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takyon [soylentnews.org] writes:

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is urging the Department of Justice to deny a grant [eff.org] to the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD). The grant would allow the department to pay for 700 body cameras:

Los Angeles could also become the largest city [latimes.com] in the country to use body cameras on a wide scale. LAPD has already purchased 860 cameras using private donations and plans to purchase 7,000 cameras total [latimes.com]. The city has a goal of outfitting every LAPD officer [latimes.com] with a body camera.

But amid these ambitious plans, LAPD has enacted a body camera use policy that runs completely counter to every reason to employ body cameras in the first place. At its heart, the policy appears designed to protect law enforcement officers rather than members of the public who they have sworn to serve.

The policy [lacity.org] fails for four main reasons:

• It does not provide for any public access to body camera video—even in cases of shootings or alleged misconduct. In fact, LAPD has made clear that it will not release video footage unless required to do so in court—or unless the chief, in his discretion, believes it would be "beneficial." [nytimes.com]
• It not only permits but requires officers to review body camera footage before they write up their reports—even before they provide an initial statement to investigators when they are involved in critical uses of force or accused of grave misconduct.
• It has no consequences for officers who fail to turn on their cameras during use-of-force incidents.
• It provides no clear rules to prevent LAPD from using body cameras as a tool to surveil the public at large. It doesn't address the use of back-end analysis tools such as facial recognition on footage; nor does it provide guidelines for use of the cameras during First Amendment-protected activity.

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