IMO LAPD is actually pretty good about using body cams when they're supposed to. Way better than LASD and other law enforcement agencies in the area. In California they're required to release footage (if it exists) after every OIS (officer involved shooting) or LERI (law enforcement something injury, like if a cop hurts someone without shooting them via tazing/dog/baton/bean bag/punches).
If you look at their Youtube channel [1] pretty much every OIS and LERI video does have body cam and/or dashcam footage. The events that don't are mostly compliant with their policy (although it sounds like their policy should be amended to include training activities. Both for safety and to make the training more realistic). When I looked at a sampling of 30 LAPD incidents, 28 of them had body cam footage recording during the incident. The two that didn't involved off-duty officers[2]
[1]: https://www.youtube.com/c/LAPDONLINE1/videos
[2]: Here's the videos if you want to see for yourself, but FYI the first one shows some unpleasant aftermath: Attempted car theft: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QgESIr-MIUg Cop shoots at someone after a drive-by on his neighbor: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UXWJIX2rL4Y
Am I reading this wrong or is this a very biased sample? Of course videos are more likely to have video.
I do not know of a "critical incident" that doesn't have a corresponding video (except for deaths in prisons and negligent discharges that don't result in injury). If there's no actual media to go with it, they'll still show a talking head reading a statement listing off the address and police version of the narrative (you can see examples if you look at LASD, since they've halfassed their body cam deployment). I'm curious to hear if you know of any exceptions (excluding events within the last 45 days or so, before the deadline).
LAPD releases a list of all of the critical incidents and the videos, so should be easy to cross reference and see if anything is missing.
I don't know if LAPD releases much of that BWC footage in unedited form, but where I live (Chicago), a civilian oversight board reviews use-of-force incidents and makes BWC footage and other materials public [0], and in my experience as a homicide researcher for UChicago, officers were initially skeptical of BWCs, but now they consider them a valuable piece of personal protective equipment, as they are often exonerated by their BWC footage.
Doesn't say a lick about what they omitted from YouTube.
However that doesn't imply anything about situations where they aren't required to use body cams.
If my body cam is off, this is one of the possible explanations.
If there are fewer other explanations for my body cam being off, then it is more likely that it was because i was committing murder than in the other case
They're meant for cops to turn them on when they feel like they need evidence against whoever they're detaining, arresting or otherwise dealing with.
In this case, video surveillance was working as intended.
In some police departments, there is a requirement that body camera (OBRD, BWC, different departments like to use different terms) footage be uploaded after every call for service or reported incident, officers are audited against this requirement, and missing footage is an infraction subject to suspension without pay. In some departments, there is no policy at all, and no interest in creating one.
The biggest vendor, Axon, has a fairly well-designed system for video management where the auditing system makes it fairly easy to determine whether or not footage exists and why (e.g. cameras log all deletion of footage e.g. due to full storage and report it at the next upload, the management system reports on cameras that have not uploaded for more than two shifts, video once uploaded cannot be deleted until the end of routine retention even if not associated with any incident). This is not to portray Axon as a saint, because there are questions about the auditability of their evidence.com product specifically when it comes to preparation of video footage for court or public release, and this can be a material problem. But it also makes it even more troubling that some departments, district attorneys, etc. make no effort to use the auditability features that exist, or routinely accept sketchy excuses that are not consistent with the audit record.
These aren’t technical limitations, and there are a lot of police agencies - a few who are on top of things and see it as a way of keeping their officers honest and getting to the truth, and a lot of them looking to CYA.
These body cams are useless if the video can go conveniently missing whenever it needs to.
> Even departments with few problems are experiencing rate increases of 30 to 100 percent. Now, insurers also are telling departments that they must change the way they police.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/interactive/20...
(/s)
For example say a rich person murders their partner. The cops show up and the killer says "if you arrest me I will drag all of you into court personally for years to come and bankrupt your families." Without QI the officers need to make a decision if justice is worth the risk of personal loss.
Or if a rich person wants to build a new deck which is denied a permit, QI is what prevents them from personally dragging everyone involved to court personally.
QI does not eliminate personal liability when a crime has been committed. If an officer shoots someone and is charged criminally, they can then be sued personally.
No it doesn't. The case will get thrown out on some other grounds when the officials sends in their report on why the permit was denied. Likewise, not responding to the lawsuit could result in a default judgement regardless of QI.
We can keep frivolous lawsuits by people pissed off with bureaucracy from happening while also allowing government officials to be sued for the actual economic damages they inflict on people.
I take it you believe the US became a functioning democracy in 1967, then?
That's when Pierson v. Ray was decided and QI was invented.
Because there was a specific reason QI came to be, and it was not a matter of a long-established doctrine being formalized.
I'll wait.
Should give you a good context and background going back to the 1800s.
Better to reform the official checks & balances on police power so they are more effective.
Hello, I live in Europe. We don't have qualified immunity here, but we have police officers. How do you explain this?
Germany is by the way far more litigious than the US, so no, don't go pulling this, "But we have more lawsuits" thing.
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Is there a way to stop you guys doing this? "It's impossible to do X" when in fact you are the only country that doesn't do X? It's simply embarrassing after decades and generations of this.
Is there a particular reason for that? (fast courts for instance, or the ability to gain tengoble money from the litigation? (something we do not have in France))
Most (almost all?) police officers in the US have a union negotiated contract where the employing agency indemnifies them. Not only do you not need QI to avoid the liability you're concerned about, but the infrastructure is already in place.
Trying to sue the government from inside the prison system is just naive. And even when it works, it doesn't work. We sued because we were housed in inhuman conditions. Because only inmates in one wing of the prison sued, the ruling only applied to inmates housed in that wing, even though the rest of the prison was exactly the same as what the Court had just ruled inhumane and unconstitutional.
Qualified immunity is a made up right by the courts (it doesn't exist in law) and places SOME animals above other animals when it comes to accountability. I thought we were all equal? All Americans should be responsible for their actions, government employees > accountability simply because they have a special 'job' should not be a thing.
This is because the standing they had was tenuous to begin with, his claim was that the issue was he'd be taxed on the 20K in cancelled debt and couldn't opt out. So it was clarified that he could, and suddenly he is no longer harmed. You don't have standing to sue if you aren't harmed.
Student loan companies have a somewhat less tenuous argument, but the real issue is that Biden's actions were probably legal, and checks and balances don't exist to prevent the government from doing legal things.
Cops are above the law. They are the violence arm of the local government.
It's perfectly fair for the law to allow certain groups to do something that's illegal for other groups to do. For example, illegal for people not sanctioned by the government to drive on public roads.
Just upload the video automatically to some central server. Then the corruption on police station level can't get to it.
You could do the upload via mobile network if a "bang" is heard too.
> There was little doubt that fence cutting would be criminalized, but what was to be done about ranchers who were fencing over public roads and lands? Here the Texas Legislature stood with the rich, making fence cutting a felony punishable by two to five years in prison, while for the cattle barons who encroached on public land, the punishment was a misdemeanor and a small fine of $10 to $100.
ie levying a slight tax to enable it rampantly through surface-level law and order
I think their is another kind, used more in cities, with bodycam uploading the video directly, with 3 modes (low-res, lowframe, low-res, normal framerate + audio, and high res high framerate).
You're assuming that malice is the reason why there isn't video footage if there was supposed to be. I think that's a fair assumption, and I think that this is most likely the case.
But it's not necessarily the case. It is possible that negligence or incompetence is the reason the cameras weren't recording. The whole thing sounds like a murder to me, and I assume the video footage was deliberately disabled/destroyed/lost/etc. But at this stage I don't think anybody can be certain of that. There is only circumstantial evidence for somebody preventing/destroying the video footage.
There doesn't have to be malice.
There has to be accountability.
> "When something happens, conveniently the video footage that should exist, magically doesn't."
Magic doesn't exist. When something is said to "magically" not exist, that is a sarcastic way of saying that somebody deliberately made it not exist. I believe that is the most likely explanation, but it's not necessarily true.
I see sarcasm is one of your strong suits.
Indeed, and I stated such :)
> so what is the point of your response?
What is the point of yours? The "magical" nonexistence of footage whenever 1. there would ordinarily be footage and 2. that footage happens to record something for which someone doesn't want evidence demonstrates a pattern; that pattern is in and of itself a problem, regardless of whether it's explained by incompetence or malice. Assuming that someone else assumed malice and quibbling on that particular point is a pointless distraction from the actual problem in this case.
Based on other comments here, there seems to be a plausible reason that this type of exercise might not normally be recorded.
But if there's supposed to be a recording, and there isn't, then in the very least that's a plausible angle for investigation.
Meanwhile if it really is the case that the exercise wouldn't normally be recorded, then there's also an open question as to why this guy was assigned to an unrecorded training with somebody he was investigating for rape.
Police investigations and juries aren't logical proofs, that's why there are juries, character witnesses, etc.
Still, I don't know the facts, and if this "bicycle training exercise" was in a small yard of the police academy, and if "often" means "nearly always", then yeah, this would be pretty damning circumstantial evidence of malice.
That seems like standard procedure by now. When something happens, conveniently the video footage that should exist, magically doesn't.