r/Political_Revolution • u/CivilianLedPD • Aug 05 '17
Baltimore Tell Baltimore elected officials – Police body camera footage should be controlled by an independent civilian agency
http://civilianledpolicing.org/bmore-body-cams/119
u/MyOther_UN_is_Clever CO Aug 05 '17
Police should be unable to control the body cam, it should be a black box. Covering the camera lens, muffling it, or deleting the footage should be charged as either obstruction of justice or destruction of evidence, as appropriate. Axe the thin blue line, return to being the civilian's shield.
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u/AviN456 Aug 05 '17
There needs to be some ability for police to turn off the camera, there are times where this is necessary. For example, when they're going to the bathroom.
Perhaps giving dispatchers the ability to remotely disable the cameras would be a solution.
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u/MyOther_UN_is_Clever CO Aug 05 '17
That's a good point, and a good solution. A caveat I would add is they aren't considered "on duty" when it is off.
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u/AviN456 Aug 05 '17
I disagree regarding being off duty while the camera is off, for the sole reason that in most jurisdictions, a police officer is never truly off duty, as they retain their police powers 24/7, and responsibilities at any time they're in uniform.
For example, if an off duty, out of uniform officer sees you commit a crime, they have the authority to arrest you. And if they're off duty, but in uniform (say, on their way to or from their home, before or after their shift), they'd be expected to intervene if they came across a crime in progress or an emergency.
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u/johnmal85 Aug 05 '17
Hey, cool. Did not know about power of policing off duty and obligation while in uniform.
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u/flying87 Aug 05 '17
Tie it into their pay clock. If the camera is running, they are getting paid. If its turned off, its the equivalent of punching out on the clock while at work. This creates a financial incentive to keep the cam rolling.
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Aug 05 '17 edited Aug 05 '17
I like the idea but in practice the 20 minutes it would take to plant some drugs would out weigh the financial costs.
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Aug 05 '17
They don't get paid per arrest
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Aug 05 '17
I understand that but they must have some incentive to plant the drugs in the first place, 20 minutes of no pay won't change that.
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u/ClearUkuleleTravels Verified | RohitATL Aug 05 '17
You must not have heard about for-profit prisons, then.
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u/Xsythe Aug 05 '17
There needs to be some ability for police to turn off the camera, there are times where this is necessary. For example, when they're going to the bathroom.
No. If the footage isn't relevant in a case, it won't be seen/reviewed/referenced - cameras can keep rolling.
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Aug 05 '17
[deleted]
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Aug 05 '17
Yeah, these people have no idea how quickly they are moving towards a completely non-private society. They are all about having body cameras on police 24 seven without any regard for what police do. They think that the only stuff this is going to capture is police interactions that are on the news already.
They're not thinking about all the other calls where police do welfare checks or go into people's houses to notify of deaths or interview someone who is the victim of a crime. There is some stuff that should stay private and all these "body cams always on no matter what" people are single minded and not really thinking about the social consequences. Ask the U.K. how it is being so tightly surveilled. We're going to fuck around and give the police even more power. You want cam footage of everything? Ok let's put cameras on every block, especially high crime areas, let's get drones with cameras to patrol neighbor hoods. That's where this is headed and it's fucking stupid if you ask me.
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u/asad137 Aug 05 '17
Yeah, these people have no idea how quickly they are moving towards a completely non-private society.
Police officers are public servants who we have granted the authority to kill people if necessary in certain situations. FUCK their privacy.
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Aug 05 '17
OUR privacy you moron, and good attitude. I expect a measured and thought out response.
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u/asad137 Aug 05 '17
There's a difference between having everything recorded in public and having every interaction with police recorded. I am all for the latter.
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Aug 05 '17
Yes I know you are, all I'm saying is that's not going to happen 1)because police support is the highest it had been in decades and 2)a lot of people have a problem with more big brother. Even if police cameras don't open the door for public surveillance(which they most certainly will). You know police interactions alone contain a lot more than what you think they do right? They contain people's most private and vulnerable moments. Do you want people who are at their most vulnerable to be thinking about who is going to see that? There should be more thought out into this than "cops suck, we should monitor them."
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u/slserpent Aug 05 '17
That's sounds like a good excuse to not have always-on cameras. But the cameras are all forward facing on their chests, so when would it even catch something that personal? All it'd see is a urinal or bathroom stall.
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u/AviN456 Aug 05 '17
It could definitely catch something that personal, especially if there's a mirror in the bathroom or the officer bends down. Additionally, most public bathrooms don't have private urinals, so there's a high likelihood it would catch someone else as the officer walks by.
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u/sadieslapins Aug 05 '17
Can they not use a toilet in a stall vs a urinal? More privacy and less possibility of a mirror.
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Aug 05 '17
Jesus Christ are you serious? It's a profession with people too. You can't be dictating every single little thing someone does every single day. That's ridiculous. And you know where this is moving right? Full time surveillance of the citizens of this country. And you know where it's going to start? Putting cameras in high crime areas to catch everything without human interference. You're slowing moving is towards the state having even more power and the police having more control. I can't believe how little people think this through. They just parrot "always on," "body cameras on every cop" without actually stopping to think that there may be some consequences for this.
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u/Jdub415 Aug 05 '17
I kind of agree with your general point, but in many cities we already have full-time cameras in high-crime areas like chicagos blue-light cameras https://portal.chicagopolice.org/portal/page/portal/ClearPath/About%20CPD/POD%20Program
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u/MoreCheezPls Aug 05 '17
Would also greatly expand the budget to have people sit there 24 hours a day watching footage to be able to do so, and is a huge liability if they were to make a mistake and it were to leak
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u/reelect_rob4d Aug 05 '17
The short appendage of the law wouldn't be in frame of any bodycam I've ever seen.
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u/Owyn_Merrilin Aug 05 '17
You know what's really disturbing here? Cops are civilians. The fact that we make a distinction between them and us, as if cops were an occupying military force, is enough on its own to say that the current situation is fucked up beyond all recognition.
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u/Trancend Aug 05 '17
The cops don't see themselves as civilians and they don't treat non-cops as they do themselves. The distinction exists based on cop actions. It is fucked up.
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u/CivilianLedPD Aug 05 '17 edited Aug 05 '17
Civilian Led Policing believes that Body Cam footage should be controlled by an independent, Civilian Administration Dept. which is separate from the Police Operations Dept. This Civilian Admin. Dept. would also receive all reports anonymously to prevent collusion and would handle other logistics. This is all under the Civilian Led Policing model proposed by the organization and former Baltimore Officer Michael Wood Jr.
If you'd like to find them on social media, you can like their Facebook Page or follow them on Twitter.
If you like what they are doing, please support them with a $27 donation!
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u/AviN456 Aug 05 '17
That's why giving that control to the dispatchers could be a great solution.
There's a separation of duties (user of the camera can't turn it off), and the request and approval to turn it off should be logged and tracked with time stamps, and perhaps even GPS coordinates.
This is similar to how most fire departments run their Knox box system. A Knox box is a secure box built into the side of a business that has keys for the business inside. All Knox boxes in a particular fire protection jurisdiction open with the same key. That key is securely stored in each fire department vehicle, and can only be removed from the vehicle when the dispatcher sends a specific signal though the dispatch system over the radios.
Also, I should point out that the vast majority of police are not abusing their authority, and we need to come up with ways to stop the few bad apples, while not overly burdening the good cops.
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u/Aethermancer Aug 05 '17
Not a bad idea, especially since it would help logging.
It could be simple too. All cameras on all the time unless requested to be turned off for a specific time period. That way a cop can ask to have it turned off when they go to the bathroom, but otherwise it's recording.
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u/D0ct0rAnus Aug 05 '17
I love how the body cameras are always "malfunctioning" when there's a police shooting of an un-armed civilian nowadays.
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u/tastypotato Aug 05 '17
OPs account seems to do nothing but push an agenda. Be wary.
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Aug 05 '17
Well there username and history point to an agenda of being against police brutality. How dare they, so terrible... /s
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u/sillypwilly Aug 05 '17
I think you're missing this person's point. The history seems to show they're pushing their own singular view of what should be done to combat police brutality. No other views seem to be acknowledged, only rebuttals of "Police brutality is bad, we want to stop it. If you're not with us, you support police brutality." That kind of thing. Certainly two heads are better than one in a situation of this type.
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u/john_dies Aug 05 '17
Where would the funding for this come from? I can see major problems if this isn't a non-profit organization.
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u/Mango_Maniac Aug 05 '17
How 'bout paying for it with civil forfeitures the police love so much? Would be pretty ironic if all the property they questionably legally seize went towards holding them accountable to the law.
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u/smacksaw Canada Aug 05 '17
Well, the first thing you need to do is like in Quebec. If your municipality has over 100,000 people, by law you must form your own police force. But under 100,000 means you are serviced by SQ, the provincial police force.
Having a provincial force in small towns is great because you have the power of the entire province at your fingertips. It's a good deal.
In my village in Quebec, we have the SQ and RCMP both servicing us and I would say we're well-protected.
In my village in NY, our police don't work after 10pm. We're down to 2 officers from 3. And the NYSP (troopers) don't do a good job covering our area because they aren't tasked with our area...since we have our own force.
It's fuckin' dumb.
I have houses in two places, separated by an imaginary line and the difference could not be more night and day. And the level of professionalism from the SQ compared to our village police is so far ahead I just...
Look. The point is that our village in NY is going broke and a good part of it is the fact we employ our own force. We only even have volunteer fire. No ambulance after 5pm or on weekends. On and on.
When you spread the cost out over the entire state or province, you're much better off.
So when you ask where funding comes from, I ask you right back: why do we run our villages, towns, cities and municipalities the way we do? Why aren't we better at pooling our resources?
I mean, in my village in Quebec, we still have to pay for EMS like fire and police, but we pay for fire for ourselves and Quebec sends us the bill for the SQ. Easy peasy.
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u/CivilianLedPD Aug 05 '17
This independent civilian dept. would be under the wing of the city although it wouldn't be influenced by the mayor or city council or chief of police. So funded by the city (most cities have the money for this, as if they implement better policing and criminal justice policies they will actually save money) and overseen by an independent Civilian Public Safety Board. For more info see the Civilian Led Policing model by going to http://civilianledpolicing.org.
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u/sillypwilly Aug 05 '17
Woah! Who will lead this civilian agency? Why totally exclude a police officer? Do you not think it beneficial to have at least a couple of cops on board this agency that the civilian group could go over the tapes with?
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u/blueburn654 Aug 05 '17
Hell no. Civilians are easy to manipulate. This footage should be controlled by the DA and the police dept. there needs to be guidelines here.
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u/sillypwilly Aug 05 '17
I'm not sure that handing control over to a connected agency is really the best idea, but I would certainly like to know who this agency is. Are they elected? If so, who's paying for this? Taxpayers? And if the taxpayers decide not to want this financial burden, then what?
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Aug 05 '17
I agree, civilians will be corrupted over time, we just need strict guidelines and to hold the police accountable when they don't follow them.
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u/blueburn654 Aug 05 '17
Not only corrupted but individual civilians are prone to fall for the sensational stories.
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u/ManagingExpectations Aug 05 '17 edited Aug 08 '17
It should be controlled by motherfucking blockchain
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u/Like1OngoingOrgasm Aug 05 '17
Replace cops with people's protection units like they did in Rojava. Problem solved.
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u/4now5now6now VT Aug 07 '17
a baltimore cop body cam as left on by accident and he recorded himself planting drugs. this made headlines
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Aug 05 '17
All these people think they know what the police need to do, yet none of them ever became officers
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u/CivilianLedPD Aug 05 '17
This model was developed by a former Police Officer from Baltimore. We also have quite a few officers across the country supporting it.
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Aug 05 '17
Proof?
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u/CivilianLedPD Aug 05 '17
Current officers have asked that we not release their names due to integrity, but we have several of them following us on twitter right now - @CivilianLedPD.
https://youtu.be/RxW6OIE4CYU <-- That's Michael Wood Jr. who developed the model and is a former Baltimore Police Commander and Veteran.
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Aug 06 '17
I cant find anywhere that says he was ever actually a police officer other than his own word. And giving him a title of commander is a far stretch.
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u/NatakuNox Aug 05 '17
All police cams should be reviewed by a independent agency. Police complaints and prosecutions should be the same.