Today’s Police Put on a Gun and a Camera | Hacker News Reader

Today’s Police Put on a Gun and a Camera

nytimes.com

15 pointstokenadult22 comments

Minnesota's requirement, since early in the 1990s, that all custodial interrogations by police be recorded on videotape felt like a disaster to police departments when it was first proposed, but now it is generally liked by all participants in the criminal justice system here.[1] On the whole, expecting any confession to a crime to be on videotape is just normal life here now, and everyone has gotten used to how the system works. There will be legal issues to decide if body cameras become commonplace about whether those are turned on by default, and how discoverable (and by whom) the videotaped records are, as the article submitted here reports, but this is just the kind of issue that courts and legislatures are equipped to deal with, especially if you the citizen make your point of view known. What's new here is a technical means that for the first time can massively reduce the he-said, she-said disputes that have come up in complaints about police conduct. Having more evidence to evaluate according to the law of evidence and in light of other legal rights of citizens and responsibilities of the police seems like a generally good idea.

[1] http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/Recording_Interrogations.pdf

http://www.policechiefmagazine.org/magazine/index.cfm?fuseac...

http://webster.utahbar.org/barjournal/2006/10/crimes_truth_a...

This may be a dumb idea, but how hard would it be to put a camera on the gun, and activate it via the trigger. It seems like even a few low res photos of what the gun was aiming at could go a long way in investigating office involved shootings.

This technology exists. The camera starts recording the moment the safety is off. It's not been deployed yet because of complaints that it reduces accuracy - which, last I checked the attachment was fairly big (no idea why - a modern cellphone camera + battery would be tiny).

But we absolutely should have this. Ideally a police-issue firearm which had it milled right into the chassis.

> last I checked the attachment was fairly big

Making room for the camera by removing a few bullets would help reduce the numbers of innocent bystanders who are shot.

Being less accurate would be pretty scary. http://www.popehat.com/2013/12/05/nypd-baby-you-know-we-love...

> As long as you ignore the fact that the shooting victims were innocent bystanders, hitting two people with three shots represents unusual excellence in marksmanship for the NYPD, matching another recent incident in which skilled NYPD officers were able to hit their target and nine bystanders with only 16 bullets. Overall the NYPD usually requires about 331 rounds to hit 54 targets, of which 14 will be innocent bystanders, 24 will be dogs, and 16 will be people the NYPD was actually aiming at. Statistically, if you aren't a dog, it is slightly more dangerous to be the person the NYPD was shooting at than a bystander (16 people out of 331 shots for intended targets for a 4.8% hit rate vs. 14 people out of 331 shots for bystanders, a 4.2% hit rate.) NYPD has a better success rate for other weapons, and certain factors, like shooting unarmed people in the back, tend to increase hit rates.

So, perhaps the popularity of the safety-less Glock is the reason why this hasn't taken off?

As my shooting instructor always says "Your number one safety is your finger" meaning leave it off the trigger until you have something in your sights.

Agreed. And FWIW, I'm not suggesting you change the design of the Glocks (though I vastly prefer the palm trigger on the 1911s), but thinking it through, I don't know if a camera that activated at the moment the trigger pulled would be all that worthwhile.

Perhaps it would (assuming that the timing meant that it was able to capture more than the flash of the bullet) in certain situations, but I think that the shoulder-mounted cameras that are always-on provide far more consistent value in protecting all parties involved to merit serious consideration of trigger cameras.

I've seen some police departments do this already with their tasers. The moment the safety is disengaged, it starts recording.

For example, here's one of the add-on modules Taser makes for this: http://www.taser.com/products/on-officer-video/taser-cam-hd

That would probably be more prejudicial than probative, because the photos would be out of context. Better would be something continuously recording video on a loop that saves an extract spanning any firings of the gun.

Outside of action movies, though, I doubt many officers shoot people or other targets that they are not looking at, so a head mounted camera would probably be sufficient for almost all practical purposes.

Could it activate via accelerometer instead of the trigger, so you get the before as well as the after?

So, on the one hand, I think that it should be obvious that all officers on duty should have cameras running all the time--there should be no reason to ever need manual on/off of cameras.

That said, there's a lot of trouble there. Consider the recording of normal daily banter, of normal procedures, or of just really heinous shit at an accident site. Maybe we don't actually want all of this available.

The big problem is: what happens when a cop comes out on a call and there is clear photographic evidence of a crime being committed (very likely, considering the sheer number of things that are technically illegal)? When there is clear video evidence of, say, possession of paraphernalia, assault, public intoxication, or whatever else, it suddenly becomes a lot easier to pick on citizens.

In turn, why would anyone want to interact with cops, ever? They're recording everything, and it's trivial to go after these minor issues.

I suspect that the deal going to be presented is "Okay, you want us on camera all the time? Fine. You get what you want--and we're going to handle 'evidence' collected in that way differently than normal." Recalling, of course, how expensive it is to defend yourself against the state in such matters, I expect this to be yet another massive push in favor of police power unless managed very, very carefully.

Also, consider that the desire to film the cops may go away if it is common knowledge that they're already filming--nevermind that, perhaps, the cameras or videos are mysteriously corrupted when it comes time to review them. It's really a great way of defusing suspicion without having to risk actually changing procedures.

And, to tinfoil further: how long until all these video feeds are being run, in real-time, through some sort of computer-vision system (much as license plates are today in some places)? Are we really wanting that?

>>The big problem is: what happens when a cop comes out on a call and there is clear photographic evidence of a crime being committed (very likely, considering the sheer number of things that are technically illegal)? When there is clear video evidence of, say, possession of paraphernalia, assault, public intoxication, or whatever else, it suddenly becomes a lot easier to pick on citizens.

I think this highlights a bigger issue with the justice system in general. Those minor things shouldn't be illegal to begin with. Or at least, not wreck your life with an insane fine or criminal record. Those issues should just be some kind of $50 - $100 fine, maybe an evening in a single person cell, and that's it. e.g., BART(www.bart.gov) does not want people eating/drinking on their trains or within paid-areas of the stations or you risk a $250 fine. I break that rule from time to time because... whatever. A bunch of people break that rule in fact. No law should be absolute in its application or punishment. They should be evaluated in case by case basis and context of the situation.

If it's July 4th, people are partying and one of drunk party-goers happens to run into a cop after stumbling too far from the beach... he/she doesn't deserve their life to be ruined.

Major sporting event, 2 people from opposite teams get into heated argument. Both people continued to escalate the situation until eventually a fight breaks out, I don't think their lives need to be ruined with assault charges.

Our legal definition of "paraphernalia" is messed up, so I won't get into that. I'll just say that a person who isn't a major drug-lord or drug-pusher on the corner shouldn't be wrecked by the legal system. Some young person just experimenting with a small amount of a controlled substance probably just needs a night in a cell and mandatory drug education class for a week or something.

$50-$100 fines are life wreckers. Doesn't take too many of those to wipe out someone's weekly paycheck.

But this isn't a problem: because the police can (and do) do this to people now, but it's also why we have procedure as a valid defense. Cameras wouldn't make that worse, they'd make it better. It would mean the procedure is plain to see. The only policy needed to ensure this is to ban fishing-expeditions with the footage (which would protect police and citizen alike). If the police don't write a ticket then and there, then it's illegal to go through the footage after the fact if it's not relevant to an ongoing investigation (and make it illegal to file charges for say, non-felonies found peripheral to that).

Most of this sort of stuff has been put through case law in various guises at different times already - it's likely it would extend to police cameras by simple precedent in the courts, if not by explicit policy in advance.

> So, on the one hand, I think that it should be obvious that all officers on duty should have cameras running all the time--there should be no reason to ever need manual on/off of cameras

How about when talking to a witness who could get into trouble for talking to the police? It's already very hard to get people who witness things like gang-related killings to say anything to investigators. They will be even more reluctant to do so if it is being recorded.

> The big problem is: what happens when a cop comes out on a call and there is clear photographic evidence of a crime being committed (very likely, considering the sheer number of things that are technically illegal)? When there is clear video evidence of, say, possession of paraphernalia, assault, public intoxication, or whatever else, it suddenly becomes a lot easier to pick on citizens

Worse, if these routine recordings leak, or if they are available to the public under freedom of information requests or something similar, then every time a cop lets someone off who they could have arrested someone will find a reason to criticize that. If they let a white person off, they will be complaints that they would have arrested the guy if he was black. If they let a black guy off, there will be complaints that they only care about stopping crime in white neighborhoods. Let a woman off with a warning on a traffic stop, and there will be complaints that a man would have received a ticket.

It will not take officers long to figure out that they are a lot better off if they arrest every one of these paraphernalia possessors, publicly intoxicated people, and so on that they see and let the courts sort them out. No one will be happy with this.

Each officer (I guess, it's true in England) has some discretion.

Allowing officers to make it up as they go along does seem like a really bad idea. Evidence-based guidelines about when to arrest and when to have a discussion should be welcomed and would be one consequence of the situation you're describing. Rather than just arresting everyone because the camera shows evidence the officer can point to their guidelines when they don't arrest.

And when something is the police's fault, the camera mysteriously "malfunctions".

And when the camera actually malfunctions, it must be a conspiracy.

And when the cameras malfunction several orders of magnitude more often than statistically observed, people who point out such discrepancies are called "conspiracy theorists" by the "skeptics"...

Conspiracy theorists wouldn't take statistics into account, unless those statistics could be interpreted in their favor. They would insist the video we can't see is clear evidence of a cover-up, while the video we can see has probably been doctored or manufactured.

The definition of "Conspiracy Theorist" changes to suit the person who imposes that label on someone else. It's a flexible & emotionally appealing ad hominem strategy. Marketers love it because it makes their position appear "realistic" and "normal" while those who oppose their position are "fringe" and "kooky".

And maybe I'm lucky, but I've never had a camera malfunction on me.

I think the definition of 'conspiracy theorist' is pretty generally held - someone who holds to their belief in a conspiracy regardless of evidence to the contrary, or who dismisses such evidence as being, itself, part of the conspiracy.

Although you're right that the label is used to malign and dismiss people who believe in conspiracies which actually exist, that doesn't mean trying to examine such things objectively isn't justified, or warranted.

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