Why don't our police use body cams.

Forums › Off topic › Why don't our police use body cams.

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#2694329 18-Apr-2021 08:19

Cost is certainly a consideration, as it is with everything when you're working within a budget but the main concern is the privacy aspect and how to deal with the consequences around that.

This has been messaged within the organisation.

jonherries

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#2694341 18-Apr-2021 09:18

scuwp: They have been trialed in NZ. I think cost and privacy were/are barriers. The Privacy and OIA in NZ creates all kinds of issues as far as collection and storage of any kind of information. Then there are the cyber security concerns. Government departments already dedicate large resources dealing with OIA requests. I could only imagine the Police would be swamped and need to set up an entire new department.

It's not as simple as buying a GoPro and strapping it to your chest.

Yep agree, one of the standard questions for the health select committee is “how many OIAs are done by Min Health”, you can look it up on the parliament website - is an interesting document. Short answer is that it is a lot, and the effort described is constrained to the “managing the process” team, not actual effort from the ones who have to get the information for the request. Of course this is the price of a democracy so it is mostly worthwhile, but it would be easier if most of the stuff could just be made public (which it is increasingly).

Media requests is also a massive effort for government agencies, and this would be the same. I can imagine “can you make the footage available - just some general bits thanks” requests will become the norm (like cctv requests are becoming).

Jon

cruxis

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#2694398 18-Apr-2021 14:12

The police can attend some personal scenes of innocent victims, the footage would need to be deleted, encrypted ? Some system would need to be put in place.

Imagine the police who entered christchurch mosque shootings had bodycams on. That footage would have been horrific.

Kyanar

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#2694500 18-Apr-2021 17:27

scuwp: They have been trialed in NZ. I think cost and privacy were/are barriers. The Privacy and OIA in NZ creates all kinds of issues as far as collection and storage of any kind of information. Then there are the cyber security concerns. Government departments already dedicate large resources dealing with OIA requests. I could only imagine the Police would be swamped and need to set up an entire new department.

It's not as simple as buying a GoPro and strapping it to your chest.

Dealing with OIA requests is pretty easy. In 90% of cases, the request can probably be rejected as the person making the request won't have grounds to request it. In the remaining cases, it's pretty easy to find as the footage is linked to the occurrence or incident or whatever they're internally called at NZ Police (we call them occurrences).

cruxis:

The police can attend some personal scenes of innocent victims, the footage would need to be deleted, encrypted ? Some system would need to be put in place.

Imagine the police who entered christchurch mosque shootings had bodycams on. That footage would have been horrific.

Again, typically the footage is constrained only to use of force, and in some cases taking of statements (though some judges tend to be reluctant to accept bodycam footage as contemporaneous notes). The gold standard in body camera media storage is evidence.com, which encrypts all data both in transit and at rest. Every privacy concern and data management concern in this thread is a solved problem.

scuwp

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#2694521 18-Apr-2021 19:31

There are no limits on the grounds to request information under an OIA. Anybody can ask for anything, no justification needed. There are only very limited reasons to decline a request, but even that takes resources to decide and usually legal opinions etc. OIA is the price of democracy, but it's a very expensive one. You would be surprised what people ask for...this will be a minefield for police video footage, however a law change could help.

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Geektastic

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#2694530 18-Apr-2021 20:09

scuwp: There are no limits on the grounds to request information under an OIA. Anybody can ask for anything, no justification needed. There are only very limited reasons to decline a request, but even that takes resources to decide and usually legal opinions etc. OIA is the price of democracy, but it's a very expensive one. You would be surprised what people ask for...this will be a minefield for police video footage, however a law change could help.

Make it record on a loop which automatically deletes after 24 hours unless saved. Can't hand over information you officially do not keep...!

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Kyanar

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#2694593 18-Apr-2021 21:10

scuwp: There are no limits on the grounds to request information under an OIA. Anybody can ask for anything, no justification needed. There are only very limited reasons to decline a request, but even that takes resources to decide and usually legal opinions etc. OIA is the price of democracy, but it's a very expensive one. You would be surprised what people ask for...this will be a minefield for police video footage, however a law change could help.

Yes, there are limits on the grounds. Police body cam footage invariably includes footage of a privacy sensitive nature, that no-one but the person in the footage would have standing to request, barring very exceptional public interest grounds. I can tell you right now the police force I'm associated with (which, naturally, I'm not authorised to officially speak on behalf of so this is anecdotal) does not receive "huge amounts" of requests for body cam footage.

Handle9

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#2694624 19-Apr-2021 07:05

scuwp: There are no limits on the grounds to request information under an OIA. Anybody can ask for anything, no justification needed. There are only very limited reasons to decline a request, but even that takes resources to decide and usually legal opinions etc. OIA is the price of democracy, but it's a very expensive one. You would be surprised what people ask for...this will be a minefield for police video footage, however a law change could help.

That doesn't stop the managerial bureaucracy from obstructing or "managing" the information provided.

The OIA is massively abused, both by the bureaucracy and the likes of Jordan Williams and his bunch of clowns.

Some questions are pretty funny though.

Shapenz

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#2694697 19-Apr-2021 10:10

Shapenz

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#2694699 19-Apr-2021 10:14

Sorry for the double post - I did some contract work for a company that does some IT services for the police. While I have no actual numbers the impression that I got was OIA are hugely time consuming and a massive workload problem for the Police. Its very time consuming and costly to manage all these requests due to the sensitive information.... I can only imagine having video footage attached to case files will make things even worse.

JaseNZ

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#2694711 19-Apr-2021 10:31

I can understand the privacy and costs concerns but my personal opinion is that they should be made mandatory over the coming years.

Just in regards to privacy though the first thing people do is whip out there cell phones and start videoing and uploading, A lot of times this can not capture the lead up to the event and the video is only showing one small point where a body cam would record the full incident.

Perhaps phase them in over time. At the end of the day they can protect both sides.

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Kyanar

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#2694715 19-Apr-2021 10:38

JaseNZ:

I can understand the privacy and costs concerns but my personal opinion is that they should be made mandatory over the coming years.

Just in regards to privacy though the first thing people do is whip out there cell phones and start videoing and uploading, A lot of times this can not capture the lead up to the event and the video is only showing one small point where a body cam would record the full incident.

Perhaps phase them in over time. At the end of the day they can protect both sides.

Body cams don't record the whole interaction. Due to the limited storage capacity (until someone invents an infinite capacity SSD anyway...) the cameras are only turned on when either exercising a power or exercising a use of force. I have known some road policing types to record the whole interaction (because people being pulled up by road policing are more likely to dispute the elements of the offence etc) but that's not policy.

There is a model with 4G capability, but the prices telcos charge for that kind of data transfer are hideous.

JaseNZ

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#2694750 19-Apr-2021 11:35

Do our police cars have camera's in them looking ahead and in the car. ??

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tukapa1

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#2694792 19-Apr-2021 13:46

JaseNZ:
Do our police cars have camera's in them looking ahead and in the car. ??

No.

neb

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#2694811 19-Apr-2021 14:50

Responding to @Shapenz's post, I can understand why the police would be overwhelmed with OIA's, they're the poor schmucks who get stuck trying to defuse any dispute that escalates, and one or both of the aggrieved parties will invariably want to get more information to back up their side of the argument. You wouldn't, for example, expect to get OIA's when the police are invited to talk at a school, but you can see it happening whenever they're asked to separate two squabbling neighbours or whatever.

So don't think of bodycams as an integral element of "police brutality" as they are in the US, think of them as a source of endless OIAs when dealing with argumentative individuals.

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