What is someone is hearing impaired?

Lack of consent is not consent

@1: You know, I may just be thinking of some kind of far off sci-fi universe, but I think there are ways to communicate with hearing impaired people.

There will be witnesses to crime who do not wish to be recorded due to legitimate fear of retaliation. Since we don't want body cams to become a deterrent to crime solving, what's the fix?

What's the enforcement mechanism? Violators get some paid time off to think about it?

@4

As explained both in the pilot program policy and in Heidi's writeup, violations of the pilot program policy can result in violators being removed from the pilot program.

#4 didn't use enough sarcasm, I guess.

If you don't use the body camera, you get taken off the body camera pilot program...

That's logic.

@6 Robots don't get sarcasm.

I think they should leave the cameras running during protests, etc. historically, cops have behaved for more poorly at protests than protesters have.

@6, @8

Seems it's not just robots having trouble detecting sarcasm here, fellas.

What if they're sarcasm impaired?

@10: your response wasn't sarcastic... I think you're just proving you don't understand sarcasm at all.

papa oly's building his/her/it's firearms database and everybody's worried about go pros?

@12

I guess repeating "pilot program" three times in a short sentence is a bit too subtle for the reading comprehension level of some SLOG readers.

I think cameras are a good idea, but I don't think they should be subject to normal records requests. They should only be used in court cases.

@15: Likely the only way I would agree to exempt these public records from requirements for public access under the Public Records Act is if their use is restricted to oversight of those we employ to use guns on people.



If these roving cameras are used to produce criminal evidence against the public and are exempt from public access, we should just pass on the system. We would avoid the opportunity to decrease false reports of misconduct, but it's not a huge problem in the first place. When people accuse police of bad behavior, not much happens: Feelings are hurt, maybe a manager suggests toning it down a bit, but false misconduct reports don't result in people beaten in the back of a squad car or executed on the side of the street with hands in the air.

Protestors are known for not wanting their message to be heard or seen by anyone, so it makes sense to turn off the cameras in those private spaces

@ Mehlman: Ask the police unions who are pulling when and how they will be used into labor negotiations, or the manufacturers who are doing things like making audio-off the default config in order to preserve he-said/he-said ambiguity and mollify the unions.

My problem with the footage being available for public record requests is for the confidential stuff that cops deal with all the time. Would we want footage of a woman who had just been raped, or a child who had just been molested available for some schmuck to view, or worse yet, put in some sort of "Faces of Death" compilation? What about dead bodies, or people who are in extremis? What about scenes of Domestic Violence or home invasions?

These are valuable technological tools, but their product should not be openly available to the public.

@20, those are not technical problems, they are political issues, and just the kind of detail that an unsophisticated public is likely to ignore when clamoring for body cams. "Clever" implementation can all but eliminate the kind of justice most people are seeking. It's important to have enlightened leadership in police departments, but even more important would be widespread adoption of state laws that require outside investigations in any officer-involved death: http://www.npr.org/2014/12/13/370592433/…

Let's keep in mind that the choking-to-death of Eric Garner by the NYPD was captured in full technicolor. And the Staten Island grand jury declined to indict. Body cams aren't a panacea. They must be used in conjunction with responsible judicial response, something we appear to lack in this country right now. Especially if you're not pasty white.

Anywhere that you happen to be, in public, you can legally appear on camera. It happens all the time....surveillance cameras, atm cameras, traffic light cameras, ect. If you appear on a police officer's footage, and you have an important role as a witness, that footage is evidence and should be treated as such, and not released to the general public. Rules for handling evidence will hopefully cover issues with privacy, witness intimidation, or fear of retaliation. There are a lot of things to be worked out, but as things sit, more accountability for law enforcement can only be a good thing for all of us.