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Comment by lancefisher | Hacker News Reader

>The images cannot be shared publicly, she said, because the suspects appear to be minors.

Really? If you're old enough to rob a train, you should be old enough to have a wanted poster.

That's because that wanted poster then stays around forever because of the internet and their records can't be wiped when they reach the age of majority.

Police typically don't release booking photos of minors, because there is nothing to gain, and there is the potential cost you mention. But surveillance footage that might assist in the apprehension of the criminals, even kids, is often released, and rightfully so.

In this case they write they have good hope that the department they are working with will be able to ID the suspects so there is as far as I can see no need to release the footage.

It just shows it is a low priority, and they don't want people to see the footage because it makes BART look bad.

They're part of a violent gang which violently robbed a train — they don't deserve to have their records wiped when they reach adulthood.

You should go into politics. Meanwhile, the law is the law and that's how it stands. What you (or I) personally feel they deserve or not doesn't matter.

That doesn't seem to be the law in California.[1] California prohibits the copying of photographs taken by or for the Coroner at a death scene, but that doesn't apply here. There's no expectation of privacy. It's not a juvenile court record. The video will probably be available eventually.

Some of the cameras on BART trains are dummies. After an embarrassment last year, BART has been replacing the dummies with real ones. Completion is scheduled for July 1, 2017.

[1] https://www.cga.ct.gov/2013/rpt/2013-R-0364.htm

News reports are that six of the nine cars in the train had working cameras.

That's not really how that works.

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