Comments on: BART cops get shirt-pocket snitch-cams

By: Michael Crumpton

Michael Crumpton — Sun, 02 Oct 2011 03:29:00 +0000

Just make the cameras record audio all the time and activate the video whenever the police’s gun or nightstick is removed from its holster.

By: manicbassman

manicbassman — Sat, 01 Oct 2011 19:29:00 +0000

I’ve just been reading Bittle Brother as well.. so prescient… where’s m1ck3y when you need him…

By: Culturedropout

Culturedropout — Sat, 01 Oct 2011 18:05:00 +0000

Dammit. _I_ came here to say that! “won’t be able to delete or tamper with the videos they shoot – that all has to be done back in the station” *snort*

By: Steve Drevik

Steve Drevik — Sat, 01 Oct 2011 17:41:00 +0000

A simple motion sensor circuit (like on an iPhone) connected to the taser, gun, or radio could automatically activate the camera for the next 15 minutes.

By: eric Francis

eric Francis — Sat, 01 Oct 2011 16:59:00 +0000

Ive thought about this for a long time. At the very least the camera on switch should be triggered by an officer pulling out his gun

By: jmnugent

jmnugent — Sat, 01 Oct 2011 15:45:00 +0000

I wrote, re-edited and rewrote a longer response to this topic .. but I couldn’t come up anything short yet eloquent enough to articulate my disappointment regarding all the negative comments shown above regarding Police (and no, I’m not, nor have I ever been involved with LE). These cameras are a tool, and like any tool they have the potential to save lives and prevent abuse as much as they do to be used incorrectly. There is no perfect solution to set a camera to only record under conditions we approve (especially so when the majority of us disagree on what those conditions even ARE). But having the tool is much better than NOT having it. In cases of abuse it gives us evidence to see what happened,. .and in cases of legitimate crimes it obviously helps contribute data towards a legitimate conviction. Believing that there’s some widespread Blue Line conspiracy to tamper with all incoming video evidence is as ridiculous at 9/11 truthers or Hale Bopp suicide cults. Also,.. the existence of this tool doesn’t pre-empt other additional non-Police cameras for corroborating or disproving context of a recorded situation. Lets try to keep level heads.

By: mikenon

mikenon — Sat, 01 Oct 2011 14:10:00 +0000

Giving them the choice to forget to record incidents was a poor move. The cameras are 100% ineffective because of it.

Solution: Wire the mic to the recording switch, anything above indoor voices commits the last 5 minutes of footage to storage, and starts recording on top. Make it mandatory for every public servant who carries a weapon. Put a non-government entity in charge of footage collection and storage.

By: Guest

Guest — Sat, 01 Oct 2011 02:23:00 +0000

Let’s extend this to every government employee.

By: pushpins

pushpins — Fri, 30 Sep 2011 22:47:00 +0000

And you all can watch these videos LIVE on FACES OF DEATH 12

By: travtastic

travtastic — Fri, 30 Sep 2011 22:42:00 +0000

Not sure you can have them on all the time and have storage space to keep all the footage on the device and still get decent quality from them.

You definitely could. Given the size, capacity and cost of flash storage these days, it would actually probably be trivial to keep a constant record at 720p resolution. Batteries wouldn’t be much a problem, since I’m assuming they already carry at least one battery pack for their portable radios.

By: Brian Tuley

Brian Tuley — Fri, 30 Sep 2011 22:37:00 +0000

… … …and yet another step closer to that Orwellian era, circa 1984.

By: travtastic

travtastic — Fri, 30 Sep 2011 22:35:00 +0000

Phase One: Complete.

Phase Two: Rely on cops to record their own crimes and assaults to be used against them.

By: swishercutter

swishercutter — Fri, 30 Sep 2011 20:42:00 +0000

I came here to say this same thing…like a microswitch on the holster snap would take more than a couple dollars to implement. I’m willing to bet there is one on Instructables now.

By: Deidzoeb

Deidzoeb — Fri, 30 Sep 2011 20:41:00 +0000

“However, I find myself not so optimistic that they will prevent negative behavior by officers.”
Agreed. There were way too many people who viewed the full Rodney King tape and still sided with the cops. I wonder what it would take to prove police brutality to those people.

By: Deidzoeb

Deidzoeb — Fri, 30 Sep 2011 20:28:00 +0000

“Officers wearing the cameras won’t be able to delete or tamper with the
videos they shoot – that all has to be done back in the station once the
video is downloaded to a computer.”

LOL. Back at the station is where the cover-up will begin. (I don’t mean to sound exactly that cynical, but breakdown the sentence. “that all has to be done back in the station”. What does “that” refer back to? = Deleting or tampering with the videos.)

Actually it’s spooky. For honest cops, it could be like a personal “black box” recorder.

By: traalfaz

traalfaz — Fri, 30 Sep 2011 19:41:00 +0000

They need to pair this with a law that says in any case where the officer had a camera but neglected to turn it on, the officer would always lose any he said/she said argument.

By: Joe Szilagyi

Joe Szilagyi — Fri, 30 Sep 2011 19:23:00 +0000

Bluetooth tie them to sensors in the police officer’s baton, gun, mace, taser, and ticket book holsters. He draws any of them, and it auto-records.

By: Greggem

Greggem — Fri, 30 Sep 2011 19:22:00 +0000

Our local police have cameras installed on their dash that record continuously. Footage is deleted after fifteen minutes unless the siren or emergency lights are activated. If either of those things occur, the video is retained and cannot be deleted by the officer. It is automatically downloaded wirelessly when they are within range of the jail.

I think something like this would be desirable, but there are *some* situations where the police officer actually has an expectation of privacy even while on the job (e.g. bathroom break). I’m really not sure that it is feasible with an officer on foot.

By: Raggle Fock

Raggle Fock — Fri, 30 Sep 2011 19:10:00 +0000

The privacy implications, or more likely lack of privacy, is terrifying. The police in Seattle annouced in September they would start using them as well http://goo.gl/2dKXA. However, I find myself not so optimistic that they will prevent negative behavior by officers.

By: pmocek

pmocek — Fri, 30 Sep 2011 19:00:00 +0000

Here in Seattle, our police department, who are considering a pilot program for Coban's VieVu system (what BART are using) and currently use Coban's dash cam video system, refuse to provide dashcam video to "uninvolved parties" until the statutes of limitation on civil and criminal litigation run out, which is about three years. Their data retention policy has them purging videos at three years. KOMO-TV are suing them for violations of the Public Records Act, and recently reported that 45,000 dash cam videos went missing. I'm working with a friend on making the department's video access log available on the Web. We expect to have something ready for use next week.

By: asuffield

asuffield — Fri, 30 Sep 2011 18:59:00 +0000

While it’s not ideal, it’s also better than it sounds.

Step 1: make all police officers carry cameras, and instruct them to turn their cameras on
Step 2: a lawyer wins a case with the argument “the police lied, and by failing to turn on their camera they have prevented us from seeing vital evidence”
Step 3: police officers who make arrests with their cameras turned off start getting fired

Sure, corrupt officers will still find ways to block the cameras. Today, they still break into houses without warrants and “lose” evidence.

But that is not the point of the exercise

By: mindfu

mindfu — Fri, 30 Sep 2011 18:58:00 +0000

I interviewed with the company that makes Tasers, while they were developing this exact product or something pretty similar. It was actually pretty smartly set up to be tamper-proof. I believe the only difference was that their camera was on all the time EXCEPT when an officer would explicity shut it off – for lunch, going to the bathroom, etc. At the end of the day, the recorded video would be ejected in some form (perhaps an SD card) and sealed, and not be opened except via court order or something similar.

One of the sales points for police departments was that this actually increased ticket revenue, as it left for less leeway among police officers. Which is the real dirty secret of most police departments nowadays – they exist less for crime suppression and more for bringing more money into the town without raising taxes on those who run the towns.

By: Nagurski

Nagurski — Fri, 30 Sep 2011 18:49:00 +0000

Exactly. Whoever was speaking in the quoted blurb called it a “tool for police.” No one should expect any improvement in officer behavior or accountability as a result of this tool.

By: dcamsam

dcamsam — Fri, 30 Sep 2011 18:46:00 +0000

I suspect these are more intended to defend the police against accusations of misconduct than defend the public against the misconduct of police. I suspect they’ll be quite powerful for that purpose, as they more or less allow those judging the police’s actions to see directly through their eyes.

They shouldn’t be able to turn them off (and the footage, like any evidence, should be handled by an impartial third party). But as it is, I think anyone would be skeptical of a camera that “happened” to be off when an attack occurs.

By: Justin Forposting

Justin Forposting — Fri, 30 Sep 2011 18:30:00 +0000

If my memory serves correctly, the issues they’ve been having lately have nothing to do with *lack* of video evidence. This is a solution to a problem that didn’t exist.

By: Nimdae

Nimdae — Fri, 30 Sep 2011 18:11:00 +0000

The problem isn’t the cops monitoring themselves. The problem is the cops preventing others from monitoring them. Prohibition of public surveillance in public places of public officers is becoming more and more of a problem despite the fact that it violates no laws.

As long as the cop controls the surveillance (their own, or from others), nothing changes.

By: Mordicai

Mordicai — Fri, 30 Sep 2011 18:07:00 +0000

For some reason, these seems like a tool to watch the citizens, rather than watching the watchmen…

By: Guest

Guest — Fri, 30 Sep 2011 18:05:00 +0000

Yep. More placating. Nothing’s changed.

By: SedanChair

SedanChair — Fri, 30 Sep 2011 17:44:00 +0000

This is such garbage. The cameras should be on for the duration of their shift.

By: Peter Turpin

Peter Turpin — Fri, 30 Sep 2011 17:39:00 +0000

I bought a tiny lapel camera from ebuyer.co.uk a few months back. Quality’s not fantastic and the battery life is poor, but it records continually at about 1Gb per hour of video. It’s only motion-jpeg, but it’s VGA resolution. If the battery life was more than 90min it could film until it filled an 8Gb microSD card, no problem. There’s no problem with processing power, only battery life. To reach the needed battery life would only take it from being the size of my thumb up to being the size of a pack of cigarettes.
I would resolve this by having it produced as a battery module for the police radios. No police officer in their right mind would turn off their radio or leave it behind. Tie the camera into that. With more integration that could develop into sending stills or video to dispatch.