New York Police Set to Deploy 1,200 Bodycams Around the City | Hacker News Reader

New York Police Set to Deploy 1,200 Bodycams Around the City

nytimes.com

My prediction? Illegal police behaviour will continue to be unpunished. What police need is an independent, civilian, internal-affairs division.

One that does not do street beats, and isn't expected to investigate its co-workers.

Not being mandatory and uploaded to 3rd party servers means this is dead on arrival.

3rd party servers is a good thing for accountability and the only real downside is the exhorbant cost that will be charged for it.

The other downside is that a lot of raw footage that normally would not be available becomes available.

As a trivial example, consider cam footage of a raid on a home where a couple happen to be having sex.

We already let our 911 calls be played on cable news, I can't see body cam footage being any different.

only if they respond promptly to FOIA requests

it's not even close to enough. there are 34000 uniformed patrol officers in the NYPD. 1200 is tiny, even for a pilot program. also, knowing the NYPD, I'm sure they will be looking for any excuse to consider the program a failure and not roll this out to the whole force. they're allergic to accountability and consider the general public to be their enemies.

3% is tiny for a pilot program? I would say that's an overly large investment for a pilot program.

for a department with a significant problem with excessive force and a terrible reputation in the communities it is supposed to be protecting and serving, 3% is an unreasonably small program. police bodycams needed to happen 10 years ago, honestly.

The purpose of a pilot program is not to alleviate the problem, it's to work out kinks, and get a preliminary measure of efficacy in a constrained environment.

Who watches the watchmen? David Brin.

Puplic cellphones everywhere do the job way better. If there was a appthat would emg switch on recording near you so the amount of evidence gets bigger that would be nice.

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