North Texas citizens organize to monitor police with video cameras

http://www.nbcdfw.com/news/local/Arlington-Residents-Police-the-Police-267423681.html

by appleflaxen • 12 years ago

129 83 12 years ago

Personally, I agree with what they are doing (fundamentally), but they could probably do with a better strategy for how they go about doing it. If they continue this pattern, and something horrible does happen, the department could say, "Well, this group has a history of endangering officers' safety" and a lot of people would swallow that pill without further examination, thus defeating the purpose of what they are doing.

DamnYuppie• 12 years ago

I agree I am for what they are doing but they shouldn't do it in away that endangers the officer or themselves.

Now if only we could get people to follow around our Senators and Congress men and catalog everything they are doing that would be great.

bsg75• 12 years ago

And would highlight a hell of a lot more abuse of position.

sarciszewski3• 12 years ago

I had an idea along these lines... maybe I'll submit it to HN ;)

ejr• 12 years ago

This might be one occasion where throwing technology at the problem may actually be productive. HN has a reputation for using tech as a crutch for social problems, but this is an ideal job for a quadcopter.

In the U.S. the FCC was overruled over bans on commercial use of these so that's another barrier lifted. As an added bonus, it also prevents immediate discovery of the pilot and thereby avert suppression to some degree.

angersock3• 12 years ago

From the article:

"How does it make you feel when you see a cop behind you?" said Tye. "If they're going to do it, maybe they should get a taste of their own medicine."

Maybe having cops around endangers peoples safety--when driving, for example, slowing down and causing accidents.

sarciszewski3• 12 years ago

That is a fair point, but two wrongs doesn't make a right. :)

Cops carry guns and shoot racial minorities-- do we condone this for everyone? Would allowing minorities to shoot cops for arbitrary reasons solve the problem?

If you're going to protest something, abandoning the moral high ground is a bad idea. I'm not saying don't be humble, I'm saying don't lose sight of what you want to accomplish.

mcv• 12 years ago

How come everybody in north Texas is totally reasonable all of a sudden? People want to film the police but don't hate them, and the police is totally fine with it, but asks them to do so from a safe distance without distracting the police officers.

exelius3• 12 years ago

As long as the people doing the recording are non-threatening white hipsters, this policy works fine. But I guarantee some poor black or hispanic kid is going to get shot because a jumpy cop thinks the camera is a gun, and will likely get off with a minor suspension because the justice system views officers as above the law.

driverdan• 12 years ago

You immediately had to make it racial despite the fact that one of the guys recording is hispanic (Jose)?

jqm2• 12 years ago

Eh, I think they are just talking reasonable and are in reality anything but.

The film group obviously has an anti-police bias (somewhat understandable given behavior I have seen from cops) and the police obviously would prefer to remain completely unaccountable to the public.

But you can't air these feelings in public and expect to be taken seriously so everyone is "reasonable" while secretly pushing their real agenda. Just like everywhere else I guess.

Cthulhu_• 12 years ago

It seems the police is having trust issues from the people there; with stories of cops beating up people, I'm not surprised either. This is a good initiative, but to be honest I think it should come from the police precincts themselves. I've read that some police forces use helmet cams, that's a good move - as long as they're mandatory and all footage is checked by an internal affairs department. If someone turns off the camera, that's suspicious.

tl;dr, police should work at regaining trust and respect themselves. Them not beating up people following them with a camera is a good first step.

andyzweb• 12 years ago

sousveillance to maintain the balance

AlisdairSH• 12 years ago

Too bad the PD won't have their officers wear cameras while on duty. That would resolve the issue without the distraction of somebody following the office around all day.

x1798DE2• 12 years ago

Not really, because then the police have the control over the cameras. This officer in Albuquerque [1] was wearing a lapel cam in 3 separate serious incidents, after two of which he was accused of using excessive force and during the third incident he shot and killed a 19-year-old girl. During all three incidents his camera "died" before anything serious started happening.

They just learn where the wires are that keeps it running and they pull them out, then reconnect them when they're doing normal stuff. The same thing keeps coming up with dashcams, too. The dashcam footage gets "lost", etc. Maybe one day we'll have technologies and policies that don't allow officers to mess with them, but for the foreseeable future we're the ones who have to be vigilant.

BigTuna• 12 years ago

Watchguard Video, which provides dashcam tech for police departments, is working on a streaming video solution that sends the live video feed back to HQ. I've seen a demo of the system and it's really neat. Cell, WiFi, satellite and a few other receivers are built into one board and firmware dynamically switches the active connection to the device with the strongest signal, ensuring the highest throughput as well as redundancy. It's all locked away in the trunk where it can't be accessed. It won't stop a determined rogue officer but it's a step in the right direction.

coder233• 12 years ago

I would be satisfied with a ( future )society where everyone wears a recording system, officials have to or they lose their status, and the data is automatically encrypted and uploaded to state servers. Then if proof is needed, the legal system unlocks the appropriate data.

stephencanon• 12 years ago

Easily addressable — make officers personally liable (as private citizens) for any actions that are not recorded, and cameras will suddenly become a whole lot more reliable.

god_bless_texas• 12 years ago

They need a branding program, because Cop Block sounds way too much like Cock Block.

Just what we need, vigilante justice.

Tloewald• 12 years ago

When taking pictures of something becomes "vigilante justice" then we're in the world of newspeak.

Reminds me of when, in the wake of 9/11, the Justice Department released a list of domestic terror organizations that included environmental activists who had never hurt anyone.

HNJohnC• 12 years ago

Whooosh! That's kind of the point, hard to forget a name like that.

ndarilek3• 12 years ago

I have a hard time swallowing police department rhetoric in these situations. The officer has a gun, and the unfortunate power to make "extra-legal" killings with it. They're safe. If they irresponsibly use that gun in an unsafe manner, like all the drunken NYPD officers who shoot people[0], then it absolutely is our or someone's responsibility to take matters into our own hands and monitor ourselves until we see that accountability. Relying on internal affairs/review commissions to provide that is a broken model.

Also, I know folks doing this locally, and have watched officers request that filmers stand at a safe distance. It's interesting to me how often "safe distance" corresponds with a) somewhere with a shitty view far away and b) a position where the filmer is significantly further away than a number of pedestrians or gawkers whose "safety" presumably isn't in dispute. I have good friends who were arrested for nothing more than filming, and they were often given confusing and contradictory orders by an officer who obviously felt he had the immediate situation well enough in hand to direct most of his attention ordering the filmer around. It happened almost 2 years ago, no charges were filed, and if this was a legitimate concern then I'd really like to see some obstruction charges brought in the several local cases I've seen of citizens arrested for filming.

I do agree that some of these groups' strategies are a bit busted. I'm familiar with the Peaceful Streets Project here in Austin, and sometimes the ragey/personal rhetoric got a bit overpowering. Then again, cops kill people, often under suspicious circumstances, and get away with it. Perhaps it is time for a bit of rage, and to make it personal.

0. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/05/01/brendan-conin-nypd-...

davidw• 12 years ago

I have a hard time swallowing police department rhetoric in these situations. The officer has a gun, and the unfortunate power to make "extra-legal" killings with it. They're safe.

Suppose that atleast a few of the police are not the bloodthirsty crazies depicted on reddit, and actually have the best interests of their fellow citizens in mind. You might also suppose that even those people might get paranoid about some guy following them around in a car and pointing stuff at them, because merely having a gun and the ability to use it doesn't automatically make you 'safe'.

Putting two and two together, you'd conclude that this article has nothing to do with hacker news and flag it.

You folks can downvote all you want, but it doesn't change anything. I value a hacker news free of politics and current events far more than I value 'karma' points.

happyscrappy• 12 years ago

Hacker News is a bag full of stupid on political topics.

ndarilek3• 12 years ago

Then you might suppose those good cops might stand up when one of their buddy bad cops kills unarmed people or does something equally wrong. And you might suppose that, while silence doesn't imply consent, that maybe it implies something a bit more serious in a profession where people can kill with impunity and get put on paid leave while the situation is sorted out. You might suppose that maybe those good cops should publicly speak out when their departments do something bad. If they don't, you might suppose that their primary interest is in saving their jobs, our lives be damned.

netcan3• 12 years ago

I don't think reality is as clear cut as that. There is genuine complexity. Being a cop is legitimately dangerous, gun or no gun. A gun isn't an off switch. People can confront an armed cop and shooting doesn't always stop them.

There are also all sorts of rules that are learned on the job and aren't not in any manual. Ways for maintaining control and authority mostly. Many of these practices are unsanctioned and unofficial, but still essential for being able to do the job. Some things are both crucial and illegal.

Cops usually feel like when they get busted for being arrogant, bullying or outright violence that they are are victims of these situations. They do what everyone does, what has to be done for policing to be viable. Those pencil pushers with their removed perspective are making judgments about their irrelevant rules being broken.

They are under stress. Violence is a part of their days. Most of the people they deal with are lowlifes, lyres, cheaters. There is real stress. Real danger

That said, a lot of these practices aren't benign and they aren't inevitable. The police does genuinely attract many problematic people and it makes other. They get used to defending their authority and meet challenges to it with extreme responses. They develop a cops & robbers, us & them worldview that becomes their reality. More specifically cops, criminals and naive spectators, citizens & bureaucrats.

They develop a bullying mannerism.

Police manage to do their jobs without guns at all in many places. They deal with violent crime just like cops in the states. I'm not saying this should be adopted by US department, but is proof that there are other ways of doing things.

I think lights good for the paradigm. But, whatever that light reveals needs to be dealt with. Maybe police modus operandi needs to changed. But, maybe the rulebook needs to change too. It can be dangerous trying to enforce the official rulebook after long periods where it has only been enforced selectively. Maybe the official way of doing things doesn't work.

That said, this following cops around only plays to the problem paradigm. It's harassment, like what paparazzi do. It's belligerent. Maybe it's valuable as a protest, but it isn't as solution.

What I think should happen in law enforcement is that everything should be recorded. Every interrogation. Every arrest. Every time a cop pulls you over. This is all evidence and it should be part of every booking.

Hopefully that will make the need for this sort of thing go away.

coder233• 12 years ago

What I think should happen in law enforcement is that everything should be recorded.

We can expect that pretty soon with storage and chips becoming ever smaller. 10-15 years perhaps?

TallGuyShort• 12 years ago

> Some things are both crucial and illegal.

Well that's where I draw the line though. If it comes down to a choice between accepting that law enforcement is allowed to break the law or making law enforcement less effective by increasing transparency, I choose to decrease law enforcement effectiveness. I'd rather citizens undermine the police by recording them then have citizens get shot without cause with little oversight.

> What I think should happen in law enforcement is that everything should be recorded.

I agree. I would hope that in these "discussions" they're having with these groups to reach a compromise, that's the solution.

omgtehblackbloc2• 12 years ago

Being a cop is legitimately dangerous

Not really, no. It's just not that dangerous. We imagine it must be dangerous, and so do cops themselves. But you're a lot more likely to be killed as a garbage collector or airline pilot, or a construction worker, or plenty of other jobs.

It's like with the "war on terror". The fear of danger is much more powerful than the danger itself. And like with terrorism, the fear is actively promoted for political reasons.

They do what everyone does, what has to be done for policing to be viable.

That seems like an argument against the department as a whole, not a justification for an individual's abuse.

Most of the people they deal with are lowlifes, lyres, cheaters.

Most of the people they deal with are ordinary innocent civilians whom they assume are "lowlifes" because they have been trained and conditioned to.

That said, this following cops around only plays to the problem paradigm. It's harassment, like what paparazzi do. It's belligerent. Maybe it's valuable as a protest, but it isn't as solution.

It is belligerent, and it is harassment, and it is protest. And that's the point. People with power do not voluntarily stop abusing it. They continue until met with resistance - until they are forced to stop.

Unfortunately it's effectively suicide to physically force the cops to stop, but we should do everything we can short of that to stand up against them. Standing up against the cops sets an example for others that we don't need to fear them, that they don't deserve respect and deference, and that we can do something directly to stop their abuse.

sremani• 12 years ago

Over generalizations. That is not the case for many SubUrban and Rural PDs. Arlington is not peaceful but Arlington PD has episodes of dysfunction that all the N.Tex folks are aware of. The Illegal drugs for "juicing" episode and drug peddling with in the PD is latest episode. Most of the Arglington cops interact with ballpark, cowboys stadium and six flags/hurricane harbor folk. Even though its sixth biggest city in Texas - Arlington is more of a crowd management and driver safety-ish zone. So, not everything in Arlington is violent crime, no we are not talking about crompton or East LA - Arlington is way way better than those gang infested areas.

Your narrative is inaccurate at best.

ndarilek3• 12 years ago

There's a lot of idealism here. In general, I think it'd be great if the person pulling me over for speeding was different from the person who could violently shut down an armed robbery. It'd be great if the person arresting cyclists for biking unsafely, the person helping old ladies cross the street and the one breaking up family disputes was firewalled from the one with the gun. I live in a low-income apartment complex, and I try not to think much about the fact that my neighbor routinely calls people with guns to resolve non-violent disputes with her teenage daughter (I wish I was kidding or engaging in the slightest bit of hyperbole here.)

I also think it'd be great if cops had cameras on them at all times, and if they voluntarily did that themselves.

Unfortunately, that reality is a bit, well, unrealistic as well. My understanding is that APD has dash cams, but the footage often isn't released, especially in cases of suspected brutality, and often not even to those with an interest in clearing their names. Also, my understanding is that the Peaceful Streets folks arrested here never got their own cameras back, even though no charges were ultimately filed (I think the stolen camera count was at 4.)

I don't know what the solution is, but I don't think it is "let the watchmen wear their own cameras and decide what footage to release."

islon• 12 years ago

So finally we found a use for google glass.

msane3• 12 years ago

Absolutely. Police should have a lapel camera or a Glass like camera rolling at all times. Prevents brutality and (more prevalent) false claims of thereof.

JoeAltmaier7• 12 years ago

Being under constant scrutiny can help avoid abuses. But it causes a chilling effect - normal people (including police) can freeze or become passive, constantly aware of everybody looking over their shoulder. They become useless.

coder233• 12 years ago

I don't think the tech is ready just yet. Can't the glass record under half an hour and gets really hot while doing that?

Since the police are wearing a uniform, an integrated camera might be better.

ZoFreX• 12 years ago

Some departments do already. I think there's a technical glitch though: they seem to malfunction or delete their data whenever the cop does something illegal.

maxerickson3• 12 years ago

I think it is a mistake to insist on the "at all times".

If a police officer is doing something that would be sensible to record and for some reason chooses to leave the camera off, you eventually learn something. I say eventually because the flexibility could be used for abuse, saying "I forgot" and "technical problems", but not over and over and over again.

jqm2• 12 years ago

Maybe the police are more concerned about being filmed napping in the back of a parking lot (while ostensibly radar gunning for speeders) and less concerned about being filmed brutalizing and shooting innocent people.

While both of these types of events occur sometimes, the second type is probably fairly rare and the first type probably much more common.

Maybe the idea is that if police think they are being watched they will act in a more accountable fashion. I don't see this being a bad thing at all.

izzydata• 12 years ago

When I first read the title I wouldn't have thought people were actually going around following officers. I understand their point, but I also agree that isn't the right way to do it. You shouldn't be looking for trouble, you should just film it if it happens near you. Assuming you get enough people to do something like this then there would be enough people on the road to not have to follow cops around.

If the same number of people in the US had dashcams as people do in Russia due to insurance scams I think there would be enough people recording to catch these kinds of things at random encounters.

danbruc• 12 years ago

WtF?!? This reduces reasons to have a police to absurdity. And at best it will make some of the symptoms go away but not fix the root problem.

logfromblammo• 12 years ago

If you are interested in this sort of thing, you might want to look up CopBlock or Photography Is Not A Crime. If you can tolerate the foil-hattery, this sort of effort also appears periodically on Prison Planet. And if you ever watched the television show COPS and wondered what it would look like if the footage were filmed from the suspect's perspective, just hit LiveLeak, Vimeo, or YouTube and search for "checkpoint videos".

The increasing prevalence of cameras in mobile phones, wearable action cameras such as GoPro brand devices, and over-the-air footage-uploading services such as Bambuser have really jolted this new niche of police brutality porn. Further court rulings, such as Glik v. Cunniffe, that reinforced a person's right to record police in public while performing their official duties, have only emboldened crusaders against the corruption behind the thin blue line.

North Texas citizens organize to monitor police with video cameras

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