NYPD Continues To Screw Over Its Oversight By Denying Access To Bodycam Footage

from the long-extended-middle-finger-of-the-law dept

The NYPD's war on its oversight continues. The secretive law enforcement agency has spent years fighting accountability and transparency, making up its own rules and engaging in openly hostile actions against public records requesters, city officials, internal oversight, and the somewhat-independent CCRB (Civilian Complaint Review Board). Journalists say the NYPD is worse than the CIA and FBI when it comes to records requests. The FBI and CIA say it's worse than a rogue state when it comes to respecting rights.

The NYPD probably doesn't wonder why it houses bad cops. In fact, it probably doesn't not even consider the worst of its ranks to actually be "bad" cops. Making things worse on the accountability side, the NYPD answers to two very powerful law enforcement unions, which makes it all but impossible for the department to punish bad cops, even if it wanted to. And while it's subject to public oversight via the CCRB, it has the power to override the board's decisions to ensure cops engaged in misconduct aren't punished too harshly for violating rights and destroying the public's trust.

The NYPD began wearing body cameras in 2017 as part of comprehensive reforms put in place by consent decrees issued by federal courts presiding over civil rights lawsuits over the NYPD's surveillance of Muslims and its minority-targeting "stop and frisk" program.

But body cameras continue to be mostly useful to prosecutors and of negligible value to the general public that was supposed to benefit from this new accountability tool. As ProPublica reports, even the civilian oversight board can't get the NYPD to hand over footage crucial to investigations of misconduct.

In some instances, the NYPD has told CCRB investigators no footage of an incident exists, only for the CCRB to later learn that it does. For example, during one investigation of an incident for which the NYPD said there was no footage, an officer later told investigators that she had her camera on.

Other times, the NYPD has acknowledged footage exists but refused to turn it over, citing privacy issues. In one case, an officer slammed a young man into the pavement, sending him to the hospital with a brain bleed. Seven body cameras worn by officers captured parts of the incident. But the NYPD withheld almost all the footage from CCRB investigators, on the grounds that a minor’s face could be seen in some of it.

This stonewalling is detailed in the NYPD Inspector General's latest report [PDF], which finds yet again that the NYPD has zero interest in holding its officers accountable. The NYPD is supposed to be subject to its oversight, but the reality is the oversight is subject to the NYPD.

The agency must rely on NYPD to produce BWC footage that is responsive to a request, making the progress of investigations dependent on NYPD’s capacity and discretion. As mentioned above, and discussed further below, capacity and manpower issues at NYPD have caused extensive delay in the past, and easily could again. But the problems are also substantive. For example, an NYPD searcher may consider certain tags to be not relevant or responsive even if the requesting CCRB investigator would have disagreed. This is problematic since only the investigator has complete knowledge of the investigation, and therefore is best suited to know what may be relevant. In such a case, not only might relevant BWC footage be withheld, but the CCRB investigator would never even know that such footage existed in the first place.

Even when the CCRB obtains footage, it could be redacted into abstraction by NYPD liaisons, who everyone has to assume are acting in good faith, even when it appears apparent they aren't.

When only NYPD has seen the unredacted footage, the redaction analysis, legal or otherwise, is impaired because NYPD has sole discretion regarding handling of the footage, but incomplete information as to the facts of the investigation and its procedural posture. This is especially problematic when the grounds asserted by NYPD for redaction are disputed or otherwise in doubt. Given the information disparities, the requesting investigative agency may find it difficult to effectively challenge the redactions, which can produce inaccurate or unnecessary redactions, cause additional delay, or force the requesting agency to make disclosures that may infringe on the independence or confidentiality of its investigations.

And, instead of things improving as time goes on, the NYPD's cooperation with its oversight appears to be getting worse.

CCRB reported that in the second quarter of 2019, 99 percent of BWC video requests remained open for 20 or more business days, or longer than one month. From the beginning of 2018 through the second Quarter of 2019, the percentage of footage returned redacted grew from six to 63 percent. CCRB also reports that there were occasions in which it was not notified that video had been redacted, nor was it provided an explanation for such redactions.

Since the NYPD retains control of all body worn camera footage, it can claim no relevant footage exists, even when it does. And there's no way for the CCRB to challenge this claim unless it comes up with evidence elsewhere that points to the existence of footage the NYPD claims is nonexistent.

Moreover, current (pre-MOU-implementation) procedures have resulted in a number of “false negative” returns. False negatives are defined as instances in which NYPD reports there is no relevant footage for a particular search, yet CCRB later learns that a pertinent video does exist. CCRB reports learning about false negatives through other police documents, during interviews, or via footage provided to the media, and attributes these false negatives in part to potential incompleteness of NYPD search criteria, incomplete tagging of videos in the system, as well as lack of geotagging of footage. Due to the inability to conduct its own searches, CCRB cannot be certain how many negative search results are accurate.

The solution is -- as the IG suggests -- that CCRB be given direct access to body camera footage. Quite obviously, the NYPD will never agree to this. And, since it runs its footage through Evidence.com -- Axon's proprietary portal -- the NYPD will be able to stonewall future requests by pointing to the fine print in Axon's contract or simply refusing to provide CCRB with access licenses.

Unless the city is willing to give the CCRB some teeth, it will continue to be nothing more than the illusion of oversight. The NYPD has to answer to the public, and it has shown it's unwilling to do that on any level. New York legislators need to be willing to stare down the blue-uniformed 800-lb gorilla in its midst. If it can't, the NYPD will continue to be as awful as it has been for decades.

Filed Under: bodycams, nypd, oversight, transparency

Study Says Police Body Cameras Have Contributed To Increased Uses Of Deadly Force

from the not-so-fast dept

The Wall Street Journal is reporting on a study that claims to show an increase in shootings by police officers is related to the increase in officer-worn body cameras. The heart of the study's [PDF] claims is this:

Our empirical analysis produced several interesting findings. First, we found that in police departments that conduct statistical analyses of digitized crime data, there are 2.15% fewer fatal shootings, substantiating our theoretical prediction that criminal intelligence can prevent police officers from using lethal force. Similarly, the use of smartphones by officers for intelligence access is related to 2.72% fewer deadly shootings. We obtained similar results from the alternative data from killedbypolice.net and the FBI. Surprisingly, we found that the use of wearable video cameras is associated with a 3.64% increase in shooting-deaths of civilians by the police. We explain that video recordings collected during a violent encounter with a civilian can be used in favor of a police officer as evidence that justifies the shooting.

While I don't doubt that some officers believe footage may assist them in justifying shootings, there's very little here that suggests anything more than a statistical blip. No such increase was noted in 2013 or 2014, and a 3.64% increase would seem to be a fluctuation, rather than anything correlative.

The authors of the study note one issue that may be skewing the numbers slightly upward: there's very little data available to differentiate between justified shootings and unjustified shootings. Without this, it's difficult to draw the conclusion that officers have made conscious or unconscious decisions about the perceived exculpatory value of capturing deadly force incidents on tape. And yet, such a conclusion is being tentatively drawn.

The professors found almost no link between cameras and shooting deaths in 2013 and 2014. The difference between those years and 2015, they surmise: Officers grew more comfortable using the devices in the field. “It could take a while for police officers to realize how helpful evidence from body cameras can be in justifying the use of lethal force,” they write.

Maybe. Maybe not. A lot more data is needed to determine whether this tick upwards indicates a trend or just a mild diversion from the mean. There's lots of anecdotal data out there that suggests body cameras are having zero effect on limiting excessive force simply because many officers treat the devices as optional.

Here are just a few reports involving shooting by police where footage hasn't been recorded.

A Spokane police officer involved in the shooting of a domestic violence suspect last weekend was wearing a body camera but did not have it turned on, according to an initial investigation.

[Source]

Chittenden County State’s Attorney TJ Donovan announced Monday morning that two police officers have been cleared of any criminal wrongdoing in the shooting of a Colchester man in September. He said at the announcement that the officers were cleared without any body camera video of the incident.

The body cameras were turned off, he said, because officers didn’t want the cameras’ red recording lights or audible recording beeps to jeopardize their safety.

[Source]

A Chicago police officer who fatally shot a black man in the back last week was wearing a body camera during the shooting, but the camera was turned off at the time, officials with the city’s police department said Monday.

[Source]

An Alabama police officer was wearing a body camera that was not turned on when he fatally shot a man who held a “large metal spoon in a threatening manner” as he approached the officer, according to Tuscaloosa County officials.

[Source]

A New Orleans police officer turned off her body cam before opening fire on a man who had escaped from her a week earlier.

Lisa Lewis shot the man in the forehead during a traffic stop, then shot at him again as he ran away, according to the lawyer of the man who remains hospitalized.

If shootings by police are trending up despite the use of body cameras, it's not the cameras that are at fault. It's the culture. Body cameras have been shown to decrease deployments of excessive force and reduce complaints by citizens, but only when used in conjunction with policies that hold officers accountable for not recording their interactions with the public.

A slight rise in shootings may indicate what the officers suggest: that officers are "getting used" to the cameras -- not as a source of exculpatory recordings, but rather as a nuisance that can be ignored without fear of reprisal. A lack of solid policies and punishments would similarly generate a rise in deployments of excessive or deadly force, no matter what tech is forced on officers under the guise of accountability.

Filed Under: body cameras, bodycams, police, violence

If Police Officials Won't Hold Officers Accountable, More Cameras Will Never Mean More Recordings

from the more-$$$-spent,-but-nothing-changes dept

Cameras have been referred to as "unblinking eyes." When operated by law enforcement, however, they're eyes that never open.

Dash cams were supposed to provide better documentation of traffic stops and other interactions. So were lapel microphones, which gave the images a soundtrack. Officers who weren't interested in having stops documented switched off cameras, "forgot" to turn them back on, or flat out sabotaged the equipment.

Body cameras were the next step in documentation, ensuring that footage wasn't limited solely to what was in front of a police cruiser. Cautiously heralded as a step forward in accountability, body cameras have proven to be just as "unreliable" as dash cams. While some footage is being obtained that previously wouldn't have been available, the fact that officers still control the on/off switch means footage routinely goes missing during controversial interactions with the public.

The on/off switch problem could be tempered with strict disciplinary policies for officers who fail to record critical footage. Or any disciplinary procedures, actually.

Chicago, Dallas, Denver, New Orleans, New York, Oakland and San Diego are among the cities that don't specify penalties when officers fail to record, according to the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University's School of Law.

Body cameras aren't just for big cities anymore, which means countless smaller towns are just as lax when it comes to ensuring body cameras are rolling during stops and arrests.

Samuel Walker, a retired criminal justice professor, notes the problem isn't just limited to body cameras. It's any camera an officer controls.

[Walker] pointed to a study that showed across-the-board low compliance rates of officers in one high-crime Phoenix neighborhood between April 2013 and May 2014, the most recent information available. Officers only recorded 6.5 percent of traffic stops even though the department's policy required cameras to be activated "as soon as it is safe and practical," according to the study, conducted by Arizona State University's Center for Violence Prevention and Community Safety.

With body cameras, the default mode of operations for police officers was supposed to be "always on," with a few exceptions for privacy concerns. Instead, the default mode appears to be "only when an officer feels like it."

The Alameda County Sheriff's Department changed its body-camera policy following a highly publicized incident last November where two deputies were caught on surveillance video using their batons to beat a car theft suspect in the middle of a street in San Francisco's Mission District.

Eleven officers in all responded and 10 failed to turn on their body cameras. The one who did activate his did so by accident.

The problem is endemic. Law enforcement agencies have long felt no one should need more evidence than an officer's word and, for far longer than that, have felt that deployments of force shouldn't be second-guessed by outsiders. Recorded footage far too often runs counter to police reports and official narratives. The problem that needs to be fixed, apparently, is the recording devices.

During a six-month trial run for body cameras in the Denver Police Department, only about one out of every four use-of-force incidents involving officers was recorded.

Cases where officers punched people, used pepper spray or Tasers, or struck people with batons were not recorded because officers failed to turn on cameras, technical malfunctions occurred or because the cameras were not distributed to enough people, according to a report released Tuesday by Denver’s independent monitor Nick Mitchell.

What happens when disciplinary procedures are in place for failing to activate cameras? For one, compliance with camera policies goes way up.

According to data from the Oakland Police Department, of the 504 use of force incidents last year, 24 were not captured on camera. That puts the department a 95 percent success rate of recording use of force incidents.

The other thing that happens is better quality policing.

The Oakland Police Department has seen a 66 percent decrease in use of force incidents since the department started issuing body cameras to all of its officers in 2011.

Agencies that aren't willing to hold officers accountable aren't just (often literally) hurting the public they serve. They're also hurting themselves. They may not care what the public thinks when spokespeople deliver the news that all nine dash cams coincidentally malfunctioned during the beating of an arrestee, but they've also got legislators to answer to -- many of whom are tiring of dumping public funds into lawsuit settlement sinkholes.

Filed Under: accountability, bodycams, police, recordings

Body Cam Footage Of Cop Hitting Handcuffed Man Leads To Firing Of Three New Orleans Police Officers

from the the-accountability-unicorn-makes-a-rare-appearance dept

Body-worn cameras as a tool of accountability is an idea whose time has come, but so far, the implementation has been less than ideal. Lawmakers -- pressured by law enforcement agencies and unions -- have frequently pushed legislation that makes it almost impossible for the public to get their hands on recorded footage.

In other cases it's been shown that camera placement results in highly-subjective footage -- where the "first-person" perspective can obscure what's really happening. One notable case resulted in two sets of footage. The body-worn camera footage gave the impression that officers were dealing with a highly-combative arrestee. A nearby surveillance camera showed something completely different: several cops beating a non-resisting suspect.

So, it's somewhat a surprise to hear that body camera footage has resulted in the firing of police officers. For one, officers generally don't get fired. They get suspended. Or, if the misconduct is egregious enough, they're allowed to resign.

In this case, however, multiple officers were fired in connection with the same incident. (h/t Techdirt reader Nathan F)

Three New Orleans police officers were fired Wednesday (June 15), and a fourth suspended, for their roles in a September 2015 incident in which a handcuffed man was hit several times while seated inside the department's French Quarter station.

Officer Alfred Moran's body-worn camera showed him using his hands to strike the man, who had been arrested for public intoxication shortly before midnight on Sept. 30, NOPD said.

[Worth noting here is the fact that the writer has chosen to use police lingo and exonerative passive phrasing while writing about the incident. Officer Moran hit a handcuffed man multiple times. An "incident" didn't just occur wherein a man "was hit." Furthermore, "using his hands to strike the man" is needlessly descriptive and gives the impression that there still might be some legal use of force contained in Moran's actions -- which were, let's not forget, hitting an unarmed, handcuffed man multiple times while in the presence of other officers who did nothing.

The writer then goes on to point out that the beaten man had "argued" with Moran earlier, again skewing the narrative slightly towards the police end of the spectrum. I don't believe these are even conscious decisions on the part of the writer. I think this sort of exonerative reporting is just as ingrained in some journalists as the blithe acceptance of misconduct is ingrained in some police organizations.

These firings are notable. This is something that just doesn't happen. When it does, it's usually only after an extended period of deflection where police spokespeople say things about "ongoing investigations" and "wanting to get all the facts first," while berating the media for reporting on the incident in a "one-sided" fashion and causing the public to "rush to judgment."

Also notable is the fact that this agency proactively reviews body cam footage, rather than simply uploading it and hoping it's overwritten before anyone files a complaint against an officer.

The incident came to light the following day during a supervisor's routine review of body-worn camera footage, said NOPD spokesman Tyler Gamble.

Even better, it wasn't just the abusive cop who was fired/punished. It was also those around him who not only did not intervene, but lied to cover up the misconduct.

NOPD's Public Integrity Bureau launched criminal and administrative investigations. But Moran, Simmons and Jennings were "untruthful" during the investigation, Gamble said. Tyler, meanwhile, answered honestly when questioned.

This is a very good -- and very rare -- thing. Law enforcement agencies tend to encourage bad behavior by delivering minimal punishment and allowing other officers present at the scene -- who didn't intervene and/or participated in the cover-up -- to walk away from it completely unscathed.

The inadvertently hilarious response to these firings comes from the police union -- which believes officers' testimony should outweigh video footage that directly contradicts their statements.

"Among many others, we have warned numerous times that video evidence only has value in context of the officer's perception of events and other measurable factors," [police union attorney Donovan] Livaccari said. "In this case, the video evidence, which was inconclusive, was relied on entirely in spite of testimonial evidence to the contrary..."

In other words, don't believe your eyes. Believe what you're told. Video footage should only be viewed in the "context" of assertions made by officers seeking to avoid punishment for wrongdoing. And only a police union rep could make the assertion that "officer's perception" is a "measurable factor" with a straight face. Yes, there's nothing more quantifiable than subjectivity, especially when it conflicts directly with more objectively-obtained evidence of wrongdoing.

Filed Under: accountability, bodycams, new orleans, police

Legislators Strip Funding For Warrantless Use Of Stingrays By FBI, Take Money From The DEA To Buy Bodycams

from the CATCH-AN-IMSI-FUNDRAISER!-TIX-3/$5!! dept

The passage of appropriations bills is a seemingly casual process in which any legislator can attempt to hitch his or her hobbyhorse to it as it makes its way slowly to a vote. (And then to a government shutdown.) "Rob Peter/Pay Paul" amendments are offered for quick floor votes, adding millions to one program while siphoning the equivalent amount from another. Other amendments are simply of the "Rob Peter" variety, in which funding is stripped from programs or activities a legislator doesn't agree with.

Given the recent legislative activity surrounding US surveillance programs and the ongoing exposure of the FBI's tactics and technology, it's somewhat unsurprising that lawmakers are taking a shot at defunding some of the more questionable efforts. Darrell Issa, for example, offered an amendment stating that if the FBI wants to deploy its Stingray devices without a warrant, it will need to hold a bake sale to pay for it.

The amendment prohibits funding for federal law enforcement to conduct non-court-ordered “stingray” operations that collect bulk electronic data from individuals. The amendment was adopted on a voice vote.

This is of some import, although the FBI now claims it gets a warrant before deploying Stingrays. It will probably edge around this defunding by claiming it doesn't use Stingrays to collect data in bulk (sort of true, if used for their intended purpose and with proper minimization) or by pointing at its exemptions to its self-imposed warrant requirements, which are big enough you could fly a single-engine plane bristling with antennas and cameras through them.

In addition to other surveillance-targeting amendments, like defunding of any future NIST/NSA partnerships to backdoor encryption and the FBI/DOJ's use of backdoor surveillance via wiretapping laws, other interesting amendments were proposed and passed.

Rep. Gosar (R-AZ) – The amendment increases funding for the DOJ Office of the Inspector General by $1.7 million, offset by a reduction to the DOJ General Administration – Salaries and Expenses account.

Michael Horowitz -- the Inspector General for the DOJ -- has been battling the FBI and DEA for months now over the release of documents his office has requested. So far, the battle has been futile, but some additional funding will help ensure his office will continue to try to hold the DOJ's agencies accountable for their misconduct and failures. If nothing else, Horowitz has been both dogged and vocal while performing his oversight duties -- something that very obviously hasn't endeared him to the agencies he polices. I see no reason not to give this man, and his office, more funding.

Rep. Castro (D-TX) – The amendment increases the Community Trust Initiative, which provides grants for police body cameras, by $10 million, offset by a reduction to the DEA Salaries and Expenses account.

Body cameras are no panacea, but they're definitely better than taking no action at all. The best part about this is that it forces the DEA to fund a program many law enforcement agencies are hesitant to adopt. The ironic part is that the worst behavior in law enforcement (i.e., abuse of no-knock warrants, asset forfeiture) is tied to the Drug War. True accountability is still little more than a starry-eyed ideal, but taking $10 million from the DEA for this program is definitely a better use of that money.

Rep. Grayson (D-FL) – The amendment prohibits funding to compel a journalist or reporter to testify about information or sources that they regard to be confidential.

This is interesting, especially in light of the DOJ's efforts to compel New York Times journalist James Risen to reveal his sources. There's more to it than just the summation of this amendment, but it's far too much to cover here. (Hint: define "journalist." Once again, the government wants to be able to make that determination, probably on a case-by-case basis.)

Rep. Luetkemeyer (R-MO) – The amendment prohibits funding for DOJ’s “Operation Chokepoint.”

If this sticks, Team America: Morality Police™ will have to hold Bitcoin auctions or whatever if it wishes to keep porn performers and other blacklisted undesirables from availing themselves of bank services.

The attendant downside to these easily-passed amendments is that they can just as easily be deleted before the appropriation bill's final passage, especially if those targeted are able to apply enough pressure to block the bill's package with these intact.

Filed Under: appropriations, bodycams, congress, darrell issa, dea, fbi, stingrays

Seattle PD Holds Hackathon To Solve Body Cam Footage Redaction Problem

from the putting-privacy-back-into-'no-expectation-of-privacy?' dept

Behold. The future of law enforcement.

The Seattle Police Department (SPD) held its first-ever hackathon on Friday. The event was focused on a single problem: How to redact the video streams recorded by police officers from their dashcams and (soon) body-worn video cameras.

This hackathon was inspired by a local privacy activist formerly known only by his email address (policevideorequest@gmail.com) and his FOIA request for every Seattle PD body cam recording in perpetuity. By leveraging transparency against privacy, the activist hoped to achieve a better balance of both -- but for a few moments, it looked like the only thing that would suffer damage was accountability. The expansive request caused the city to rethink its decision to put cameras on its cops. Now, the camera program is again moving forward, and with the activist's help.

No completely workable solution presented itself during the five-hour event, but progress was made towards achieving this balance. Many of the projects presented performed automatic blurring of persons encountered by police and offered rudimentary auto-transcription of recorded audio. Timothy Clemans -- the activist who is now working with the police to solve their redaction problem -- has a demonstration of his own prototype hosted at his website. He also voiced his support for police officers and suggested the default settings for FOIA'ed video.

Clemans… stated that most of the work done by police officers is saving lives through CPR or calmly working with drunken or angry citizens, yet the public rarely sees that on video. He also urged a report where all video would be initially over-redacted – essentially the whole frame is blurred – and then the news media or activists could ask for less redacted versions of the video of interest.

Although solid progress was made, there are a few caveats. First, as Marcus Womack of Evidence.com points out, the job can never be solely trusted to an automated process. Anything deemed "sensitive" would still need human review before release. Secondly, many of the tools demonstrated have their own limitations, like text-to-speech programs that only recognize English and the fact that much of the recorded audio is less than pristine.

Finally, whether privacy activists like it or not, there's not going to be a whole lot of redaction happening once the camera program is underway.

Seattle Police officials… admitted that about 90 percent of the video officers create probably needs no redaction at all. That’s because members of the public have no right to expect privacy in their interactions with police, unless they are juveniles or a witness or victim whose safety might be at risk if their identity is known.

Now, we just need the police to remember this 90 percent rule. With the police wearing body cameras and the public carrying cellphones, the playing field is as level as it's going to get. This means whatever lack of privacy the public is expected to deal with goes double for camera-wearing cops -- and this means no intimidation tactics, B.S. obstruction charges or seizing of cameras as "evidence." I only mention this because Seattle's law enforcement officers haven't proven themselves any more accepting of public recording than other PDs around the nation.

But the overall good news is that the body cam program is back on track and the Seattle PD actually seems interested in making it work for the betterment of everyone -- not just those wearing the blue.

Filed Under: body cams, bodycams, hackathon, police, privacy, redaction, seattle