Gadgetory

so I think that the earliest public connection to police abuse being recorded although on film and not necessarily on video was the police abuse during the civil rights movement in the South and Selma Alabama and various cities where you saw the fire hoses and the dogs being turned on on yeah breaking up just thinking about it a few years ago on New Year's Eve a BART police officer shot and killed a man named Oscar Grant and this was captured on four five six different cell phones from different angles this technology had arrived and not only has it arrived in everyone's hands who has a cell phone camera but it's also arrived with the police departments who are now using this the latest technological advance that is likely to revolutionize policing is on body recording systems you got to be out of your damn mind what happens on the street away from the cruiser has always been the subject of a lot of contention and a lot of litigation you'll have somebody making a complaint about a police officer and if it's one citizen and one officer you can have an accusation and then denial by the officer and nobody really knows what has happened now we'll have the ability not just to know what happened but to to treat that systemically to make police forces better and make them more protected than people civil rights there are a number of vendors now who are working in this space that have on body recording systems the real gold standard the one that really hits it right this time it's axon flex and it includes a back-end that's called evidence calm the axon flex is a breakthrough point of view video system that will revolutionize transparency with axon flex it's simple you record in the field you dock the unit which automatically uploads and then you view and share your files on evidence comm you can better protect your officers today with taser and axon we developed the x26 2003 made it with a camera so the camera came out with that as well as an accessory called the Taser Camp when we launched it very well-received hot let's start filming things that aren't being you know exposed to just tasered the plants the only way to do that is put a camera on someone well no one's gonna walk around the camera it's gotta be warned we'll conduct that customer we were with taser devices many years ago when people said yeah you'll get a few guys to learn the vast majority this planet is going to be using taser devices and we know cameras are rapidly exploding right now that's where it's going three years ago the cheese were saying now we're not going to take cameras they're being recorded where they like are not all you do is take an iPhone off your head and record these officers or take a look at how many CCTV cameras around throughout the world they're being recorded where they like or not so the question is don't you want to be recorded from your own point of view we have 50 units that we deployed back in October we purchased these 50 for the one-year pilot program I don't see why anyone wouldn't want to use these there's nothing for me but a positive thing it's nothing but a good thing for me this street drugs shootings we just had a homicide in this apartment complex last night is everything in anything how are you okay so why are you drinking out here and why are you dropping stuff out of your pocket look this guy's going running does having a camera prevent an officer from engaging in behavior that he wouldn't behave on if he didn't know he was being taped I don't know perhaps in some cases but in other cases I imagine that the officer believes he's doing he or she is doing the right thing at the time so the guy comes out of nowhere and is a complaining that you know he doesn't have a gun and I'm in the wrong for pointing my gun at him and I didn't search the guy yet I don't know that he doesn't have a gun underneath this waistband hey shut your mouth if the citizens are able to see what we have to put up with and what we actually do there they're more likely to understand why we did what we've done that doesn't matter I am armed keep walking partner for what it's worth it's hard to argue that the police shouldn't have the same rights that you or I have but it does make sense that in order for this to be useable as evidence against someone that it's in line with the Miranda rights that they should have to be notified that they're being filmed will be used against a court of law the other white diplomat attorney and you're talking directly to a person they may look at it but they don't say anything about it because they're not sure or they don't or they don't care because of the situation we're in I've yet to have someone say don't record me then I would say arrested when the police film you they will quickly bring up the fact you have no right to privacy in a public space despite the fact that they will say that this is a private issue that they're dealing with him that you can't film them we we generally supported you know the use of videotape because we think that the transparency is necessary and you know I think in the end it's good for the public or I think it's important that the information be retained I mean that people have access to that information most citizens aren't concerned about this issue enough to bankroll a lawsuit to question whether or not we the public have a right to the video being recorded by the police officers working on the public staff if you ask the police why you can't as a journalist get a copy of that tape they say to protect the privacy of the person who they claim has no privacy in a public place so it starts to feel a bit Orwellian once you start navigating these public records requests the end of the shift we go back we take them off we put into a charging station now it starts uploading all the videos starts uploading those to a secure cloud called Kevin is calm all of this data that an officer is going to generate by wearing one of these systems is protected can't be manipulated can't be deleted and attentionally by officers and will be available for defense attorneys prosecuting attorneys civil rights advocates and police command staff for oversight purposes and that's something that hasn't been available to any of us before every action is recorded if you go into this file as an administrator it'll show what you did it'll tag you know Joe Blow did this today he open up the file made edits but it keeps the original file - who has access to these videos can these videos be used in your defense or is it just something that the government will use to get you unfortunately because on body recording systems are so new not that many agencies have policies to deal with them you know I've had people that watched my videos and it's almost to the point that they looked like they don't actually jumped through the screen to try to help me like a video game and we'll see what that officer had to do versus them seeing the defendant here dressed in a three-piece suit hair combed sober looking like an upstanding citizen but when we dealt with him you know six months earlier he was drunk belligerent very angry at us for whatever reason and we had to arrest him infinity billions or go around aimlessly Toronto turn around okay I'm gonna sleep on the officers we've had several officers that were real hesitant in the beginning like four and five months ago because they didn't like the fact that a camera was on their head and they maybe felt like they were being watched those same officers have been the last week or two have come to me and said hey if you take my camera away I'm gonna be upset technology is inherently neutral that can be used positively you can be used negatively there are absolutely significant civil liberties concerns when you implement either a dashcam or an on body recording system down on the cloud it's my back and forth audience has huge reasons to be hopeful about the use of this technology because it's it's gonna cut down on bad interactions between officers and the people that they interact are things that we've missed until now because we haven't really bad the officers perspective and now we do