ALL POLICE SHOULD WEAR BODY CAMERAS THAT THEY CANT PERSONALLY TURN OFF. IT WOULD BE BETTER FOR EVERYONE, INCLUDING THE POLICE. USE: Police body camera programs should begin in urban areas where policing is most controversial, then rolled out to all police as costs permit. Prison Guards and other security services interacting with the public should also be required to wear body cameras. Cameras should be on for the duration of a shift and they should not be able to be turned off by the wearer. It should be considered a crime for the wearer to try to turn off, damage, or lose the camera. PRIVACY: To address privacy concerns those able to view the footage collected should constitute a separate division within the police department answerable only to the Chief of Police and a Civilian Oversight Committee. Police should not be able to view the footage collected unless a formal request is made as part of their job. All views of footage should be logged. Any files released should be logged and tracked. Footage should be viewed and stored on computers not linked to the internet or any internal network. Footage should be available for police review and court proceedings. It should not be available to journalists or the public. Any release of footage publicly and/or commercially by police (and it should be assumed that it was a police employee that released it) should constitute a crime and punishable by firing and possibly harsher penalties. Footage not in use in any legal or review proceeding and which does not show any crime or non-criminal violent act should be deleted after one year. — Kevin Davies, November 26, 2014. - - - - - - - - - - - Article Excerpt | Eileen Shim, Mic News, Nov 25, 2014. In February 2012, the city of Rialto had 70 police officers take part in a controlled study in which they were required to wear a tiny camera that filmed their interactions with the public. The results were incredible: In the first year of the cameras introduction, complaints against Rialto police officers fell by 88%, while use of force by officers fell by almost 60%. The cameras cost as little as a tenth the price of a standard-issue firearm. When you put a camera on a police officer, they tend to behave a little better, follow the rules a little better, Rialto police Chief William A. Farrar told the New York Times. And if a citizen knows the officer is wearing a camera, chances are the citizen will behave a little better. Now other cities want to follow suit. The federal court in New York has ordered some police officers to carry cameras, while departments in Albuquerque, Fort Worth, Texas, and Oakland, California, have voluntarily started the practice. The test runs have been so successful theyve even made their way to England and Wales, which have begun their own small-scale trial programs. The idea of requiring police officers to wear body cameras at all times has been met with some opposition from those with privacy concerns: Constantly being filmed could be seen as invasive not only by officers, but by the civilians whom they interact with. Still, proponents argue the trade-off is worth it when you consider how the technology holds police officers accountable for their actions. Last year, the American Civil Liberties Union published a position paper on the topic, highlighting the upsides of body cameras: Although we generally take a dim view of the proliferation of surveillance cameras in American life, police on-body cameras are different because of their potential to serve as a check against the abuse of power by police officers. Body cameras arent a guarantee against police brutality by any means. San Diego police have declared their own camera footage inadmissible in court and regularly deny requests for the footage by the public and by journalists. Theres also no way of making sure the cameras are turned on — when the Times-Picayune reviewed a body camera pilot program in New Orleans, it found that the cameras were only turned on in 34% of cases that involved the use of force. It may take some trial and error to take Rialtos program nationwide. But one only needs to look at the scenes from Ferguson to judge the potential costs as being worth it — a $50 camera could have prevented the Brown familys heartache, Fergusons civil unrest and a nations fury over the inadequacies of its justice system, and it would have been worth it. ARTICLE: 3 Years After This City Made Cops Wear Cameras, Heres What Happened to Police Violence (Nov 25, 2014). mic/articles/92777/3-years-after-this-city-made-cops-wear-cameras-here-s-what-happened-to-police-violence ARTICLE: California police use of body cameras cuts violence and complaints (Nov 4, 2013). theguardian/world/2013/nov/04/california-police-body-cameras-cuts-violence-complaints-rialto
Posted on: Wed, 26 Nov 2014 22:56:39 +0000
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