Houston P.D. Orders All Officers Turn Off Body Cameras During Protest !

originally posted by: Shamrock6

Personally, I have no problem with body cams. But I do understand that there is a degree of privacy that needs to be maintained in some situations.

They said the same thing in Nashville. And the answer is...it CAN be streaming, but only to one or two places, and that was the police chief and the mayor. It could NOT be turned off. The data wasn't available to the public at large, except by court order, and in that case the pee stops were redacted, because they were not germane to the case.

But I disagree with you on several points. Testimony that is given the officer MUST be recorded. It might not be available to ME, with no particular reason to know. But who says the officer actually writes down such testimony correctly? Having interacted several times with cops in a neutral-to-good way, even when they TRY to get the statements right, they often seem to miss. And I found that even when the lawyers contact the station and demand that the recordings be retained, it seemed to be conveniently "whoopsie" any time the statement was negative towards the police.

As far as personal conversations go, if it's about the wife and kids, ok, no problem. If it's with the buds and the topic is "I beat the # out of this guy HAR HAR HAR" then, yeah, it's evidence.

And don't you guys push that line that you're on duty even when you're not on duty? Especially when it's convenient to you? Well, this is the back side of that sword. Maybe you want to rethink that on duty 24/7 mantra, if it comes with a camera. Personally, I'd be fine with you NOT being on duty when you're not, I find that a lot of cops I run into that work OT as store security get this idea by osmosis that store policy == enforceable law. I'd really rather you have the idea (as a whole) that off duty is off duty, and off duty you are not a cop.

So, in a sense, I agree with you that it shouldn't be something I can surf to. That is not a valid reason for it to not exist. It should be stored, all of it, pee stops and food fights and talk about the neighbor's old lady intact, and it should be discoverable. Missing bits, you obscuring it, "whoops I forgot", "how did that antenna end up broken off" and the like that result in no recordings should be actionable, and it should at the least result in you being unable to testify about the missing areas or the judge should HAVE to repeatedly remind jurors that your testimony is hearsay, has no weight and that it's possible you destroyed the evidence intentionally.

originally posted by: 727Sky

originally posted by: IslandOfMisfitToys
a reply to: 727Sky

I hope the Mayor issues his own statement that if the camera isn't on, the cop doesn't get paid.

Or goes to jail if someone is injured in his custody.. Never work I know but... What a bunch of "Sleaze" department heads if all this is true..

This IS Activist Post, so I'm not sure how much I believe the little details, either.

originally posted by: burdman30ott6
A side issue here which I don't believe many of the anarchy folks have thought out very well is the fact that these videos can (and will) be used in court against both the minority of poorly behaving officers and anyone who actually does resist arrest or otherwise break the law in front of a cop

Good. I only have issues with the minority of poorly behaving officers.

eta: and their buddies, who fail to take action to stop them, or fail to report them. The cameras should...assist with that.

a reply to: Bedlam

you're both arguing with me and agreeing with me all at once. I support body cams. I don't support the access in the way that I said, and I said that the solutions to those problems are probably not ones that most body cam proponents will like. Such as the data is kept somewhere that the officers can't access them. The flip side of that is that it's not going to be stored somewhere that the general public can access but the officers can't.

My point was pretty simple: there are a number of reasons for the GP to not have full access to the body cams. Those reasons are valid, not made up. There are solutions to each and every reason. I've seen more than one person on here ranting that they should have full access to all video from body cams, from every officer in every department across the country. That's absurd.

If my post sounded like I don't support them, then perhaps I could've worded it better. I DO support them. I just don't support unfettered access to them by every Tom, Dick, and Harry with a router.

originally posted by: Shamrock6
a reply to: Bedlam

you're both arguing with me and agreeing with me all at once.

That's typical. I don't have simplistic views ALL the time. Even about LEOs.

...the data is kept somewhere that the officers can't access them. The flip side of that is that it's not going to be stored somewhere that the general public can access but the officers can't.

It really can't be any other way, IMHO. In Nashville, at least during the brief time we were associated with the first project (2005?) before we relocated, the data was stored in the car in a locked "safe" and downloaded itself any time the car got close to a station. If it started building up because the cop was avoiding the station, the system would log that and then do the transfer over cellular. You could not, in the end, really stop it without mangling the car up in a way that was very obviously an attempt to destroy the information. The data went, IIRC, three places - the main police precinct, the prosecutor's office and the SO's office. None had an ability to tamper with it other than outright destruction, which would have been sort of obvious.

My point was pretty simple: there are a number of reasons for the GP to not have full access to the body cams. Those reasons are valid, not made up...That's absurd.

Yeah, but I've heard the same points being used to poo-poo the very USE of cameras, either on the cop or in the car or both, and they, too, are absurd. Some inconveniences go with the job.

If my post sounded like I don't support them, then perhaps I could've worded it better. I DO support them. I just don't support unfettered access to them by every Tom, Dick, and Harry with a router.

I support them too, but only if they have teeth. Otherwise, it's just another tool for your bad minority to abuse. They ought to be cop-proof. And on 24/7. And the guy's cop buddies in IT should be prosecuted out the ass if they try to tamper with it. And it should be discoverable, and especially OTHER than through the cops. Hell, spool it to the ACLU, that ought to do it.

I know I've probably said this before, but when it went online in Nashville, the two questions you ALWAYS got from the group being trained were "How do we turn it off" and "where in the car is the 'tape', just in case we need to get to it", and when informed 'you can't turn off your lapel mics', 'there is no tape and you can't get to the hard drives', and 'there is no off switch, and there are cameras you can't put a hat over' then the screaming commenced.

a reply to: 727Sky

Maybe they didn't want the police to be filmed sniping innocents?

Support torture do you? Support assassinations? The monster you created and fostered is coming home.

a reply to: Bedlam

I'm not surprised that there were complaints. I would, however, suggest that at least part of that was simply human nature. I think most people would be unhappy to go to work one day and be told "there's going to be more oversight now, and you can't do anything to get out from under it." Not all of it would be due to them being crooked or realizing they can't go out and beat people up anymore. It could be something as simple as "my bathroom breaks take way longer than they should and now people are going to know about it" or "I'm pretty positive I was abducted by aliens and now I can't talk to myself in my cruiser about those freakin Grays anymore."

I'm not so blinded that I think there wasn't ANY officer who was thinking "oh crap, I'm screwed now." Simple statistics would show there was probably at least some. But I think if you had 20 veteran officers and 20 brand new rookies, handed them all mics and cams and said "deal with it" the new officers would be way more likely to not bat an eyelash, because they don't know any different. To put a point on it, I know officers that still won't wear vests because they remember when vests first became a big "thing" and were huge, hot, bulky, uncomfortable, and didn't work all that well. They've never changed their opinion on it and won't, because they just don't want the change.

But, as I said, I'm not so blinded that I think there wasn't at least one guy sitting in the back thinking "crap, now I can't be a jerkbag and do jerkbag things to people anymore." I'm sure there was, and hopefully he either changed or got canned.

originally posted by: Shamrock6
But, as I said, I'm not so blinded that I think there wasn't at least one guy sitting in the back thinking "crap, now I can't be a jerkbag and do jerkbag things to people anymore." I'm sure there was, and hopefully he either changed or got canned.

Hell, that's the only ones I want to affect. Well, that and the "Oh, #, we just screwed up...get the tape out and tear it up, Joe you got to cover me" moments that I'm sure affect the good cops as well. Or the occasional I'm-having-a-bad-day-and-I'm-on-tren road rage moments that seem to occur here and there.

It gets back to the leverage thing. You have a lot. You can end my life figuratively and literally, and you get away with it more often than you should because you cover for each other, as well as IA and the prosecutor, which are your only checks and balances, because the system is rife with conflicts of interest, politics, and buddyhood.

That doesn't mean you started the day off saying "I'm going to find some guy and just beat the # out of him for NO GOOD REASON HAR HAR HAR". But, as they say, # happens. Only when it's you that it springs from, there is much less accountability or recourse than there should be.

This would end that. If implemented correctly, otherwise it's worse than useless.

a reply to: 727Sky

Did anybody think cameras were the answer. Of course they are going to be turned off when the police plan to commit a civil atrocity. Duh. They are at war with us, and until we dismantle them they will continue to be at war with us. no sympathy for cops killed in action, none. You chose your path and to the good cops kia, you made the wrong choice.

Good for them, it would just be used out of context to tell Al Sharpton's story anyway in their own edited versions.