As Minneapolis marches toward outfitting its cops with body cameras, the city is hosting a series of listening sessions so citizens can speak their piece. During the fist round, the bulk of the 20 people who piped up at the North Side forum supported the move aimed at increasing police accountability, Minneapolis Public Radio reports.

Not surprisingly, the cops have their concerns. But less expected, a group dedicated to curb-stomping police brutality also believes the cams aren’t all they’re cracked up to be. While the Minneapolis Police Department plans to roll out the cameras next year, Michelle Gross of Communities United Against Police Brutality isn’t sold on their effectiveness.

“We’re not outright opposed to them, but we certainly don’t think they’re the panacea that everybody thinks they are,” she says.

Despite studies showing body cameras elsewhere have reduced excessive force incidents and made for a precipitous drop in complaints, the Minneapolis activist isn’t convinced the city will have the right policies in place to make the cameras a beat-down deterrent. She fears that if the public can’t easily access the unaltered film, or if police aren’t always required to keep the cameras rolling, the program will be a bust.

“Unless you have those things in place the body cameras are no good. They’re just a waste of money,” Gross says.

The total bill for the cameras is pegged at $1.2 million, though the city is chasing a federal grant that would cover half.

According to an oft-cited study conducted in Rialto, California, body cameras resulted in a 60 percent dip in incidents where cops used force and an 88 percent reduction in citizen complaints. During a similar Mesa, Arizona, test run that led to comparable drops, officers without cameras had nearly three times more complaints than their filmed peers.

“Whether the reduced number of complaints was because of the officers behaving better or the citizens behaving better – well, it was probably a little bit of both,” said Rialto police chief William Farrar.

Ahead of cameras, Gross would prefer requiring police to carry professional liability insurance and wants to disband the Minneapolis Office of Police Conduct Review (OPCR), which replaced a similar board after it collapsed in 2012. At the time, members complained their recommendations bounced off closed ears, and critics of the new review body argue its civilian influence is even weaker.

Communities United Against Police Brutality recently collected complaint data from the first two and a half years of OPCR’s tenure. Out of 962 cases it examined, less than 1 percent resulted in officer discipline.

As for the body cams, Gross likens their hype to the initial push to give cops Tasers, which were billed as a way to reduce the use of lethal force. “It was held out as the next big great thing that’s going to solve everybody’s problems. To me, body cameras are the same thing. They’re holding it out as the next big great thing that’s going to solve all the problems, and I don’t see it.”

The next community hearing takes place at 10 a.m. Saturday at the Sabathani Center.

Published on citypages.com by Michael Rietmulder.

by Virgil Vaduva

Police accountability advocates often discuss the importance of body cameras being used and worn by police officers. The argument would be that body cam use will lower violence and keep cops accountable, but there is not enough evidence to suggest that body cameras worn by police will do much to help the general public.

Here are five reasons why I believe the mass implementation and usage of body cameras for police are a terrible idea.

1. Facial recognition and expanded surveillance

There is a rich irony present in the statements of police-accountability folks advocating for the use of body cams by police officers. Why? Because they are the same people opposing the expansion of CCTV cameras throughout America’s cities. I am unsure how body cams are not in essence anything more than mobile spy-cams. While a permanently mounted surveillance camera cannot be moved or relocated easily, a body cam worn by a cop at all times is clearly nothing short of a glorified and even better version of a surveillance camera.

Duluth, Minn., police officer Dan Merseth demonstrates the docking procedure for police body cameras at police headquarters. Duluth initially received 84 cameras and charging bays for less than $5,000 from camera maker Taser International, but its three-year contract and licensing agreement for data storage cost about $78,000.

While the body cam technology is still largely in its infancy, it is expanding very fast with high-end cameras having many advanced capabilities such as GPS tagging of footage, fast dock recharging and automatic download and storage of footage on a central police-owned server.

These capabilities can be easily expanded to be integrated into NSA’s PRISM program or another FBI program where all footage collected by any cop in America throughout his or her shift could be automatically scanned and tagged by facial recognition software.

Some body cams will also soon have high-bandwidth real-time video streaming capabilities. Such capabilities would allow central governments to easily track activists and persons of interests in real time!

This would be a huge step back in maintaining the civil liberties of activists and Americans involved in street protests. Cops would have the ability to immediately recognize and pull up files on unknown individuals encountered on the street, individuals whom they may have never met before.

2. Real-time tracking of individuals

Pairing the capabilities outlined above with the ability to tag video with GPS coordinates, police will easily be able to locate and track in real time to actual location of individuals of interest, especially during street protests or activities involving opposition to government activities.

Imagine a large anti-tax or anti-police protest taking place in a large metropolitan area where thousands of cops are live streaming video of participants’ faces as they move through the city.  Some protesters may not even live there, yet their privacy is still being violated by government agents simply through the use of advanced surveillance technology and video processing.

The FBI has been sued by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) for access to its biometrics database, arguing that the US agency has failed to comply with Freedom of Information Act requests and is gathering face-recognition data, among other things, with no external governance.

Worse yet, as a result of participating in such protests and being easily identified, the participants could possibly be harassed in the future by police or other government agents.  We have seen this happen on a small scale, but body cameras will expand the possibility of abuse.  The attempts to track and identify Americans on a large scale were exposed when the Electronic Frontier Foundation has sued the FBI for the use of tracking and facial recognition records and databases implemented without any congressional oversight.

3. Footage integrity

Another issue of concern with the current generation of body cameras is the difficulty of maintaining the integrity of the footage recorded. Whether the footage is streamed or stored on the device, to my knowledge none of the current devices on the market have the ability to prevent a police officer from turning the device off or erasing and modifying the footage.

These features have not been introduced due to the cost, but also due to the backlash from police unions, who have largely been speaking against the use of body cams as a method to promote accountability.

A well-designed body camera would integrate features that will maintain the integrity and availability of the video by not allowing a cop to turn the camera off and by containing software that automatically provides a cryptographic hash for all the footage recorded.  Detailed access logs to the device should be a requirement, and also alerts should be issued when a user attempts to disable the device, open or modify software on the device.  These features currently do not exist and it is unlikely they will ever be implemented.

Ideally, if body cameras are truly about keeping our public servants accountable, all video from police officers should be available publicly in real time to anyone wishing to watch what a cop is doing during his employment.

4. Exoneration of police actions

Another problem with video footage is that we have observed many times throughout the years that video footage, no matter how damning it is, will often exonerate cops involved in wrong doing.  I have seen footage of cops involved in theft, lying, beatings, rape and even outright murder.  In many of these cases the video was largely ignored by prosecutors (who are often former police officers themselves) or by jurors who believe police can do no wrong.

With the nation-wide cost of body cameras running into hundreds of millions of dollars, the question on everyone’s lips should be, “why should we even bother with them if the footage is largely ignored?”

5. They empower crony corporate camera manufacturers at the expense of taxpayers

One of the largest corporations catering to police departments throughout the world is Taser International.  The company is mostly known for the manufacturing of their electrocution “stun-gun” devices often known as Tasers which have caused hundreds of deaths in America.

In this photo taken Thursday, Feb. 19, 2015, Rick Smith, chief executive officer and founder of Taser International, center, talks with Brant Garrick left, and Kenny Park of the Vallejo Police Department who attended the Taser tech summit at the California Highway Patrol Headquarters in Sacramento, Calif.

The company has now seen the dollar signs in the body cam market and is pulling all the strings it can to further extort money from the American taxpayers. With revenues of almost $200 million per year, the company is growing very fast due to crony and in some cases, criminal agreements with local police departments, union leaders and police chiefs.

Taser International has quickly become the world’s largest manufacturer and supplier of body cams for police departments. But they have not become leaders in the market through fair competition. Instead the company has carefully cultivated financial relationships and ties with police chiefs throughout the country.

An expose published by CBS news in March 2015 covered questionable practices involving Taser International, including hiring retired police chiefs as consultants and sending them on luxury trips overseas to promote and sell company products.

CBS wrote, “As the police chief in Fort Worth, Texas, successfully pushed for the signing of a major contract with Taser before a company quarterly sales deadline, he wrote a Taser representative in an email, “Someone should give me a raise.”

The police chief in Albuquerque also pushed for a no-bid contract with Taser International, which caused backlash in the community and prompted and investigation by the inspector general.  The Albuquerque-Taser contract was worth $1.9 million dollars.

Police chiefs from Salt Lake City, Fort Worth, New Orleans and other cities have all been involved in highly questionable and likely unethical or illegal contract negotiations and signing with Taser International. New Orleans agreed to a $1.4 million contract with Taser for 420 cameras and storage. A year after the contract was signed, the New Orleans Police Superintendent Ronal Serpas went to work for Taser as a consultant.

The Fort Worth contract for 400 body cams was worth $2.7 million and Jeffrey Halstead, the police chief openly discussed how he would like to also become a consultant for Taser International.

It is clear that the body camera market is not intended to promote fair competitive market where the best product wins and the customer (the American taxpayer) benefits from the product.  Instead it is a crony arrangement between police chiefs, union members and corporate executives who are colluding to rip-off the American taxpayers while doing very little to promote true police accountability.

Virgil Vaduva is a Libertarian security professional, journalist, photographer and overall liberty freak. He spent most of his life in Communist Romania and participated in the 1989 street protests which led to the collapse of the Ceausescu regime. He can be reached at vvaduva at truthvoice.com.

Sci-Shot founder Anita Byer opens the discussion about the mandatory use of police body-cams:

Today’s technology lets us see police activity that may have otherwise gone unseen. Recent high-profile incidents, including fatal shootings by law enforcement in South Carolina and Oklahoma, have many clamoring to see more. This has prompted a push for the mandatory use of Body-Worn Cameras (BWCs) by law enforcement officers. The President even proposed funding to increase the use of BWCs nationwide.

Those advocating for the mandatory use of BWCs certainly have a compelling argument. Footage of the fatal Tulsa shooting should, at the very least, trigger an evaluation of current departmental deadly force guidelines and training policies. Though not captured by a BWC, murder charges were filed against the North Charleston (SC) police officer after footage of the fatal shooting surfaced.

For many, these outcomes are more than enough to justify the mandatory use of BWCs by law enforcement officers. However, it’s important to understand that there are some concerns too. A 2014 study, Police Officer Body-Worn Cameras: Assessing the Evidence, which was funded by the U.S. Department of Justice Office of Justice Programs Diagnostic Center, identified a number of perceived benefits and concerns of BWCs.

Perceived Benefits of BWCs

• Increase transparency and citizen perception of police legitimacy.
• Have a civilizing effect, resulting in improved behavior among both police officers and citizens.
• Have evidentiary benefits that expedite resolution of citizen complaints or lawsuits and that improve evidence for arrest and prosecution.
• Provide opportunities for police training.

Perceived Concerns of BWCs

• Create citizen privacy concerns.
• Create concerns for police officer privacy.
• Create concerns for officer health and safety.
• Require investments in terms of training and policy development.
• Require substantial commitment of finances, resources, and logistics.

Since the use of BWCs by law enforcement is a relatively new phenomenon, there is little research on whether these perceived benefits and concerns are rooted in reality. Indeed, the study’s author emphasizes that independent research is urgently needed.

Until then, the debate over BWCs will no doubt continue and we’d like to know what you think.

Should BWCs be mandatory for all law enforcement officers?

Link to original article: http://www.scishot.com/blog/post/Body-Cameras-Mandatory-for-all-Cops.aspx

OKLAHOMA CITY — A bill that may prevent the public from accessing videos from police vehicles and body cameras has just passed the state Senate in Oklahoma, and is pending approval from governor Mary Fallin (R-OK).

The bill passed with a vote of 44-2 from the Oklahoma state Senate, and adds new exemptions to the state’s Open Records Act for police and other law enforcement agencies.

Oklahoma HB 1037 will allow police to suppress videos that depict acts of violence, nudity, or information that reveals the identity of crime victims, police officers, or informants.

State Senators David Holt (R-OK) and Marty Quinn (R-OK), as well as House Representative George Faught (R-OK), sponsored the bill, which was last amended in April.