I think a lot of sheltered middle class white people such as myself didn’t realize the brutality the police were using, especially on innocent people. Cameras shattered that illusion.
I was aware of some level of excessive police force, but it wasn't until I started doing some additional research with the current BLM protests that I realized just how truly horrific the situation has been. I just had no idea how common and how brutal it is, I'd only hear about maybe one event in a whole year. Out of anything, this situation has made me pissed off with the news outlets more than anything else because this shit should've been front-page prime-time headliner news every single fucking time and the news has barely even acknowledged any of this happens. And media outlets still continue to try and pass off the protestors as hateful anti-American terrorists while almost flatly refusing to show the thousands upon thousands of peaceful protestors.
As much as hate the likes of the people running Twitter and Facebook, all this ugliness is coming to light is expressly because the population now has a news outlet of its own instead of only getting news from a handful of incredibly cowardly and greedy sources.
I have got most of my news about the protests from Twitter, because the media mostly write dry-as-bone stuff that makes it hard to figure out whether the police or protesters provoked the unrest.
I think a lot of sheltered middle class white people such as myself didn’t realize the brutality the police were using, especially on innocent people. Cameras shattered that illusion.
I was aware of some level of excessive police force, but it wasn't until I started doing some additional research with the current BLM protests that I realized just how truly horrific the situation has been. I just had no idea how common and how brutal it is, I'd only hear about maybe one event in a whole year. Out of anything, this situation has made me pissed off with the news outlets more than anything else because this shit should've been front-page prime-time headliner news every single fucking time and the news has barely even acknowledged any of this happens. And media outlets still continue to try and pass off the protestors as hateful anti-American terrorists while almost flatly refusing to show the thousands upon thousands of peaceful protestors.
As much as hate the likes of the people running Twitter and Facebook, all this ugliness is coming to light is expressly because the population now has a news outlet of its own instead of only getting news from a handful of incredibly cowardly and greedy sources.
The news didn't have video of any of this shit either. No one did. Rodney King's beating being on tape was an anomaly.
I think a lot of sheltered middle class white people such as myself didn’t realize the brutality the police were using, especially on innocent people. Cameras shattered that illusion.
I was aware of some level of excessive police force, but it wasn't until I started doing some additional research with the current BLM protests that I realized just how truly horrific the situation has been. I just had no idea how common and how brutal it is, I'd only hear about maybe one event in a whole year. Out of anything, this situation has made me pissed off with the news outlets more than anything else because this shit should've been front-page prime-time headliner news every single fucking time and the news has barely even acknowledged any of this happens. And media outlets still continue to try and pass off the protestors as hateful anti-American terrorists while almost flatly refusing to show the thousands upon thousands of peaceful protestors.
As much as hate the likes of the people running Twitter and Facebook, all this ugliness is coming to light is expressly because the population now has a news outlet of its own instead of only getting news from a handful of incredibly cowardly and greedy sources.
The news didn't have video of any of this shit either. No one did. Rodney King's beating being on tape was an anomaly.
So? Plenty of shit gets reported on that doesn't have video. And even when news outlets do have video they're often quite bad at presenting what happened.
I think a lot of sheltered middle class white people such as myself didn’t realize the brutality the police were using, especially on innocent people. Cameras shattered that illusion.
I was aware of some level of excessive police force, but it wasn't until I started doing some additional research with the current BLM protests that I realized just how truly horrific the situation has been. I just had no idea how common and how brutal it is, I'd only hear about maybe one event in a whole year. Out of anything, this situation has made me pissed off with the news outlets more than anything else because this shit should've been front-page prime-time headliner news every single fucking time and the news has barely even acknowledged any of this happens. And media outlets still continue to try and pass off the protestors as hateful anti-American terrorists while almost flatly refusing to show the thousands upon thousands of peaceful protestors.
As much as hate the likes of the people running Twitter and Facebook, all this ugliness is coming to light is expressly because the population now has a news outlet of its own instead of only getting news from a handful of incredibly cowardly and greedy sources.
The news didn't have video of any of this shit either. No one did. Rodney King's beating being on tape was an anomaly.
So? Plenty of shit gets reported on that doesn't have video. And even when news outlets do have video they're often quite bad at presenting what happened.
Without video it's based on reports from both sides, if anyone even reports it. We see this going on still, even when video is available. Imagine what happens without that?
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zepherinRussian warship, go fuck yourselfRegistered Userregular
It seams like the bare minimum that should be done is requiring all police to wear body cams and if the police turn off the cameras for anything other than using the restroom, they are terminated immediately.
It seams like the bare minimum that should be done is requiring all police to wear body cams and if the police turn off the cameras for anything other than using the restroom, they are terminated immediately.
And those restroom breaks need to be called in in advance.
Just so we don't get a "I needed to pee, and was looking for a bathroom, and that's the exact moment when that guy 'resisted arrest', and I had to shoot him."
I think a great part of that party evidence is that a person gathered a bunch of video evidence of people saying their names and jobs by saying they were a contractor and that for "insurance reasons" they needed everyone to state their names and say they don't have a temperature.
It seams like the bare minimum that should be done is requiring all police to wear body cams and if the police turn off the cameras for anything other than using the restroom, they are terminated immediately.
And those restroom breaks need to be called in in advance.
Just so we don't get a "I needed to pee, and was looking for a bathroom, and that's the exact moment when that guy 'resisted arrest', and I had to shoot him."
That’s an easy to fix situation as well. If any weapon is pulled when a camera is off, make it a termination and a crime.
Another thing we should have is an independent facility which reviews all of the police cameras in real time. And if there is a malfunction (which does happen, the body cams are durable but the batteries crap out), the board flags the dispatcher to have the officer come in immediately to swap out cameras.the independent review facility can also remote sensor the camera if the officer forgets to call in taking a shit.
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zepherinRussian warship, go fuck yourselfRegistered Userregular
I would also add that the facilities should be in a different locality than the police and federally run.
It seams like the bare minimum that should be done is requiring all police to wear body cams and if the police turn off the cameras for anything other than using the restroom, they are terminated immediately.
And those restroom breaks need to be called in in advance.
Just so we don't get a "I needed to pee, and was looking for a bathroom, and that's the exact moment when that guy 'resisted arrest', and I had to shoot him."
That’s an easy to fix situation as well. If any weapon is pulled when a camera is off, make it a termination and a crime.
Another thing we should have is an independent facility which reviews all of the police cameras in real time. And if there is a malfunction (which does happen, the body cams are durable but the batteries crap out), the board flags the dispatcher to have the officer come in immediately to swap out cameras.the independent review facility can also remote sensor the camera if the officer forgets to call in taking a shit.
Body cameras should have a fail-safe audiovisual indicator (bright light and sound) that it isn’t operating. That way both the officers and anybody they interact with know that it’s not operating.
And anytime the camera is not operating, you are not authorized to detain, arrest, or use force as an officer. You still have the same right to self defense as anybody, but you have no protection from the department or your position as a cop.
Obviously there would have to be extremely limited exceptions for plain clothes and undercover work. That’s fine.
Also, this idea of the 24/7 cop needs to die. You’re off duty? You’re not a cop.
all that said a cop will not be punished for having their police brutality caught on tape
Hell, retired cops can shoot people without consequence if I remember that movie theater incident in Kansas correctly. On/off duty has no bearing on anything.
all that said a cop will not be punished for having their police brutality caught on tape
If you're alright with ascribing 12-dimensional chess thinking to Obama, I've suspected that his goal with pushing body cameras wasn't to stop police violence, (or to "improve relations between police departments and minority communities") but to get it on tape in order to push public opinion. Sure, the cop won't get punished, but the lack of punishment also pushes public opinion against the police.
all that said a cop will not be punished for having their police brutality caught on tape
Hell, retired cops can shoot people without consequence if I remember that movie theater incident in Kansas correctly. On/off duty has no bearing on anything.
If you're thinking about the Popcorn killer, then it was actually in Florida, and the guy is just about to go on trial for 2nd degree murder (the case was in limbo for several years after the FL legislature tried to rescue him by changing the stand-your-ground law but a judge said nope)
all that said a cop will not be punished for having their police brutality caught on tape
I think there are direct papers written and data that body cams don't stop the behavior, because like with dash cams, when something goes down, the video 'disappears' or the camera is 'malfunctioning' per the department, and not the officer. If you fire an officer for when the department disappears the footage, the unions would kick and scream. Noone is going to agree to change the law that there has to be documented video evidence of the crime to submit to court or the charges are dropped.
all that said a cop will not be punished for having their police brutality caught on tape
If you're alright with ascribing 12-dimensional chess thinking to Obama, I've suspected that his goal with pushing body cameras wasn't to stop police violence, (or to "improve relations between police departments and minority communities") but to get it on tape in order to push public opinion. Sure, the cop won't get punished, but the lack of punishment also pushes public opinion against the police.
I think that is definitely giving him too much credit.
all that said a cop will not be punished for having their police brutality caught on tape
If you're alright with ascribing 12-dimensional chess thinking to Obama, I've suspected that his goal with pushing body cameras wasn't to stop police violence, (or to "improve relations between police departments and minority communities") but to get it on tape in order to push public opinion. Sure, the cop won't get punished, but the lack of punishment also pushes public opinion against the police.
Intended or not, that’s how it’s turned out.
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HenroidMexican kicked from Immigration ThreadCentrism is Racism :3Registered Userregular
edited August 2020
Look a lot of us were sold on the idea of "body cams will solve everything." And they didn't. But trying to push this idea that people wanting body cams to go into effect to prove it wouldn't stop cops from being violent thugs is a bridge too far.
Edit - At best there were critics who were saying "this won't solve the problem." Those people were right, and THEY deserve the credit for pointing it out.
Look a lot of us were sold on the idea of "body cams will solve everything." And they didn't. But trying to push this idea that people wanting body cams to go into effect to prove it wouldn't stop cops from being violent thugs is a bridge too far.
Edit - At best there were critics who were saying "this won't solve the problem." Those people were right, and THEY deserve the credit for pointing it out.
It doesn't solve the problem on its own. It does however make it much easier to point to the problem, generate public opinion against the problem, and is probably a huge step toward solving the problem.
Those distant optimistic days, when I figured if people saw unjustified murders happen on camera they would demand justice and get it, and that in turn the people on camera would hesitate to commit those murders.
I don't know if it's cynical or optimistic to think that as heinous as things are now, the present state of affairs probably represents an improvement over police forces that were just unimaginably horrific in decades past. Albeit with some backsliding as mask-off fascism and white supremacy has come back into the mainstream.
It's just, things were really really really fucking bad before and even huge improvement is still really fucking bad and now we have unending proof on camera that we didn't have when things were even worse.
It's a step in the right direction. The next step is for everyone to develop extreme sceptical face every time the cameras malfunction or the footage is 'lost'.
Nobody remembers the singer. The song remains.
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HenroidMexican kicked from Immigration ThreadCentrism is Racism :3Registered Userregular
Those distant optimistic days, when I figured if people saw unjustified murders happen on camera they would demand justice and get it, and that in turn the people on camera would hesitate to commit those murders.
I don't know if it's cynical or optimistic to think that as heinous as things are now, the present state of affairs probably represents an improvement over police forces that were just unimaginably horrific in decades past. Albeit with some backsliding as mask-off fascism and white supremacy has come back into the mainstream.
It's just, things were really really really fucking bad before and even huge improvement is still really fucking bad and now we have unending proof on camera that we didn't have when things were even worse.
As far as 'optimistic' days go, POC (Black Americans in particular) have been trying to sound the alarm on this shit for decades. Back in my day, "Cop Killer" and "911 is a Joke (in My Neighborhood)" existed for a reason.
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Munkus BeaverYou don't have to attend every argument you are invited to.Philosophy: Stoicism. Politics: Democratic SocialistRegistered User, ClubPAregular
It's a step in the right direction. The next step is for everyone to develop extreme sceptical face every time the cameras malfunction or the footage is 'lost'.
The next step is to assume malfeasance if it fails and shift the burden of proof to be on the cop to prove that they didn’t do something shady.
Humor can be dissected as a frog can, but dies in the process.
It's a step in the right direction. The next step is for everyone to develop extreme sceptical face every time the cameras malfunction or the footage is 'lost'.
The next step is to assume malfeasance if it fails and shift the burden of proof to be on the cop to prove that they didn’t do something shady.
And while the city might not be able to prosecute them (unfortunately) it can at least have it be policy the no video gremlin cops get removed from the department.
He's a shy overambitious dog-catcher on the wrong side of the law. She's an orphaned psychic mercenary with the power to bend men's minds. They fight crime!
A big step forward will be when storage hits a point where the cameras can feasibly be on all shift (with a procedure for when the officer needs to momentarily turn it off) and the recordings can be stored for a period time if any complaint from that shift arises.
Like I'm sure it's possible now but wouldn't doubt the logistics or cost being astronomical.
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A big step forward will be when storage hits a point where the cameras can feasibly be on all shift (with a procedure for when the officer needs to momentarily turn it off) and the recordings can be stored for a period time if any complaint from that shift arises.
Like I'm sure it's possible now but wouldn't doubt the logistics or cost being astronomical.
Look at their budgets. The cost isn't astronomical. Most retail employees have multiple cameras watching them all the time and the footage is kept for a decent amount of time for negligible cost. Now apply more money and legal consequences for not having the footage and it's a solved issue.
A big step forward will be when storage hits a point where the cameras can feasibly be on all shift (with a procedure for when the officer needs to momentarily turn it off) and the recordings can be stored for a period time if any complaint from that shift arises.
Like I'm sure it's possible now but wouldn't doubt the logistics or cost being astronomical.
Look at their budgets. The cost isn't astronomical. Most retail employees have multiple cameras watching them all the time and the footage is kept for a decent amount of time for negligible cost. Now apply more money and legal consequences for not having the footage and it's a solved issue.
How long does the store have to keep the footage? In what medium? Even in a greatly pared down department it's hundreds or thousands of bodycams for major departments each day that have to be always on in order to subvert tampering.
You can't erase them at the end of the day because it may take a significant amount of time for a complaint to be lodged by an aggrieved party for a variety of reasons. Do you hold them for a month? A year? Do you transfer them to more permanent storage medium?
I'm not saying this isnt feasible in the nearish future it just doesn't seem plausible at the moment.
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Those distant optimistic days, when I figured if people saw unjustified murders happen on camera they would demand justice and get it, and that in turn the people on camera would hesitate to commit those murders.
I don't know if it's cynical or optimistic to think that as heinous as things are now, the present state of affairs probably represents an improvement over police forces that were just unimaginably horrific in decades past. Albeit with some backsliding as mask-off fascism and white supremacy has come back into the mainstream.
It's just, things were really really really fucking bad before and even huge improvement is still really fucking bad and now we have unending proof on camera that we didn't have when things were even worse.
As far as 'optimistic' days go, POC (Black Americans in particular) have been trying to sound the alarm on this shit for decades. Back in my day, "Cop Killer" and "911 is a Joke (in My Neighborhood)" existed for a reason.
Say officers working 40 hours per week. 2080 hours a year.
Reasonably compressed 1080p is about 3 gigs/hour.
So about 6 terabytes for an officer-year of footage.
Seattle police has ~1400 officers. ~8.5 exabytes for a department-year of footage, for a medium-large police force.
AWS S3 deep archive (12 hour pull time) is $0.001/GB/month. That's a bit under $9k, per month, per department-year of footage.
Say you keep 5 year's worth of footage, that's about half a mil per year in data storage. That's around 0.138% of SPD's annual budget of $363 million.
Not 13.8%, point one three eight percent.
Data storage (especially archival storage) is cheap.
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life's a game that you're bound to lose / like using a hammer to pound in screws
fuck up once and you break your thumb / if you're happy at all then you're god damn dumb
that's right we're on a fucked up cruise / God is dead but at least we have booze
bad things happen, no one knows why / the sun burns out and everyone dies
Say officers working 40 hours per week. 2080 hours a year.
Reasonably compressed 1080p is about 3 gigs/hour.
So about 6 terabytes for an officer-year of footage.
Seattle police has ~1400 officers. ~8.5 exabytes for a department-year of footage, for a medium-large police force.
AWS S3 deep archive (12 hour pull time) is $0.001/GB/month. That's a bit under $9k, per month, per department-year of footage.
Say you keep 5 year's worth of footage, that's about half a mil per year in data storage. That's around 0.138% of SPD's annual budget of $363 million.
Not 13.8%, point one three eight percent.
Data storage is cheap.
Dang, shit moves fast.
The biggest logistical issue would seem to be uploading it at this point
Yeah the more expensive thing would be hiring the people to build and maintain the system. (Or getting raked over the coals by contracting it out to targus or tazer or whoever makes the cameras)
life's a game that you're bound to lose / like using a hammer to pound in screws
fuck up once and you break your thumb / if you're happy at all then you're god damn dumb
that's right we're on a fucked up cruise / God is dead but at least we have booze
bad things happen, no one knows why / the sun burns out and everyone dies
How long does the store have to keep the footage? In what medium? Even in a greatly pared down department it's hundreds or thousands of bodycams for major departments each day that have to be always on in order to subvert tampering.
You can't erase them at the end of the day because it may take a significant amount of time for a complaint to be lodged by an aggrieved party for a variety of reasons. Do you hold them for a month? A year? Do you transfer them to more permanent storage medium?
I'm not saying this isnt feasible in the nearish future it just doesn't seem plausible at the moment.
But he wanted his officers to be able to capture high-profile incidents. Reynolds sought quotes from a retailer, Viridian Weapon Technologies, which estimated that it would cost $5,000 to use and store data from one body camera for five years.
Approx. $1,000 per officer per year doesn't seem too bad to me, particularly when that's a quote from a retailer who is no doubt rubbing their hands together with delight over the thought of government money.
I'm fairly confident a national solution that leans on existing cloud infrastructure from e.g. Amazon et al could handle storing the footage, particularly if there's a "no footage, no charges allowed" approach for arrests tied to in-person offenses the police "witnessed", combined with the ability for citizens to request storage of footage themselves.
Not all the footage needs to be stored, only that relevant to specific situations )plus or minus some margin).
I'm very confident this could be done if the political will exists.
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ButtersA glass of some milksRegistered Userregular
I think a lot of sheltered middle class white people such as myself didn’t realize the brutality the police were using, especially on innocent people. Cameras shattered that illusion.
I was aware of some level of excessive police force, but it wasn't until I started doing some additional research with the current BLM protests that I realized just how truly horrific the situation has been. I just had no idea how common and how brutal it is, I'd only hear about maybe one event in a whole year. Out of anything, this situation has made me pissed off with the news outlets more than anything else because this shit should've been front-page prime-time headliner news every single fucking time and the news has barely even acknowledged any of this happens. And media outlets still continue to try and pass off the protestors as hateful anti-American terrorists while almost flatly refusing to show the thousands upon thousands of peaceful protestors.
As much as hate the likes of the people running Twitter and Facebook, all this ugliness is coming to light is expressly because the population now has a news outlet of its own instead of only getting news from a handful of incredibly cowardly and greedy sources.
The news didn't have video of any of this shit either. No one did. Rodney King's beating being on tape was an anomaly.
And the Rodney King beating had its fair share of rationalists. I think back to the Chris Rock show's "How to not get your ass kicked by the police" sketch that made minimal reference to racism (one step was have white person in the car with you) but then featured multiple bits of black men facing police beating for misbehaving. After the initial shock of the video footage, Rodney King got the "no angel" treatment big time and it wasn't just MSM of the day.
The biggest logistical issue would seem to be uploading it at this point
The situation is even more reasonable if you're willing to accept e.g. lower resolution video at a lower framerate. I don't think you neccessarily need high-res, high-rate video for many of the issues bodycams are intended to address.
I think it's feasible you could reduce those file sizes (and hence, costs) by a factor of 4. Also, economy of scale must surely come into play for storage initiatives of this type.
I'd like it if lawyers were allowed to use finger-quotes when questioning officers about it:
"Now Officer Shooty, when did you discover that the bodycam had "stopped functioning"?"
Nobody remembers the singer. The song remains.
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zepherinRussian warship, go fuck yourselfRegistered Userregular
How long does the store have to keep the footage? In what medium? Even in a greatly pared down department it's hundreds or thousands of bodycams for major departments each day that have to be always on in order to subvert tampering.
You can't erase them at the end of the day because it may take a significant amount of time for a complaint to be lodged by an aggrieved party for a variety of reasons. Do you hold them for a month? A year? Do you transfer them to more permanent storage medium?
I'm not saying this isnt feasible in the nearish future it just doesn't seem plausible at the moment.
But he wanted his officers to be able to capture high-profile incidents. Reynolds sought quotes from a retailer, Viridian Weapon Technologies, which estimated that it would cost $5,000 to use and store data from one body camera for five years.
Approx. $1,000 per officer per year doesn't seem too bad to me, particularly when that's a quote from a retailer who is no doubt rubbing their hands together with delight over the thought of government money.
I'm fairly confident a national solution that leans on existing cloud infrastructure from e.g. Amazon et al could handle storing the footage, particularly if there's a "no footage, no charges allowed" approach for arrests tied to in-person offenses the police "witnessed", combined with the ability for citizens to request storage of footage themselves.
Not all the footage needs to be stored, only that relevant to specific situations )plus or minus some margin).
I'm very confident this could be done if the political will exists.
$5,000 a camera is about right. Because of how govt acquisitions are, the cost isn’t the camera. It’s that they want to do it piecewise and they want the contractor to cover everything (infrastructure, training, software, IT) as well as warranty them for 5 years and assume liability for everything. So they are spendy. However if the fed would stop doing dipshit expensive grants and just buy the cameras for everyone and handle the infrastructure they could get that cost down by making a few large purchases.
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I was aware of some level of excessive police force, but it wasn't until I started doing some additional research with the current BLM protests that I realized just how truly horrific the situation has been. I just had no idea how common and how brutal it is, I'd only hear about maybe one event in a whole year. Out of anything, this situation has made me pissed off with the news outlets more than anything else because this shit should've been front-page prime-time headliner news every single fucking time and the news has barely even acknowledged any of this happens. And media outlets still continue to try and pass off the protestors as hateful anti-American terrorists while almost flatly refusing to show the thousands upon thousands of peaceful protestors.
As much as hate the likes of the people running Twitter and Facebook, all this ugliness is coming to light is expressly because the population now has a news outlet of its own instead of only getting news from a handful of incredibly cowardly and greedy sources.
The news didn't have video of any of this shit either. No one did. Rodney King's beating being on tape was an anomaly.
So? Plenty of shit gets reported on that doesn't have video. And even when news outlets do have video they're often quite bad at presenting what happened.
Without video it's based on reports from both sides, if anyone even reports it. We see this going on still, even when video is available. Imagine what happens without that?
KNOCK.la is independent media but they show all the video evidence in the thread and the linked post
And those restroom breaks need to be called in in advance.
Just so we don't get a "I needed to pee, and was looking for a bathroom, and that's the exact moment when that guy 'resisted arrest', and I had to shoot him."
Another thing we should have is an independent facility which reviews all of the police cameras in real time. And if there is a malfunction (which does happen, the body cams are durable but the batteries crap out), the board flags the dispatcher to have the officer come in immediately to swap out cameras.the independent review facility can also remote sensor the camera if the officer forgets to call in taking a shit.
locals get investigated by the state. states by the feds.
Body cameras should have a fail-safe audiovisual indicator (bright light and sound) that it isn’t operating. That way both the officers and anybody they interact with know that it’s not operating.
And anytime the camera is not operating, you are not authorized to detain, arrest, or use force as an officer. You still have the same right to self defense as anybody, but you have no protection from the department or your position as a cop.
Obviously there would have to be extremely limited exceptions for plain clothes and undercover work. That’s fine.
Also, this idea of the 24/7 cop needs to die. You’re off duty? You’re not a cop.
Hell, retired cops can shoot people without consequence if I remember that movie theater incident in Kansas correctly. On/off duty has no bearing on anything.
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If you're alright with ascribing 12-dimensional chess thinking to Obama, I've suspected that his goal with pushing body cameras wasn't to stop police violence, (or to "improve relations between police departments and minority communities") but to get it on tape in order to push public opinion. Sure, the cop won't get punished, but the lack of punishment also pushes public opinion against the police.
If you're thinking about the Popcorn killer, then it was actually in Florida, and the guy is just about to go on trial for 2nd degree murder (the case was in limbo for several years after the FL legislature tried to rescue him by changing the stand-your-ground law but a judge said nope)
I think there are direct papers written and data that body cams don't stop the behavior, because like with dash cams, when something goes down, the video 'disappears' or the camera is 'malfunctioning' per the department, and not the officer. If you fire an officer for when the department disappears the footage, the unions would kick and scream. Noone is going to agree to change the law that there has to be documented video evidence of the crime to submit to court or the charges are dropped.
I think that is definitely giving him too much credit.
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Intended or not, that’s how it’s turned out.
Edit - At best there were critics who were saying "this won't solve the problem." Those people were right, and THEY deserve the credit for pointing it out.
It doesn't solve the problem on its own. It does however make it much easier to point to the problem, generate public opinion against the problem, and is probably a huge step toward solving the problem.
I don't know if it's cynical or optimistic to think that as heinous as things are now, the present state of affairs probably represents an improvement over police forces that were just unimaginably horrific in decades past. Albeit with some backsliding as mask-off fascism and white supremacy has come back into the mainstream.
It's just, things were really really really fucking bad before and even huge improvement is still really fucking bad and now we have unending proof on camera that we didn't have when things were even worse.
And while the city might not be able to prosecute them (unfortunately) it can at least have it be policy the no video gremlin cops get removed from the department.
Like I'm sure it's possible now but wouldn't doubt the logistics or cost being astronomical.
Come Overwatch with meeeee
Look at their budgets. The cost isn't astronomical. Most retail employees have multiple cameras watching them all the time and the footage is kept for a decent amount of time for negligible cost. Now apply more money and legal consequences for not having the footage and it's a solved issue.
How long does the store have to keep the footage? In what medium? Even in a greatly pared down department it's hundreds or thousands of bodycams for major departments each day that have to be always on in order to subvert tampering.
You can't erase them at the end of the day because it may take a significant amount of time for a complaint to be lodged by an aggrieved party for a variety of reasons. Do you hold them for a month? A year? Do you transfer them to more permanent storage medium?
I'm not saying this isnt feasible in the nearish future it just doesn't seem plausible at the moment.
Come Overwatch with meeeee
Now they have proof.
Say officers working 40 hours per week. 2080 hours a year.
Reasonably compressed 1080p is about 3 gigs/hour.
So about 6 terabytes for an officer-year of footage.
Seattle police has ~1400 officers. ~8.5 exabytes for a department-year of footage, for a medium-large police force.
AWS S3 deep archive (12 hour pull time) is $0.001/GB/month. That's a bit under $9k, per month, per department-year of footage.
Say you keep 5 year's worth of footage, that's about half a mil per year in data storage. That's around 0.138% of SPD's annual budget of $363 million.
Not 13.8%, point one three eight percent.
Data storage (especially archival storage) is cheap.
fuck up once and you break your thumb / if you're happy at all then you're god damn dumb
that's right we're on a fucked up cruise / God is dead but at least we have booze
bad things happen, no one knows why / the sun burns out and everyone dies
Dang, shit moves fast.
The biggest logistical issue would seem to be uploading it at this point
Come Overwatch with meeeee
Yeah the more expensive thing would be hiring the people to build and maintain the system. (Or getting raked over the coals by contracting it out to targus or tazer or whoever makes the cameras)
fuck up once and you break your thumb / if you're happy at all then you're god damn dumb
that's right we're on a fucked up cruise / God is dead but at least we have booze
bad things happen, no one knows why / the sun burns out and everyone dies
https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/blogs/stateline/2020/01/14/body-cameras-may-not-be-the-easy-answer-everyone-was-looking-for
But he wanted his officers to be able to capture high-profile incidents. Reynolds sought quotes from a retailer, Viridian Weapon Technologies, which estimated that it would cost $5,000 to use and store data from one body camera for five years.
Approx. $1,000 per officer per year doesn't seem too bad to me, particularly when that's a quote from a retailer who is no doubt rubbing their hands together with delight over the thought of government money.
I'm fairly confident a national solution that leans on existing cloud infrastructure from e.g. Amazon et al could handle storing the footage, particularly if there's a "no footage, no charges allowed" approach for arrests tied to in-person offenses the police "witnessed", combined with the ability for citizens to request storage of footage themselves.
Not all the footage needs to be stored, only that relevant to specific situations )plus or minus some margin).
I'm very confident this could be done if the political will exists.
And the Rodney King beating had its fair share of rationalists. I think back to the Chris Rock show's "How to not get your ass kicked by the police" sketch that made minimal reference to racism (one step was have white person in the car with you) but then featured multiple bits of black men facing police beating for misbehaving. After the initial shock of the video footage, Rodney King got the "no angel" treatment big time and it wasn't just MSM of the day.
The situation is even more reasonable if you're willing to accept e.g. lower resolution video at a lower framerate. I don't think you neccessarily need high-res, high-rate video for many of the issues bodycams are intended to address.
I think it's feasible you could reduce those file sizes (and hence, costs) by a factor of 4. Also, economy of scale must surely come into play for storage initiatives of this type.
"Now Officer Shooty, when did you discover that the bodycam had "stopped functioning"?"