property; or
Shows a child younger than 14 years of age at any location.

Taken without context, the list of exceptions seems reasonable. But match it up with recent events, and you can see where this set of exceptions could easily nullify this tool of accountability.

Medical emergency exception? Sure, HIPAA and other related laws make medical events and history very private information, subject to several sharing restrictions. But what if a cop is called to assist someone who's suffering a medical emergency or is suicidal or suffers from mental illness? Far too often, a call for help is answered with violence. Under this exception, the underlying medical emergency prompting the police response would allow law enforcement agencies to withhold captured body cam footage.

The exceptions devoted to minors would allow law enforcement agencies to withhold the sort of damning footage that contradicted the Cleveland police narrative in the shooting of 12-year-old Tamir Rice. Without this footage, the public would have been left to rely on the CPD's claims that Rice refused to comply with multiple orders to put his hands up and "made a move towards his waistband," ultimately resulting in his being shot to death by responding officers. A park surveillance camera recording showed what actually happened: two police officers drove across the park, stopping within feet of Tamir Rice and and shot him within two seconds of arrival.

ACLU Florida's Michelle Richardson says these exceptions are blank checks for LEO opacity and abuse.

"If this was really about privacy, it would apply to what officers can practically release on their own as well," Richardson says. "So this is really just about shielding police misconduct. If police want to control the narrative, they can release what they want."

While not nearly as restrictive as the LAPD's policy of only releasing body cam footage to parties involved in criminal or civil court proceedings, it's still a recipe for disaster. Florida has laws in place that already restrict the release of police-captured recordings and this pile of exceptions -- while facially well-intentioned -- allows agencies to further dodge accountability for their officers' misdeeds.

Filed Under: body cameras, exceptions, florida, police

LAPD's Body Cams To Be Synced To Taser Deployment

from the recorded-into-compliance dept

The Los Angeles Police Department is going to be compiling some pretty graphic footage in the near future, thanks to Taser International.

Los Angeles police on Tuesday ordered Tasers that, when used, automatically activate cameras on officers' uniforms, which will create visual records of incidents at a time of mounting concern about excessive force by U.S. law enforcement officers.

The 3,000 new digital Taser X26P weapons record the date, time and duration of firing, and whether Taser wires actually strike suspects and how long the thousands of volts of electricity pulse through them.

This is the functional synergy of buying your "less lethal" weapons and body cameras from the same company. A Bluetooth connection between the two engages the camera once the Taser's safety is disengaged. This should provide a fairly decent record of incidents involving this particular form of force, while simultaneously addressing fears that officers might forget to engage the camera during heated situations or lose valuable seconds turning them on manually.

That the device will also record key data about the Taser itself is also encouraging. Even if the camera angle is less than helpful, the captured metrics should give overseers a pretty good idea whether the use of force traveled into "excessive" territory.

On the downside, this is the LAPD, which has already stated that body camera footage will be available only via court proceedings. By cutting out the general public, the LAPD has removed a very important layer of accountability. And the incidents mentioned in the Reuters article as examples of public concern over police use of force (Eric Garner, Michael Brown, Ezell Ford) all notably did not involve the use of a Taser (Garner was choked to death, Brown and Ford were both shot). The new Taser/camera system closes the accountability gap for one particular area, but use of other types of force are still subject to officers' control of their body cameras.

The LAPD has proven in the past that its officers don't care much for being recorded, so the rollout of 7,000 body cameras needs to be treated with more skepticism than optimism. Widespread abuse of DOJ-mandated audio recording devices (missing/disabled antennas, deliberate disengagement) has been greeted by LAPD supervisors with timid hand slapping and "accountability is hard" complaints. There's no reason to believe certain officers won't be able to find a way around this new, automatic recording technology as well.

But, on a theoretical level, it's a better system than relying on officers themselves to engage recording devices before deploying Tasers. Its application in the real world will probably not be quite as foolproof as Taser's spokesman portrays it. And, even if it does roll out smoothly and work as advertised, we're still left with the unfortunate fact that the general public will have very limited access to either the Taser data or the automated recordings.

Filed Under: body cameras, body cams, lapd, police, taser

Oakland PD Body Cams Help Cut Police-Involved Shootings From 8 A Year To Zero In The Last 18 Months.

from the the-Mild-West-of-law-enforcement dept

More good news on the police body cam front: according to Oakland's mayor, the police department's camera program has significantly reduced use of force incidents.

[Mayor] Jean Quan said Oakland police officers had 2,186 use-of-force incidents in 2009, the last year that no officers wore body cameras, and that number declined to 836 such incidents last year and to only 572 incidents so far this year, with just two weeks remaining.

It's not just excessive force that's seen a drastic reduction. The department's 619 body cams have also played a part in reducing the use of deadly force.

She also noted that the department has gone more than 18 months without an officer-involved shooting, in a city that used to average about eight such incidents a year.

Additionally, Quan said the captured footage has been useful in defending officers against bogus excessive force allegations, proving the cameras "work both ways."

A body camera system is nothing without solid policies backing them up. Anyone can instruct an officer to wear a camera, but only a department solidly behind the program will hold them accountable if they fail to do so. According to public records obtained by Ars Technica, the Oakland PD is making a genuine effort to ensure devices are on and recording.

Over the last two years, the Oakland Police Department (OPD) has disciplined police officers on 24 occasions for disabling or failing to activate body-worn cameras, newly released public records show…

The new data shows that the most common punishment for officers who did not comply with their own department’s policy was a "written reprimand" or a suspension of one to three days. One officer was even suspended for 20 days in December 2013 due to an allegation of failing to activate his body-worn camera.

On November 22, 2013, there were five separate incidents where officers allegedly "improperly removed" or "failed to initiate their PDRD." One of those officers, none of whom were named, appears to have resigned as a result of the incident.

As Cyrus Farivar points out, something strange happened on November 22 of last year (records requests have been filed for more details), but otherwise, department officials are staying on top of cops who don't comply with the camera policy. This also suggests the city's 700 officers are comfortable with the recording devices, as the number of violations is very low. If this were just a case of underreported abuse, it's likely the department would not have seen such a dramatic drop in use of force incidents.

Taking this program seriously is essential to its success. To do otherwise is to trend towards something like the Los Angeles Police Department's situation: widespread and open abuse. Voice recording equipment installed in vehicles was routinely tampered with and one precinct found that half of its squad cars had their antennas removed or disabled. Those overseeing the recording program weren't informed of this abuse until months after it had been discovered.

Outside factors can have some effect on officer behavior, but better policing starts from within. The Oakland PD seems to have a handle on its body cam program and both its officers and the public they serve are better for it.

Filed Under: body cameras, oakland, police

Videos From Wearable Cameras Contain Natural Biometric Markers That Can Eliminate Anonymity

from the motion-pictures dept

Video evidence figures quite frequently here on Techdirt, because moving pictures of incidents are generally compelling and incontrovertible. That's true even if they are released anonymously to protect the person recording the event from retribution. But new research suggests that videos from wearable cameras have embedded within them natural biometric markers (via New Scientist):

Egocentric cameras are being worn by an increasing number of users, among them many security forces worldwide. GoPro cameras already penetrated the mass market, and Google Glass may follow soon. As head-worn cameras do not capture the face and body of the wearer, it may seem that the anonymity of the wearer can be preserved even when the video is publicly distributed. We show that motion features in egocentric video provide biometric information, and the identity of the user can be determined quite reliably from a few seconds of video.

The paper describing the work also points out some consequences of this result:

Egocentric video biometrics can prevent theft of wearable cameras by locking the camera when worn by people other than the owner. In video sharing services, this Biometric measure can help to locate automatically all videos shot by the same user. An important message in this paper is that people should be aware that sharing egocentric video will compromise their anonymity.

On the plus side, this also means that videos from police body-cameras can also be tied to particular officers, which may help to make such evidence less vulnerable to tampering.

Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca, and +glynmoody on Google+

Filed Under: anonymity, biometric, body cameras, wearable cameras

Seattle Privacy Activist Attempts To Kill Accountability With Transparency

from the it-was-the-requester-in-the-basement-with-the-gmail-address dept

You'd think that accountability and transparency would never get this screwed up. But theoretical good can sometimes become a practical nightmare.

The Seattle police department -- one of several police departments around the nation to have spent some time under the DOJ's microscope -- is only weeks away from starting their body cam pilot program. This is good.* Or was, right up until the unlikeliest of wrenches was thrown into the works: a Freedom of Information request.

*Caveats apply.

Now that plan may get put on ice, due in part to an overly broad public records requests. The Seattle Times reported this morning that an anonymous man, known only by the email address policevideorequests@gmail.com, has made an official request for "details on every 911 dispatch on which officers are sent; all the written reports they produce; and details of each computer search generated by officers when they run a person’s name, or check a license plate or address."

The requestor also wants all video from patrol car cameras currently in use, and plans to request video from body cams once they are implemented. He has requested the information "every day, in spreadsheet form."

Look, I'm one of the biggest fans of freedom of information laws and police accountability, but what the anonymous requester is demanding creates a massive logistical headache. The problem is the request can't necessarily be denied because the state law doesn't provide a legally-sound escape hatch to use to turn down overly-broad requests. Faced with this request, the city created it own exit strategy: pulling the plug on the body cam program.

Not that the requester's intentions were pure. The unnamed requester (who is in his 20's and lives with his parents, according to the Seattle Times) has an ideological ax to grind.

“I think what we need is some sort of balance between transparency and privacy,” the requestor said.

The man, who runs a YouTube channel of police video and audio, also spoke to Reuters, stating his belief that "state law is simply too liberal when it comes to privacy."

The requester is hoping to make the city realize that body cams create potential privacy problems, presumably by posting as many unredacted recordings as possible. Audacious, if a bit disingenuous. Fortunately, the city and the privacy activist have reached an agreement.

The programmer agreed to drop his requests if given videos in a deal that would then see him advise the department on thorny tech issues related to public-records requests for videos, such as how to more quickly redact footage and how to store it online for easy access by the public, media and lawyers.

"Under the law, they get requests regardless of whether or not I go away, and they view what I do as part of the solution," the programmer, a man in his 20s, told reporters at a joint news conference with police in which he declined to reveal his identity.

With this agreement in place, the body cam pilot program is back on track. The comfort level of Seattle citizens may not be where it once was, however, not after watching the city being extorted into handing the control of body cam footage over to someone who still lives with his parents.

In the long run, this will probably result in less information and less accountability. Someone has given legislators a pretty good reason to patch holes in their freedom of information laws, and given them every excuse to load up on additional restrictions and exemptions. The anonymous requester may have made a point about privacy, but the end result will likely be more secrecy.

Filed Under: body cameras, body cams, foia, police, privacy, seattle

Police Body Cameras: It's Not The Footage, It's The Deterrent

from the can't-fix-everything,-doesn't-mean-we-shouldn't-try dept

Body cameras for police officers: the cure-all that isn't. While obtaining additional footage (and in some cases, any footage) of officer-involved incidents is a step forward, there are still too many inherent flaws in the system to consider it a complete fix for misconduct and abuse. For one, cameras are only as reliable as their operators, and the police will still control the "RECORD" button in most cases.

There are also issues with what they actually capture. A first-person perspective may not be the most helpful and the rolling 30-second buffers that don't capture audio (put in at the insistence of police unions) may cause some headaches in the future. That being said, it is a huge step forward from what has been deemed acceptable for years now: the incident report, a purely subjective recounting of an event, often by an unreliable narrator.

The successes seen by the Rialto, California police department trial program point to the real benefit of using body cameras. It's not that questionable incidents were caught on tape and reviewed. It's that fewer questionable incidents occurred.

Even with only half of the 54 uniformed patrol officers wearing cameras at any given time, the department over all had an 88 percent decline in the number of complaints filed against officers, compared with the 12 months before the study, to 3 from 24.

Ethan Bernstein at Harvard Business Review has more details from that trial.

In that study, incidents occurring during shifts without cameras were twice as likely to result in the use of force. Indeed, when officers wore cameras, every physical contact was initiated by a member of the public, while 24% of physical contact was initiated by officers when they weren’t wearing the cameras.

Being observed results in better behavior. In this way, the police aren't so different from the public.

You’ll see similar results — with an interesting twist — in a study by Washington University’s Lamar Pierce and his coauthors, who looked at employee behavior at almost 400 U.S. restaurants. Bodycams reduced restaurant employee theft by 22%, or about $24 per week. (The effect grew over time, with theft dropping $7 a week the first month and $48 a week by the third month.) But the cameras actually had a much larger impact on productivity and sales: On average, total check revenue increased by 7% ($2,975 per week), and total drink revenue by 10.5% ($927 per week). Tips went up, too, by 0.3%.

There are, of course, downsides to constant observation. Bernstein notes that some people faced with this -- especially if their employment is highly dependent on their observed performance -- tend to focus on small details rather than the overall picture. They expend more energy engaged in tedium, rather than improving. He suggests a few adjustments that might result in fewer officers (or employees) succumbing to the desire to perform in an automaton-like fashion, rather than in a way that benefits both them and the people around them.

If too much transparency kills innovative behavior, how can police departments improve officers’ track record on profiling without sacrificing the kind of educated risk-taking and problem solving that’s often needed to save lives?

I would argue that the answer lies in focusing on developing good judgment and supporting justice, rather than on enforcing police protocol. Police in Ferguson and elsewhere can learn from companies that use cameras for coaching and development instead of evaluation and punishment.

This is a very difficult balance to achieve in a law enforcement setting. The potential harm caused by rogue police behavior can be almost incalculable. Relaxing accountability and relying on cameras to deter bad behavior won't accomplish anything with those determined to game the system. Police misconduct should still be treated seriously and have serious repercussions. (This area definitely needs to be improved, cameras or no cameras.)

But there are officers who just have a few rough edges to polish off in order to make them positive additions to the force. Using body cameras solely as a lead-in for punitive measures will either push these on-the-edge cops to do their own on-the-fly film editing or turn them into officers who prefer the rote comfort of reports and clockwork patrol routes, rather than actively engaging with the community in a positive fashion. Neither outcome is desirable.

These issues aside, there's really very little reason to oppose the use of body cameras. An additional account of incidents, as well as the inherent deterrent effect, have too much potential benefit to be ignored. A new level of transparency and accountability is owed to the public after years and years of public servants operating under an unwritten code of silence and obfuscation. If law enforcement agencies are at all concerned about their officers' behavior, this option isn't one they can afford to ignore.

Filed Under: body cameras, deterrence, police

Putting Body Cameras On Cops Won't Fix Misconduct, But It's A Good Start

from the the-other-option-is-business-as-usual,-which-is-completely-unacceptable dept

Prompted by the fatal shooting of Ferguson resident Mike Brown, a We the People petition asking the federal government to require body cameras for all law enforcement officers has roared past the 100,000 signature threshold required for a White House response. (Theoretically.)

The petition asks for the creation of the "Mike Brown Law," which would mandate the use of body cameras and ensure agencies are supplied with funding needed to comply. The usual caveat about bad laws being named after deceased persons aside, the use of body cameras by police officers is nearing inevitability, what with police misconduct now being a mainstream media topic.

It's not a complete solution, but it is a very valuable addition. Dash cams, which have been in use for years, only capture a small percentage of interactions with civilians. While the use of body cameras will prompt new privacy concerns, the presence of the unblinking eye has been shown to make both police and the public behave better.

The problems with body cameras are both human and technological. Currently, almost every camera system is controlled by police officers. Guidance on what does and doesn't need to be recorded isn't always clear. What may seem to be a deliberate effort to conceal something may just be an actual malfunction. And, like any other system meant to create greater accountability, it can be gamed.

In New Orleans, Armand Bennet, 26, was shot in the forehead during a traffic stop by New Orleans police officer Lisa Lewis. However, the police department did not reveal until much later that Lewis turned off her body camera just before shooting Bennett. Bennett survived and has now been charged under prior warrants for his arrest. It also reviewed that Lewis had had a prior run in with Bennet who escaped about a week earlier.

At first glance, it has all the appearance of a deliberate coverup. But there could be dozens of legitimate reasons this encounter wasn't recorded.

The obvious reaction is that she turned it off to conceal the fact that she was about to plug Bennet in the forehead in a moment, and had the presence to do so without creating a conclusive record. But we easily see that because of what happened afterward. Post hoc rationalizations are easily deconstructed.

Perhaps she turned it off when she thought the confrontation was over. Perhaps she turned it off by accident. Perhaps she desperately wishes now she had kept it on, to prove Bennet took some action to justify her shooting him in the forehead. Or, as appears most likely, perhaps she turned it off so that there would be no video of what she was about to do.

This solution won't -- and can't -- solve everything. Beyond the actions of police officers, there's the technology itself, which is far from perfect. Unfortunately, efforts to improve are being hamstrung by those most resistant to police officers being watched.

When an officer presses record, the camera saves the 30 seconds of images that led up to that moment, but not the audio. The manufacturer designed the buffer to protect the privacy of police officers — and to appeal to resistant police unions — but it also means the cameras may miss crucial noises or words that trigger an incident.

Even a more-complete version of the events (compared to gathering eyewitness statements and weighing those against police reports) may still be missing crucial evidence, thanks to the efforts of police unions. As we've noted here earlier, legislators and government officials are becoming more receptive to the use of body cameras. Those raising the loudest objections are the erstwhile mouthpieces of the officers themselves.

The mayor of Miami-Dade sees the potential benefits of body cameras.

Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Giménez is calling for hundreds of the county's police officers to be equipped with video cameras, weeks after after a police involved shooting in the Midwest triggered days of violence.

As national outrage about alleged police misconduct in Ferguson, Mo. continues, Giménez is pushing to make body cameras mandatory for all county patrol officers. His proposed budget is calling for 500 cameras, which would cover about half of Miami-Dade's patrol force.

"The body cam is a way to assure that there's confidence in the police department, that if they had been wearing a body cam, say, in the incident that happened in Missouri, there would be no debate as to what exactly happened," said Giménez...

Next year's Miami-Dade County budget calls for $1 million for the body cameras, with an additional $400,000 in operating cost and for the data storage required.

But Miami-Dade's police union wants none of it.

In a written grievance filed with the county’s police chief, a union lawyer wrote that wearing the cameras “will distract officers from their duties, and hamper their ability to act and react in dangerous situations …”

The one-button operation of most cameras would seem to be something most officers will swiftly become accustomed to, rather than the huge impediment the police union portrays it as. But according to the union, nearly anything at all -- even a quick tap of the "RECORD" button -- could mean the difference between life and death (of police officers, that is…).

[T]he Miami-Dade police union [also] cited the distraction caused by officers having to activate the camera before approaching a traffic stop or potential arrest. “As anyone with knowledge of police training and tactics knows, if an officer hesitates for even a second in a life threatening situation, it can cost that officer his or her life, and/or put the lives of others at risk,” the complaint reads.

I don't think anyone believes this hyperbole, not even the unions themselves. The only reason they're against body cameras is because they firmly believe police officers shouldn't be held accountable for their misconduct. They completely ignore the results shown by law enforcement agencies that have put body cameras into use -- that they reduce both the use of excessive force and allegations of police misconduct.

Body cameras aren't a cure-all, but they're much more beneficial than resistant police officers and unions give them credit for. It's the direction our nation's law enforcement agencies need to be headed. It's ridiculous that we're still almost wholly reliant on something as malleable as police statements and eyewitness interviews. A camera isn't completely neutral, but it's a hell of a lot better than what we're normally given to work with.

Filed Under: accountability, body cameras, police, police misconduct, privacy