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Ars Technica brings us an update to an earlier story in which a court case was thrown out when a police officer's body cam showed him planting drugs before 'finding' them immediately after. Now prosecutors in Maryland are reviewing other body-cam footage and have already thrown out 34 criminal cases with many more under review:
The Baltimore Police Department's body cams, like many across the nation, capture footage 30 seconds before an officer presses the record button. The footage was turned over to defense attorneys as part of a drug prosecution - and that's when the misdeed was uncovered.
[...] "We are dismissing those cases which relied exclusively on the credibility of these officers," Mosby told a news conference Friday. She said the dismissed cases, some of which have already been prosecuted, involved weapons and drugs.
Lesson learned cops - plant drugs, wait 30 seconds, then turn on the camera!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 31 2017, @09:54PM (8 children)
Most of those cameras likely record up to 30 seconds of RAM video footage, and when the record button is pressed, sync it to flash (otherwise they would wear out in a matter of months.) So lengthening the pre-record period has technical constraints that would effect it.
The ONLY real solution is always recording, with the ability to hit the button for a timed pause. Hit it again if it needs to start recording before the timeout is finished. This allows cops to hit it for bathroom breaks or other momentary things that shouldn't be recorded, while also ensuring they can't easily leave it off, or have it not recording until they turn it on themselves. So long as they are not wifi accessable there is no potential confidentiality breach until it is sbumitted to whatever department handles the recordings, and as a bonus it gives people a reason to give cops a wide berth unless they need their services (because unless you're a facebook whore you probably have SOME consternation about being ubiquitously recorded in public, don't you? If not, maybe we can throw you through a time portal to STASI East Germany :)
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday July 31 2017, @11:47PM (4 children)
Timed pauses would be abused. Just don't give the cop ANY control over the camera. Bathroom break? A camera worn on you chest isn't going to be pointed downward at your anatomy, unless you purposely move it to point down. Let it always record.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday August 01 2017, @01:00AM (3 children)
What's wrong with the camera capturing someone's junk while peeing?
Will this cause massive mind-blow to someone?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 01 2017, @09:40AM
Yeah, republicans and other talibans. Because you know, the allmighty creator of the whole fricking universe is as interested in nothing else than your willy.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday August 01 2017, @01:30PM (1 child)
Breasts cause massive mindblow to many people. The idea of breastfeeding causes mindblow. Pubic hairs cause it. A vagina, or a penis? Such an image, especially if made public, could cause the cosmos to crumble around us.
Then again, maybe not.
(Score: 4, Funny) by c0lo on Tuesday August 01 2017, @04:23PM
Can you imagine a Rio Carnival in Harrison, Arkansas today? Me neither.
This is why I reckon US need more Latino immigration.
(grin)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Tuesday August 01 2017, @01:06AM (1 child)
I can store a multiple-hour movie at considerably better quality than most body cams in a few hundred megabytes, and can get a couple gigabytes of RAM for a few dollars.
Granted, constantly encoding adequate quality video at such high levels of compression in real time would likely draw considerably more power than for a simple low-compression dump, but we've got lots of slack and are well within the capabilities of a $50 prepaid smartphone with a jumbo battery, in a product that typically sells for prices more in line with something top of the line.
(Score: 2) by tonyPick on Tuesday August 01 2017, @02:28PM
The components you select for this device would probably include dedicated encoding HW support, e.g an iMx6 on a reference board will live encode/stream 720p at 1Mbps in a 6W envelope [ridgerun.com]. I suspect that's actually more efficient than trying to get the CPU to do something in pure software.
So, a back of the envelope calculation says that 720p30@1mbps will take about a Meg every 8 seconds, or 7.5 Meg a minute, call it a half gig every hour.
And so a 60Wh Li pack would give you a nominal 5 hour runtime, with 2.5Gig of memory for storage. (and up to 10hrs/5G in an emergency where you don't worry about deep discharge).
You could almost certainly do a lot better with a proper HW design (e.g. low power variant of the iMx, better custom board, etc etc) and you'd lose some lifetime for a "good" camera, but this is certainly not a technical problem.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday August 01 2017, @12:02PM
Yeah, 4GB of RAM runs $30 these days, can't be spending an extra $30 in order to increase the pre-record threshold up to 8 hours.
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