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posted by LaminatorX on Sunday January 11 2015, @10:18AM   Printer-friendly
from the watch-this dept.

Lily Hay Newman reports that the LAPD has ordered 3,000 Tasers that, when discharged, will automatically activate cameras on officers' uniforms, which will create visual records of incidents at a time of mounting concern about excessive force by U.S. law enforcement officers. The new digital Taser X26P weapons record the date, time and duration of firing, and whether Taser wires actually strike suspects and how long the thousands of volts of electricity pulse through them. “This technology gives a much better picture of what happens in the field,” says Steve Tuttle. The idea of using a Taser discharge as a criterion for activating body cams is promising, especially as more and more police departments adopt body cams and struggle to establish guidelines for when they should be on or off. Police leadership—i.e., chiefs and upper management—is far more supportive of the technology and tends to view body-worn cameras as a tool for increasing accountability and reducing civil liability. On the other hand, the patrol officer culture is concerned that the technology will be an unfair intrusion into their routine activities—for instance, it might invite over-managing minor policy violations. "In addition to these new Taser deployments, we plan to issue a body-worn camera and a Taser device to every officer," says Police Chief Charlie Beck. "It is our goal to make these important tools available to every front line officer over the next few years."

 
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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 11 2015, @10:19PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 11 2015, @10:19PM (#133813)

    That's either going to require a lot of batteries or lead to incidents where the officer "forgot" to recharge their battery during the day.

    1 lb. of batteries on your belt. Done. When going off-duty, the batteries go into the charger. Simple?

    To record for 4h, you need about 3V with 2Ah capacity. So, to record 16h, you need less than 10Ah capacity. Sorry. That is not a big deal. If they can carry a gun and/or tazer, they can carry 1lb of batteries.

    PS. Since more than 1 officer is generally on the scene, there would be no excuse for "battery gone bad" for multiple units.