grzegorz wrote:Yes, the laws around filming the police are different states by state this has been going on for a long time now with more laws favoring or essentially protecting the police. Funny logic that governor has, laws are better than no laws, and I thought Republicans were for less government.
One threat is the fact that facial recognition, in combination with wider use of video surveillance, would be likely to grow increasingly invasive over time. Once installed, this kind of a surveillance system rarely remains confined to its original purpose. New ways of using it suggest themselves, the authorities or operators find them to be an irresistible expansion of their power, and citizens' privacy suffers another blow.
Why Police Say Body Cameras Can Help Heal Divide With Public
The 75 police officers of the Parker Police Department favor wearing cameras on their body to capture encounters with citizens.
“I don’t know if you could find one officer who would want to go back to not having body cameras,” said Cmdr. Chris Peters, who designed Parker’s body camera program, which is approaching its one-year anniversary in September. “Any officer who is doing the right thing on a daily basis would want to have a camera on them. What the camera provides is an unbiased third-party account, and helps reduce the amount of questions of what happened.”
The fatal police shootings of black men in Louisiana and Minnesota earlier this month have renewed focus on the debate over supervising police and citizen interactions.
Even before those incidents, the Parker Police Department, a small force representing 50,000 people in a mostly white, affluent suburb of Denver, was not the only law enforcement agency embracing body cameras.
Some, like the Salt Lake City Police Department, acted even before the fatal police shooting two years ago of a black teenager in Ferguson, Missouri. The officer was not charged in that case, and critics argued that had he worn a body camera, there would have been a clearer account of what happened.
In May 2012, the Salt Lake City Police Department, which serves Utah’s capital city and its large Latino and refugee population, equipped two patrol officers with body cameras.
Today, 372 officers wear cameras—including detectives—attaching them to their collar, helmet, or sunglasses.
>>>Personal Experience Convinced Sen. Tim Scott on Need for Police Body Cameras
The cameras have proven not only popular but successful, the department says, in helping limit the kind of forceful interactions between police and citizens that have sparked a divide between law enforcement and minority communities.
“When we talk to our officers about body cameras, we tell them we have to be transparent with our community,” said Salt Lake City’s Assistant Police Chief Tim Doubt, who noted that use of force complaints from citizens have dropped from 40-50 per year in 2008 to 2010, to six in 2014, and 18 last year.
“We are part of the community, they are part of us, and we have to show them that the bad things that come out on YouTube from cellphone video are outliers,” Doubt added. “In this country we’ve lost trust in the last couple of years with the public, and that body camera helps tell more of the truth.”
Early Results
Though research is in its infancy, some studies have shown that the use of body cameras can reduce use of force by officers and complaints by the public.
The San Diego Police Department is a rare agency that has released a study on its body camera program.
In July 2014, the department deployed cameras to 871 officers. A first-year investigation of the program revealed mixed results.
According to a copy of the study obtained by The Daily Signal, citizen complaints against officers decreased 23 percent from the year before the department began using body cameras, to a year after.
However, officer use of force incidents increased 10 percent in that time period.
Meanwhile, a study of the Rialto Police Department in California showed that when officers began using body cameras, use of force by police dropped 59 percent, and citizen complaints against them fell 87 percent.
Travis Easter, the media relations coordinator for the San Diego Police Department, said it’s too early to connect body cameras to police and citizen behavior.
But Easter, who used to wear a body camera when he worked in the field, said it’s not too soon to try and make a difference.
“Everytime I contact somebody I have an affect on their opinion of law enforcement, whether good or bad,” Easter told The Daily Signal. “That can change given how the contact with an officer goes. If officers and citizens are being watched, we are both more liable to do the right thing.”
Policy Pickle
But as body cameras become an accepted norm of modern policing, law enforcement agencies are facing challenges over related issues such as privacy, transparency, and performance.
The trickiness of body cameras was shown during last week’s deadly police shooting of Alton Sterling in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
Police officials said after the shooting that body cameras worn by the two police officers involved fell out of position during the altercation, resulting in poor quality video unlikely to be useful in an investigation.
In another officer-involved shooting last week, the officer who killed Philando Castile during a traffic stop in Falcon Heights, Minnesota, was not wearing a body camera. Castile’s girlfriend used her phone to film the aftermath of the shooting on Facebook Live.
Between those and cctv and car cams, cop cams will be redundant.
Michael wrote:US Justice Dept. releases damning report on Baltimore PD.
Democracy Now
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=owlQr03cxp8
The Young Turks (a very concise video synopsis without sarcasm, thankfully)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mQPvO0oZzDA
Michael wrote:Giuliani does not have anything specific to say about the DOJ report on the Baltimore PD. Not a single thing. Only relevant words are about the acquittals of the officers in the Freddie Gray case. All the rest are attacks on the credibility of the DOJ, of course while patting himself on the back for things he did decades ago when he was in the DOJ and it was better. And the interview finishes with a couple of minutes criticizing Hillary.
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