[nkurz]

Here’s where better technology could help. Body cameras could be automatically activated immediately when certain cues are triggered, such as when the officer enters a crime hot spot, leaves a police vehicle, takes out handcuffs or a weapon, turns on the siren, or makes a call for assistance on the radio. This way, the officer doesn’t have to think about activating the body camera in a tense situation.

I'd taken it for granted that a police body camera would not require manual activation. I'd also assumed that they should be always on. Is there really need for better technology here, as opposed to just a change of political will?

[Silhouette]

This seems to be the most difficult issue with police body cameras, and I wonder whether it's even possible to solve it.

On the one hand, 100% on-time is obviously good for police accountability, and knowledge that the camera is always on is probably good for preventing potential violence against officers. Both of these are good things, and so far the evidence does support them.

On the other hand, there are genuine privacy issues for both officers and those they deal with, and there are plenty of non-threatening situations where I see no good reason to require recording. There are obvious situations like officers visiting the bathroom, where neither they nor anyone else using the facilities need anyone to have a permanent record of doing their business. However, there are also a lot of sensitive situations they might encounter while doing their job. I can hardly imagine what it would feel like to get a visit from police officers saying your child just got killed by a drunk driver, but you certainly don't need a camera in your face at the time making a record of your reaction to be kept on file forever. It's easy to imagine a chilling effect on useful information being volunteered discreetly as well.

[jonlucc]

These are certainly things that need to be balanced, but we already have a system for dealing with sensitive records. I think the ideal system goes like this: recording always on (keep working on battery issues), and anyone can request any video, but the police can ask a judge to withhold video of a sensitive nature.

[Silhouette]

The trouble with that idea is that some people are increasingly (and IMHO justifiably) skeptical about sensitive records being made or kept in the first place. Merely having some system for managing such records in accordance with whatever rules apply this week is not sufficient to retain the confidence of those people.

There will be mistakes. There will be leaks. There will be abuses. The possibility or likelihood of these things happening will surely have a chilling effect, even if serious problems are rare in practice.

[sleepychu]

I used to work for a body worn video manufacturer as an SE.

Your children comments are neglecting the battery cost (it's a lot cheaper to run a camera waiting to record than recording all the time). Device size is important to customers as is how often they'll need to refresh their hardware and both of these things are affected by required recording time.

>I'd taken it for granted that a police body camera would not require manual activation. I'd also assumed that they should be always on. Is there really need for better technology here, as opposed to just a change of political will? When the government in area mandates the technologies use in an 'always-on' way then this is easy to sell, otherwise you tend to find that the enforcement officers give a lot of resistance to being monitored, it's not because they're doing anything nefarious it's just because people don't like being watched 24/7 and they don't want video evidence of them checking their smart phone (because maybe they shouldn't be) or taking a shit (because who wants someone seeing that?) on the job.

[usrusr]

Both battery requirements and basic privacy expectations (officers are humans too) deserve some balancing versus the public's interest in always on cameras.

I wonder how much of a middle ground could be reached by turning off-switches into maybe-off-switches or very-very-low-quality switches.

While maybe-off could greatly reduce the "ready for mischief" effect of off switches while keeping much of the battery advantage, I doubt they will bring much relief in terms officer privacy: the great majority of all that toilet/smartphone footage won't ever be reviewed anyway, so reduction by one more stochastical factor won't make much subjective difference.

But low quality is an accepted privacy feature. Think blurred faces etc, it's everywhere. Of course the "nearly off" camera would low-res the whole frame instead of faces and preferably at a not only very low but also jittery frame rate. This could be enough to take the sting out of both battery drain and privacy intrusion, while at the same time yield sufficient information to determine wether the switch has been used in an acceptable deactivation situation or not (e.g out on the street vs at the office). Since this world not only reduce abusive camera deactivation but also make it easier to defend acceptable deactivation, this could even be sold as a plus to both sides.

[bunderbunder]

Officers are humans, too, and should get intense protection of their privacy whenever they are off duty.

When they're on duty, though, they are acting in the service of the public, not as private citizens. We need to be very careful about letting them have much or any privacy while they're at work. There's just too much opportunity for abuse.

No, I don't think this is unfair. It's certainly no less unfair than when restaurants like Chipotle and Steak n Shake use open kitchens. Having employees do their work in full view of the customers is not very different from requiring police to use body cameras from a privacy-at-work perspective, and is done for much the same reason.

[brador]

How about always on recording but only a court can authorise viewing?

So if someone has a complaint the video is pulled out and watched, else it goes in a vault and is auto deleted after 60 days.

I'd happily pee while wearing one if that was the case.

[Eridrus]

If we start allowing any deletion, police will simply find a way to stall until the deadline is passed. This has happened several times in Seattle with dash cams

[RobertoG]

I certainly would hate to be watched all the time in my job, I don't see why officers should be.

It seems to me that a compromise can be reached.

Probably the rules already exist about reporting the headquarters when they are starting a police action, you just have to add the requirement to start the camera.

[leesalminen]

Are you provided a firearm, taser, mace, and baton as part of your job? Is your job funded by taxpayer money? Are you expected to be able to deal with stressful situations that could endanger your life daily?

If you answered yes to any of the above questions, I think it's an apple to oranges comparison.

[tremon]

it's a lot cheaper to run a camera waiting to record than recording all the time

That does not mean the decision to run the camera should be in the officers' hands though. It should be possible to design an algorithm that automatically starts and stops recording based on officer location (like "shut off the camera when the officer is facing a car dashboard").

Then there's also the option to continuously record audio, even when video recording is turned off. There's so many better alternatives than "give the police officer discretion over when to hide their actions".

[746F7475]

>it's just because people don't like being watched 24/7

Unless you work at very odd hours, you probably aren't out on the streets 24/7. You are most likely on the streets for 4-6 hours a day, which really isn't that big of a deal. As for checking smartphones, maybe, just maybe, when police are out protecting people they shouldn't be hanging on social media or playing games on their phones? If you don't want to "get caught" using a smart phone, leave it at your locker. About shitting, maybe there could be a mechanism to turn off the camera for few minutes, so you could do your bathroom stuff in private and there really wouldn't be anyway way to abuse it since you'd see from the context of the video what was going on, e.g. if you are approaching a suspect, then video cuts off for a minute and next thing we see is bloodied suspect then obviously the cop should get penalized for that.

[michaelbuddy]

>social media / games

how about their private email and conversations? police work is very boring at times, lots of waiting. Cant leave a scene until detectives or shift relieve you. were supposed to believe that somebody shouldnt have privacy chatting or using smart phone then?

[746F7475]

Comes with the job, there are plenty of other jobs where you can have your smart phone shit

[ptaipale]

Even with regular working hours, it's not without problems to record everything that happens during the shift on video. Starting with bathroom breaks.

[msandford]

It's not that difficult to take the camera off before going into the bathroom. And if you forget to put it back on after and then some questionable stuff happens afterwards, well, it's going to look very bad.

If you can remember to punch in and out for your shift, you can remember to take the camera off and put it back on around bathroom breaks.

[ptaipale]

And when you take away or turn off the camera at some point, you have the problem that the camera wasn't on when someone thinks it should have been. The policeman is attacked in the bathroom. Or he or she gets an urgent distress call and rushes away and does not have time to fiddle with the camera.

There are no very simple solutions to this, no silver bullet.

[msandford]

Sure there are, there are going to be corner cases no matter how you slice it. But the people with more power should be the people held to a higher standard.

The guy who doesn't have commit access can't be blamed for breaking the build because if someone accepted his pull request without vetting it properly, now that's on them. See how this works? It's straightforward. More power, more responsibility. Don't like that? Don't become a police officer.

There are plenty of existing professions where people get to second guess what you do; doctors and nurses can be sued for malpractice, engineers who stamp drawings can lose their license and more if a building falls down, pilots can easily lose their life if they mess up badly enough.

I don't see how saying "there are SOME bad cops and there's no way to tell a priori who they are so for the sake of public safety everyone has to wear a camera because these incidents are relatively rare and that's the only way to be sure"

[746F7475]

So what was wrong with the "activate a mechanism (maybe a button) to disable the camera for few minutes"? Then there is no issues like this, unless of course the cop gets attacked in the bathroom, but that's not super likely, so let's not worry about it

[mac01021]

Nobody is going to view the footage unless there is an incident.

And if there is an incident then probably modesty should not take priority over revelation of the truth surrounding that incident.

[ptaipale]

This is an excellent argument for having surveillance cameras not just with policemen, but in all (e.g.) restaurant bathrooms. Nobody is going to view the footage unless there is an incident.

But do we trust that? No. Do the police unions trust that? No. Do people who happen to be in a bathroom at the same time with a policeman trust that? No.

[746F7475]

Personally I wouldn't care if every public/restaurant/whatever bathroom had a camera, why should I? The stalls aren't going to have them, it would just increase over all security and it wouldn't take away any of your privacy, unless you are very weird about people knowing that you too visit the bathroom at times.

Unless you are up to something illegal public cameras shouldn't be an issue in the West where we still have rights to do normal stuff

[swombat]

Policemen are public servants who are trusted with use of force in normal society. If they want to keep their privacy they should go and do something else where they don't get to occasionally legally beat up or shoot someone.

[Eridrus]

Has anyone experimented with turning cameras on when officer heart rate increases? Potentially with a notification sound and a button to explicitly turn it off if this triggers when you're taking a shit.

[Navarr]

One of the concerns my local precinct was that body cameras would hamper the right to privacy of the general public.

Always On would mean a task force of moving cameras watching everyone(?)

[ktRolster]

I'd also assumed that they should be always on. Is there really need for better technology here, as opposed to just a change of political will?

I think you can easily fit a day's worth of video on an 8GB ssd, so I'd think the problem here is not really technological. Although storing that much video is a pain.

[curun1r]

Might battery the more limited resource when it comes to body cameras? After all, given that these are mounted on someone who has a job to do, they have to be pretty small/light and batteries for always-on devices that last that long tend to be pretty big.

[DINKDINK]

>I think you can easily fit a day's worth of video on an 8GB ssd

I'm not a video expert but 8GB seems drastically inadequate for meaningful resolution / frame rate. I estimate roughly 291 Kbps which does allow you much resolution / frame rate.

[chx]

Let's simply take what Netflix recommends: 3 megabit / second for HD video, that means 32GB for 24 hours. Not too bad given you can get a 32GB microSD for below $10.

[mjevans]

Netflix gets to squeeze and optimize in advance, once, for hopefully many hundreds of thousands of streamings.

Police body cameras are going to be a lot more like the dash came I recently installed for a trip. 1080p at 30FPS and slightly blurry gets me about 5 hours to a 32 'billion byte' uSDHC card.

That isn't so bad, you can fit a normal shift in to a 64 GByte space, and if you double that up again you'd get almost a whole day's worth of time.

The battery is an issue for sure, but then again Police already come equipped with a belt that has a lot of other stuff, and are usually deployed with a moving vehicle OR are stationed in an area where they will have a regular chance to return to a break room (which is where a natural battery swap would occur).

[mistermann]

It's probably hard to close a sale if they can't be deactivated on demand.