Some thoughts about body cams on police officers.

[kwassa]

A good article in the Atlantic magazine about how access to the footage taken by dash cams and body cams is the critical issue in police justice.

Their scorecard found that the city’s body camera rules are mostly lacking. While Chicago’s policy satisfied two important criteria—it set limits on when officers could record and it protects some classes of subjects—it specifically leaves open many questions of access. Chicago allows officers to view footage before filing a report, which many civil rights groups oppose. Chicago does not specifically prohibit tampering with footage (though it does forbid copying or disseminating footage without authorization, and it says all access to its online database is tracked). And, crucially, the city provides no way for people captured by body cameras or their families to gain access to footage.

Chicago isn’t alone here. With the exception of the metropolitan police in Washington, D.C., no major American city—not New York, not Los Angeles, not Houston, Miami, or Baltimore—allows people recorded by body cameras to have access to footage of themselves. These cities prohibit access to footage even if someone on film, or a survivor from their immediate family, is filing a complaint with the department.

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Since last August, Americans across the country have protested what they see as the racist state of modern policing and incarceration. Body-worn cameras have so far been the greatest policy outcome of this movement, even though many activists feel squeamish about them. That squeamishness is understandable: Body cameras are meant as a tool of police transparency, but they surveil the community.

Whether body cameras will function more as the former or the latter is now being decided, in state houses and town halls across the country. It seems to me that activists should intensify their focus on creating a better legal structure for body cameras—as it’s the legal structure that determines how body cameras work as a technology and whom they ultimately serve.

http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/11/who-can-see-video-of-a-killing/417684/?google_editors_picks=true

[Number23]

1. Body armour is the first step. Prosecution and jail time should also always be on the table.

[qwlauren35]

2. This reminds me

of all of the anti-voting rights laws that have been passed over the last 4-6 years. The people who are the most affected are the ones who are least likely to protest the new laws. They have to rely on groups like ACLU to protest on their behalf. There won't be a lobby for the people, only for the police.

I wish I knew how to fight this.

[kwassa]

3. Politically independent civilian review boards, with real power.

Nothing less will work. Almost no city has such a board.

Therefore, the police police the police. We see how well that works.