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posted by n1 on Thursday August 28 2014, @11:55AM   Printer-friendly
from the it-wasn't-me dept.

David Kravets writes that US Senator Claire McCaskill (D-MO) says police departments nationwide should require their officers to wear body cameras in order to qualify for the hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funding they receive each year. "Everywhere I go, people now have cameras," said McCaskill during a question-and-answer session with voters in her home state of Missouri. "And police officers are now at a disadvantage because someone can tape the last part of an encounter and not tape the first part of the encounter. And it gives the impression that the police officer has overreacted when they haven't."

Only a small number of US police departments have outfitted their officers with body cameras, including forces in Fresno, California; Oakland; Rialto, California; Pittsburgh; Salt Lake City; and Cincinnati. A recent study with the Rialto Police Department showed that use-of-force incidents and citizen complaints have been dramatically curtailed since the department began wearing body cams [PDF].

 
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  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by WillAdams on Thursday August 28 2014, @12:20PM

    by WillAdams (1424) on Thursday August 28 2014, @12:20PM (#86695)

    That's fine, so long as there's a reliable system for archiving the video, maintaining it securely and controlling/monitoring access (out of privacy considerations), maintaining chain of evidence, &c.

    I also trust that there's a reasonable accommodation of the officer's personal dignity / privacy.

    From an old Slashdot post:

    http://beta.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2229228&cid=36404270 [slashdot.org]
    Police have no expectation of privacy
    when performing official duties for the good of the public.

    If their supervisor showed up, they'd have to fully disclose everything which they were doing, ditto internal affairs, the police chief / superintendent, or a government functionary whose bailiwick involved the performance of their current duties.

    If they have something to hide, which they don't want revealed in court, they need to find some other line of work.

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  • (Score: 2) by buswolley on Thursday August 28 2014, @03:08PM

    by buswolley (848) on Thursday August 28 2014, @03:08PM (#86751)

    Maintaining the security of the video is important, and also assuring authenticity of the video..synthesis of video, seamlessly inserting audio, etc., is becoming harder and harder to detect. Some computer sciency method is needed to ascertain whether the video is (1) the right video, and (2) has not been tampered with.

    Josh

    --
    subicular junctures