[News] The USA Police State will never satisfy its lust for beating, gassing, and imprisoning minorities

Dave

Staff member
I both agree and disagree with this sentiment. I disagree with the "fuck the police" as a catch-all because it's reactionary and simplistic. However, I heartily agree that the current system of coziness between the police and the prosecutors is an anathema to a judicial system that is balanced. When shit like this happens the wagons circle, the blue wall goes up, and the police investigate themselves - strangely very seldom finding anything prosecutable.
 
A black Muslim cop has killed an attractive white woman. As usual, conservatives insist on defending the cop and won't jump to any conclusions until more infor-




Oh...
 
I warned you about letting cops shoot minorities willy-nilly... once they get a taste they can't just turn it off when dealing with white people.

Also, anyone else so used to it that it doesn't make you feel anything any more? US cops sot someone under questionable circumstances? Yeah, it was due again...
 
A black Muslim cop has killed an attractive white woman. As usual, conservatives insist on defending the cop and won't jump to any conclusions until more infor-





Oh...
#blondelivesmatter

But seriously, this case is fucking weird. Why in the hell did an unarmed woman in her pajamas get shot through the car door when she was speaking to police about why she called 911? And why didn't they have the body cams on, or turn them on immediately after?
 
#blondelivesmatter

But seriously, this case is fucking weird. Why in the hell did an unarmed woman in her pajamas get shot through the car door when she was speaking to police about why she called 911? And why didn't they have the body cams on, or turn them on immediately after?
Why can they turn them off at all while they're on-duty?
 
I tend to side with people who say that if your department has a body cam policy and you turn it off, its grounds for immediate dismissal. I mean hell, even the dash cams were turned off.
 

GasBandit

Staff member
I tend to side with people who say that if your department has a body cam policy and you turn it off, its grounds for immediate dismissal. I mean hell, even the dash cams were turned off.
That is indeed a terribly large amount of smoke for there to not be some kind of fire.
 
But seriously, this case is fucking weird. Why in the hell did an unarmed woman in her pajamas get shot through the car door when she was speaking to police about why she called 911? And why didn't they have the body cams on, or turn them on immediately after?
SHE WAS COMING RIGHT AT THEM!!!!
 
I don't have the math to work this out properly, but consider the storage requirements for my department alone.

We currently have just shy of 700 officers. Assume that the majority are patrol (because they are.)
5 Precincts (well, techinically 6, but Precinct 6 is a half-strength boondoggle, brought about because rich folks screamed and cried that they weren't receiving as much police presence in the unincorporated county as the inner city areas.... because oddly enough, we ride the calls we're dispatched to, and patrol more heavily in areas of high call volume. Weird.)
Each precinct has 3 watches, working 8 hour shifts.
Each watch is allotted an average of 15 officers.

15 x 3 x 5 x 8 = 1800 hours of raw footage PER DAY, not counting special operations, overtime etc.

1800 x 7 = 12600 hours of raw footage each week. 655,200 hours each year.

When you consider that footage for misdemeanor cases alone needs to be kept for 3 years, some felony cases has to be kept indefinitely (murder, rape), you're already asking a humongous amount of storage. To say nothing of needing to REVIEW. EVERY. MINUTE. of those hours, whenever a case needs evidence saved. Who does that? Who pays the analysts to go over that footage and save the specific areas of evidentiary value? Who photoshops out the officer's genitalia whenever they're going to the bathroom?

And that's not even getting in to the power requirements. At maximum charge, a new battery pack lasts approximately 4 hours, if activated constantly. And that's being generous.

This is, of course, assuming that every officer's camera is functioning correctly, with the camera, the battery pack, and the wire running between the two all kept in perfect working order. And the bluetooth connection to the phone that allows us to review and tag our videos (NOT edit or delete them) is functioning correctly.

We activate our body cameras whenever we interact with the public. If there is ever any question brought to our chain of command, and we don't have camera footage of the incident, the complaint is automatically sustained, per our chief's order. It's in OUR BEST INTERESTS to document every encounter.

My Axon Flex body-worn camera has a 30 second buffer that is saved as soon as I activate the camera. The previous 30 seconds of footage is then saved, in addition to the recording itself, to be uploaded after being tagged with a title and case number (if applicable). This is the handy little feature that just burned 3 Baltimore City officers who were caught staging drugs at a scene. Allegedly, they were setting it up to reflect how they found things, but that doesn't fucking matter. Those 3 scumbags are getting (rightfully) fried because of it. Body cameras work.

I turn it off when I go to the bathroom because I accidently got to share my wedding tackle with a sergeant who made my life hell for WEEKS afterwards. I reactivate it when I'm done washing my hands.

And this is just my department, a mid-sized one for a mid-sized metropolitan area. Consider the requirements for something like NYPD, whose ACADEMY class recently graduated almost as many rookies as MY ENTIRE DEPARTMENT.

Body cameras are fantastic. I love having mine. It's covered me so many times when I've received frivolous complaints, or deterred the cockwombles from acting up in the first place. But it's not infallible, it's not perfect, and will ALWAYS be contingent on human interaction, until we start deploying Robocops. Because that's what the public needs - departments full of "officers" who are incapable of utilizing discretion, cite and arrest for everything, and never take human needs or necessities into consideration.

I wonder why I come in here sometimes. Some of the comments in here are despicable.
 
I don't have the math to work this out properly, but consider the storage requirements for my department alone.

We currently have just shy of 700 officers. Assume that the majority are patrol (because they are.)
5 Precincts (well, techinically 6, but Precinct 6 is a half-strength boondoggle, brought about because rich folks screamed and cried that they weren't receiving as much police presence in the unincorporated county as the inner city areas.... because oddly enough, we ride the calls we're dispatched to, and patrol more heavily in areas of high call volume. Weird.)
Each precinct has 3 watches, working 8 hour shifts.
Each watch is allotted an average of 15 officers.

15 x 3 x 5 x 8 = 1800 hours of raw footage PER DAY, not counting special operations, overtime etc.

1800 x 7 = 12600 hours of raw footage each week. 655,200 hours each year.
Meh. Big numbers, but virtually meaningless. The control room I work in is currently checking 170-ish cameras. Our Dutch counterpart is responsible for 1800. Each of those records 24/7, in high definition, and is kept 6 months. That's a whole lot more (about 30x). And we're a small outfit, really.

I'm not saying it's easy or cheap or efficient or even useful to keep all records for all officers all over the country, mind you. But yes, it's certainly possible for something the size of the US police force to have a data center per state or something and keep those records if they wanted to. I doubt you're storing the lot of it in 1080p HD, too. And there's plenty of semi-intelligent software to sift through the lot and purge parts of it that aren't important/interesting/related to a call-out. Though such a system would no doubt encounter problems of its own....

Anyway, I do think body cams are important, and I do think it's possible to record and store pretty much everything. But OTOH you really don't need to...But, as an officer, I think that if you're on a call, especially one with guns involved? Yeah, having all of the body cams not work is suspicious. Check your body cam at the start of your shift - you no doubt already have a checklist of 27 other things - and report it at that time if it doesn't work. If it does, turn it on at every intervention, every call out, every interaction with the public. I don't need to see your nuts, and I don't think anyone has the need to see you do nothing.
 
There is no kind of central US Police force, and thank goodness for that.
Isn't that what the FBI is for?

But anyway, why would you want the people you're watching to be the ones who make sure they're not doing anything wrong?

Oversight for any video system should be handled by an independent agency.
 
Isn't that what the FBI is for?

But anyway, why would you want the people you're watching to be the ones who make sure they're not doing anything wrong?

Oversight for any video system should be handled by an independent agency.
The Feds are investigators, some times a SWAT team. They are intended to investigate inter-state crime. Like Bonnie and Clyde, modern bank and jewel theft where the perps will cross state lines and there was nothing to be done. Oh, and all stranger kidnappings.
 
To be the voice of experience, maybe?

Also, 1080 30fps with a high efficiency codec (H264) runs about 7MB/sec, so 655200 hours works out to 337TB/yr

--Patrick
I appreciate those numbers - my numbers would be a bit low, because they don't take into account the afore-mentioned Precinct 6, or any of the special units or SWAT, but there's not 15 officers on the street every day either, so it evens out.
 
The Feds are investigators, some times a SWAT team. They are intended to investigate inter-state crime. Like Bonnie and Clyde, modern bank and jewel theft where the perps will cross state lines and there was nothing to be done. Oh, and all stranger kidnappings.
And making sure The Truth Is Out There!
 
There is a downside, of course. Sometimes the cameras pick up exactly what was intended, but those who review them don't see things the same way the officers and staff saw them at the time they were recorded. Something that was justified, that the cameras didn't pick up beforehand because the incident happened thisquick and even the 30 second buffer was too long, because the staff in question was too busy trying to do the right thing before they could even act. Oh, and if the body camera isn't on, it takes maybe an additional five to 10 seconds before the camera even starts to buffer.

Example: end of shift, camera battery is beeping that it's slowly dying. Staff is sitting in booth trying to get ready to leave when a phone call comes in; one of our youth, who is supposed to be in school, is missing. At the same time, the doorbell rings, indicating 2nd shift is at the door. Partner, who has his camera off, goes to door to let staff in - but it's not the staff. It's a youth, who just battered a youth from the cottage next door on his way back from school - and is standing outside, pounding on the door to be let in.

In the ensuing chase after the kid, all you have left is staff chasing after him and trying to subdue the youth, who's got blood all over him.
 
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