No jury will ever have the chance to tell us because the DA declined to pursue it. He also probably just got a new house courtesy of the police officers' union.

Maybe, maybe not. In a lot of states police have immunity from being sued for actions in the line of duty.

To clarify on this because some people find it confusing, basically "beyond a reasonable doubt" means 12 jurors need to be about 95% sure that you're guilty. Preponderance of evidence is akin to "more than 50% sure". That's why people can be acquitted of criminal charges, but found liable on civil charges.

Oh I totally agree, it IS a good thing. I'm more interested in the data management perspective. How do you take one day's footage from several thousand officers, dissect it, add metadata to associate specific police report/case numbers, correlate other videos, all without giving police direct access to those videos? How do you build a database that respects things like statutes of limitations on particular crimes? If you have a police officer using force in the video and the statute of limitations has passed, do you keep the video anyway in case there is a pattern of force with that officer? It's all design stuff. I used to work in PACS (think similar storage, but for radiology systems), so these are the questions jumping to my mind.

So, you're effectively arguing that we should stop using virus scanners, because eventually, SOME virus will get by the virus scanner so what's the point. Or maybe a better metaphor is that, even though seat belts save tons of lives, we shouldn't use them because they can occasionally fail to save a life.

That would be unworkable. If an officer reports to a crime, everything they record is evidence of the crime. Deleting it would be destruction of evidence. Thus far, police depts that have adopted the cameras have opted for indefinite holding of the film, because it's a bit of a PITA to section off bits of the video based on the statute of limitations associated with each crime.

I agree with pretty much everything you said. There are a lot of interesting programmatic and design questions that come up. The ONE place I have to nitpick though is that police departments work on shoestring budgets. Remember, if IA is doing its job, they'll have a healthy number of officers who are getting disciplined in one way or another, OR who are being investigated. If the cameras do their job, that number should plummet. Based on case studies in Rialto, complaints against the department dropped by 88% with cameras being worn. Police use of force dropped by 60%. Each of these have direct budgetary impacts on the police force. Considering a single successful lawsuit against the police force for an excessive force complaint can be well over 1m dollars, I'm pretty sure the program will pay for itself relatively quickly. Even without the lawsuits, the lack of having tons of false allegations against the police to pursue frees up a lot of resources. I'd wager good money that the program ultimately will pay for itself.

I actually think this is one of the interesting stumbling blocks with organizing this type of video data. If a cop responds to a call for a murder, everything captured by every camera is now evidence about that crime scene, and subpoena-able by the defense (hey look! that cop wasn't wearing gloves! tainted evidence! - just an example). Also, every crime has different statutes of limitations, some have no statute of limitations. How do you go about cutting up the video to be used as evidence in each case, while respecting statutes of limitations? It's just an interesting programmatic/design question. To cut it up, you have to have people editing the video, which introduces a dangerous security hole.

I have to disagree. More evidence is always a good thing. Obviously only during the officer's shift, but so long as they are on duty, that camera had better be rolling.

Most departments have a drop off where the cameras are collected/checked in at the end of their shift, where the video data is warehoused on a storage system, and the internal memory of the device is wiped. They're also signed out at the beginning of the following shift. This way the video can be retrieved for centralized storage (usually off site to act as a barrier from tinkering), and also as a way to track what officer had what device on what day. It makes sense. It's kind of like the apron folks wear at the supermarket. Your shift starts, you put it on. Your shift ends, you take it off. The end.

Exactly. Officers in places where cameras have been deployed have actually seen far fewer police complaints filed, which means less cops losing their jobs. They've also seen allegations of excessive force plummet. Either the accusations were false previously and people know the cameras will tell the truth, which could lead to a charge of filing a false police report, OR the police were using excessive force before, and now know that they'll get bent over the barrel if they do it now. Either way, the police win, the public wins. Everyone wins.

I agree 100%. Your average person doesn't get out of bed, shower, strap on at least 3 different types of weapon (our cops have a service pistol, telescopic club, tazer, mace, possibly more), and then spend their day either A) helping people or B) taking away the constitutionally guaranteed freedoms of citizens. Guilty and deserved, or otherwise. In the name of official business, it is their job to throw human beings in cages. It is necessary for them to do this. But for the life of me I can't understand why people would try to justify saying that additional evidence at any trial is a bad idea. I've never once heard a jury say, "Man, we really wish there was less evidence here."

You're forgetting a key point - the hardware must be used within 1 year of receipt by the department. Something to consider when departments are getting free grenade launchers.

No silly, you sell the guns to the saudis at a nice low price. They'll provide the guns to terrorists, which will be used as a point requiring larger budgets for the military, the military purchases even more guns, more of those guns go to the police, and the cycle continues. Isn't the military industrial complex great??

Self-deletion is a very bad idea. Statutes of limitations on crimes are upwards of 5 years all the way to forever (in the case of murder). Everything that camera records is evidence. Letting it delete itself is the same thing as intentionally deleting. They need to set up retention systems to store that data for at least 5 years. Suppose officers assault someone to the point where they're hospitalized. That person is comatose for weeks, only to come out of it and find out that the video has been deleted? Bad results.