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Taser, the company, gets a lot of cop love because of its titular product, which is deployed (too) frequently to subdue arrestees. It probably doesn't get as much love for its body cameras, especially since it's already wired one line to sync footage with Taser deployment.
Its cameras are going to get even less love now. Taser's latest product looks to ensure no shooting goes unrecorded.
To ensure accountability during police encounters, Axon, Taser's police body camera division, has announced a small sensor for gun holsters that can detect when a gun is drawn and automatically activate all nearby cameras. The sensor, Signal Sidearm, is part of a suite of products aimed at reducing the possibility that officers will fail to or forget to switch on their cameras during encounters with the public.
This isn't a welcome development for cops who'd rather have every shooting/killing go unrecorded. And it's probably not going to be picked up by many departments as it's an aftermarket add-on that serves the singular purpose of accountability.
[...] Say what you will about Taser's taser, but its camera division (Axon) continues to make strides towards better law enforcement accountability. In addition to the gun-out, camera-on clip, Axon has also made body/dash cameras that begin recording when squad car doors are opened and/or the cruiser's lights are turned on.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Monday March 13 2017, @03:30AM (1 child)
Taser International stocks have certainly improved following the BLM movement and the increased attention paid to police shootings. Did they get lucky? Did they leverage their existing relationships with police departments to dominate the bodycam market? Did they influence local bodycam debates (which went national with people like Obama weighing in)? You decide.
In another comment, I pointed out how the product could cause officers to become complacent, only turning the camera on when the gun is drawn. Many bodycam videos I've seen start when a patrol car begins responding to a call. ie. it captures a few minutes prior to them rolling up to the situation.
They are storing bodycam/dashcam footage in a subscription-based cloud storage system called "Evidence.com". Is that evil?
As for the lethality of the Taser, the perceived safety of the product could lead to it being used more often, or in less dangerous scenarios, on 5 year olds, etc.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taser_International#Issues [wikipedia.org]
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(Score: 2) by darkfeline on Monday March 13 2017, @07:07AM
I don't think it's necessarily wrong for a company to take advantage of a situation to expand their business. To cherry-pick an example, if a medicine manufacturer ramps up production to meet sudden demand, that's certainly good. I can even tolerate "influencing" to an extent; in the example, pushing a medicine as a cure for a disease when it has been shown that it treats the disease better than existing medicines. Of course, if the company flat out starts spreading disease to promote sales, that's probably crossing some moral line.
On the lethality point, considering that we have officers shooting dogs and flashbanging babies (and probably shooting them too in rarer cases), if we can't solve the problem of cops firing indiscriminately, I'd rather have them indiscriminately fire tasers than guns, just saying.
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