There's a petition for officers to wear cameras on petitions.whitehouse.gov that's rapidly approaching the required signature count:

https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/mike-brown-law-req...

It will be interesting to see how some of the access / privacy details are worked out. For example, the mike Brown shooting happened on a public street, but what if it had happened in a private residence? Would the police recording be publicly available?

Edit: There are also innumerable instances of police providing damaged, incorrect, or no footage at all even of events that were filmed. The Ferguson police, after beating a handcuffed man in a jail cell and then charging him for destruction of property for getting blood on their uniforms (no link, easy to google), submitted jail footage that was a) 12x speed, rendering it useless, and b) of a different time than the incident. Simply capturing video is not enough, it must be stored and later provisioned by a 3rd party.

I'm no constitutional expert, but I'm having a hard time figuring out how the federal government could possibly have the authority this sort of law would require.

> I'm no constitutional expert, but I'm having a hard time figuring out how the federal government could possibly have the authority this sort of law would require.

Requirements to make and keep records which demonstrate compliance with legal restrictions are a routine and essential part of the enforceability of many laws, so, to the extent that the Constitution explicitly imposes restrictions on the States and explicitly authorizes Congress to enforce those restrictions through "appropriate legislation" (especially in light of the necessary and proper clause), Congressionally-imposed recordkeeping requirements to demonstrate compliance would seem to be within the scope of the Congressional power thus granted.

This is relevant because the 14th Amendment commands that "No State shall [...] deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws" and provides that "The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article".

Even with the way the Supreme Court has limited the authorization clause of the 14th Amendment to (unlike identical language elsewhere) only authorize corrective legislation, so that it might not be possible for Congress to impose a general and unconditional requirement, Congress could still impose a requirement on particular states as a consequences of past violation of Constitutional due process or equal protection occurring under the power of those states.

(It could also do it by making it a prerequisite for, say, federal law enforcement assistance funding, or access to federal law enforcement databases, etc. -- and it could do both in parallel, so it would be required both for states found to have past violations for which it serves as a remedy, and for states wishing to federal assistance for law enforcement.)

"(It could also do it by making it a prerequisite for, say, federal law enforcement assistance funding, or access to federal law enforcement databases, etc. -- and it could do both in parallel, so it would be required both for states found to have past violations for which it serves as a remedy, and for states wishing to federal assistance for law enforcement.)"

This is a much more likely to work approach (but not what the petition is asking for).

That said, the political realities of police cameras are going to make this a fight that will not be won on the federal level (especially not in the current environment where getting anything done seems to be seen as treason).

Local laws on the other hand could be easily implemented.

> This is a much more likely to work approach (but not what the petition is asking for).

Petitions aren't generally detailed legislative proposals, and their relationship to concrete legislation is similar to the relation between the first draft of requirements for complex computing system and the concrete implementation.

> That said, the political realities of police cameras are going to make this a fight that will not be won on the federal level

Probably not; OTOH, issues like this that make any progress are rarely pushed exclusively in one venue, and even if they aren't won at the federal level, attention there can be a key factor in driving media attention to efforts and driving public awareness. (Plus, heck, the white house petition site has plenty of people petitioning for changes in policies of particular private corporations, so something that's a legitimate public policy issue where the federal government could plausibly do something close to what is requested, even if it would be exactly identical and is unlikely in the current political climate, is actually fairly reasonable.)

The Supreme Court ruled that Congress may, under the Commerce Clause, prohibit growing marijuana for personal medical use in states where medical marijuana is legal, because it constitutes interstate commerce. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gonzales_v._Raich

Before that, the Supreme Court ruled that growing wheat to feed your own chickens constitutes interstate commerce. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wickard_v._Filbur...

If enough politicians wanted the law, the constitutional argument would be of minimal concern.

While I appreciate the cynicism that this embodies, it shows a gross misunderstanding of constitutional law. There is a deep divide in constitutional jurisprudence between commerce and police powers. One of the leading cases is Printz v. US: http://www.oyez.org/cases/1990-1999/1996/1996_95_1478

The federal government cannot rely on the necessary and proper cause to empower it to compel state LEOs to fulfill its federal tasks for it - even temporarily.

The feds can offer "incentive" money, as previous commenters have stated.

Were the crop quotas in Wickard v. Filburn enforced by federal agents? I can't seem to find that information.

They don't but they attach it to money they give to Police departments. If you want money for xyz, you must also do this. The Federal Government also does mandates of these sorts with school funding and all types of funding to get what they want done when otherwise it wouldn't be possible.

Couldn't they do like they did with drinking age laws and restrict federal road/other funding to jurisdictions that don't implement police camera programs?

Sure, but that's not what the petition is asking for. It's asking for federal legislation to require it.

Also, the police are going to fight cameras tooth and nail. Major demographics from both parties are going to be mobilized (unions & crime hawks).

The liquor laws were much more sympathetic and even they took a long time for full federal compliance.

> Sure, but that's not what the petition is asking for. It's asking for federal legislation to require it.

The petitions are not bills that people are submitting to the floor of Congress. To say, "well the petition didn't ask for this specific implementation," seems a bit disingenuous. Federal legislation requiring it to receive specific funding would effectively be "federal legislation requiring it" so I'm unsure why you're splitting hairs.

> The petitions are not bills that people are submitting to the floor of Congress.

True. They're not much of anything else, either.

Mostly because, this particular petition seems like the worst sort of political polly-anna-ism. That is, it shows a lack of political, constitutional and tactical understanding of how the US works. A much more effective solution seems to be local action in this case. If you could get a couple of big city police departments to install cameras the domino effect would be tremendous and local action will be the easier route!

That should be easy enough to work around - there is no reason police officers should be presumed innocent until proven guilty. No video that shows you didn't do it? Fine now you get 10 years + a felony. Believe me the video would always be working under this system.

You give up many rights when you e.g join the marines. You might as well have the same rule when you join the police.

The cops in my town wear cameras. I also happen to be a firefighter/paramedic in my town.

This has given me a reason to ponder these cameras quite a bit...

It's not uncommon for me to be in someone's house, while they are in some sort state that they would probably not want to have recorded (if someone is having a heart attack at 2 in the morning, they are not generally concerned about the fact that they sleep naked). Now you have a situation where a cop with a camera is walking into the room... Most folks don't even realize it's there (it's black, and blends in with their uniform pretty well).

Should the LEO disclose he's wearing a camera? "Hey, I notice you just fell in the shower and are naked, soaking wet, and in an awkward position. Just FYI... I'm wearing a camera."

This doesn't even begin to cover the HIPAA implications...

In general, I'm very much in favor of cameras on cops. I think it helps keep everyone on their best behavior in potentially confrontational situations. That being said... I have been in situations where the presence of the camera has made me very uncomfortable.

It's not like the police take the cameras, and immediately post them to youtube. If complaints are made, video can be reviewed by those who need to review it. If it needs to go to court, censoring can be added.

I do see your point. I would counter with: if we are to claim we're free to record the actions of the police while they work, surely they have the right to record what goes on as well.

Sure... my point is just that the issue is more complicated than it seems to be on the face of it...

Law enforcement officers end up coming into contact with everyday people in very compromising positions, often through no fault of their own, and in their own homes.

Like I said, I fall on the 'pro-camera' side of the debate, but there are a lot of often overlooked implications that I feel need to be part of the discussion.

I think you are in the weeds at this point.

Perhaps I am. I was simply trying to relate a personal experience with these cameras, and the fact that they have made me feel uncomfortable at times (for the sake of the folks I'm caring for). It seemed germane to the conversation.

Maybe someday it'll be routine enough that it doesn't enter my mind. For right now, it's frankly a bit of a distraction (in situations where a distraction can literally be fatal).

I understand that. The petitions state in intent of direction and action, I don't put much weight in specifics at this level. And in your case, there should be some exemptions for doctor patient privilege. You need the trust of the person you are serving to know how to treat them. If they mixed drugs or took a drug they didn't have a prescription for you need to know. But if they think the camera will testify against them, they won't seek the help they need.

This is why there should be a federal standard about the collection of signals. I would absolutely like to know that when I see a camera on an officer that the event is being recorded and accessible during discovery later. Even if I don't know the officer in question and that the audio, video, etc won't be prevented from being archived or be altered. Cryptographic signatures and one way encryption are key in this regard.

The cameras should be treated as a trusted third party, not an optional tool under the purview of the officer. There should be a public ledger that is subject to review of who requested unencrypted access to recorded signals.

> if we are to claim we're free to record the actions of the police while they work, surely they have the right to record what goes on as well.

Not necessarily. The police are acting as government agents and as such have fewer rights to privacy.

> Should the LEO disclose he's wearing a camera? "Hey, I notice you just fell in the shower and are naked, soaking wet, and in an awkward position. Just FYI... I'm wearing a camera."

All good concerns, but we have to remember that the TV show Cops has been doing this for what? 20 years now?

I assume they have to get releases from everyone to put videos on the show, but they sure aren't getting releases when they walk into a house.

If police-cams are mandated the footage should be put into a case file and only released under court order.

> If police-cams are mandated the footage should be put into a case file and only released under court order.

Because if there's one thing we can trust the government with, it's our private data!

> This doesn't even begin to cover the HIPAA implications...

HIPAA doesn't generally apply to LEOs -- who are not covered entities (either health care providers nor payers) in the first place, so there probably aren't any HIPAA implications.

Probably...

What if one of the cops who shows up happens to also be a part-time firefighter/paramedic, and lends a hand with patient care? What if the agency they occasionally work with is the agency that is providing care? Lines start to get blurrier... (This is a real world scenario that is not uncommon for us)

Obviously the mere existence of the recording is still a long way from a violation, but I do find it troublesome at times...

>What if one of the cops who shows up happens to also be a part-time firefighter/paramedic, and lends a hand with patient care?

Probably the same thing that happens if a cop with a dashcam shows up to a traffic accident.

I don't know what it is that happens exactly, but it's a pretty common occurrence, so it seems likely that this scenario isn't that big of a problem.

The amount of private health information that would be exposed in someone's bedroom, on a medical call (where a thorough interview is conducted, revealing all sorts of personal information) is _miles apart_ from what would be recorded by a dashcam at the scene of an accident.

>where a thorough interview is conducted, revealing all sorts of personal information

Given the ubiquity of dashcams, I'm willing to bet that quite a few medical interviews that reveal a lot of personal information have been conducted in earshoot of a dashcam.

What happens when a cop calls an ambulance to check someone out for possible injuries, and the ambulance parks next to the patrol cruiser? Do the paramedics ask the cop to turn his dashcam microphone off while hey ask questions? How would this medical call differ from one that happens in bedroom (other than the lack of personal effects)?

Seems like this scenario probably isn't an order of magnitude less likely than a cop who's also a paramedic listening in on a medical call in someone's bedroom.

Obviously the cameras should be

* always on * encrypted (public key, the Court should have the private key) * have a GPS lock * automatically sync when they are in car and or back at base * be on the cellular network (timestamps and crypto signature of the captured stream), could even transmit officer vitals and location in realtime, could also sync in realtime over 4g connections

The officers should not be able to turn them off or review the video. Missing footage would be fireable offense.

I'd probably favor framerate and luminance over chroma. Maybe have a high resolution color still every n seconds interleaved with BW quad-hd stream.

Couldn't these issues be mitigated if the video recording was encrypted and simply archived for a set period of time unless there was a judge ordering its release?

Wearing cameras has a lot of potential for good if there are string safeguards regulating access to the footage.

I think encryption is a basic requirement here, with a software architecture that properly documents all access to the raw footage and enabling release only in some narrow circumstances.

How optimistic are you that it would actually be implemented well?

I agree that there is the possibility of privacy issues from camera footage being mismanaged or leaked, but I think that is less important than the direct police abuse that would probably be significantly thwarted by police body cameras.

Relevant, from Schenier: https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2014/04/police_disabl...

TL;DR - Voice recorders installed in police cars, and after a time it was found that a significant number of the recorders were missing or tampered with. Go figure.

Playing devils' advocate, though ... it's far too easy to criticize in hindsight what happens in a split second, both sides potentially fueled by a combination of fear and adrenaline.

One could just as easily say that about a great many crimes.

A simple law mandating that all officers wear body cams is probably not going to be all that effective. As another commentor mentioned, it's not real clear how this could be handled at the federal level. The threat of these cams being turned off is real and there will need to be laws to mete out punishment if it happens (which will be incredibly difficult.) All that being said, this is probably a good step in raising awareness of the usefulness of body cams.

http://www.fox8live.com/story/26283883/officer-involved-in-m...

Url changed from http://www.scribd.com/doc/130767873/Self-awareness-to-being-....

A related article that fell through the cracks on HN last year: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/07/business/wearable-video-ca....

"Importantly, there are still somewhat similar cases taking place, despite efforts to stop such behavior through better training and prosecution of rogue officers."

Is this an Onion University study?

Anyway, seriously, while I love the idea of body worn cameras for police officers, in practice they are in control of whether the camera is recording or not, and tend to 'forget' to turn their cameras on more often than not.

The cameras worn by the cops in my town are integrated with a base station in their patrol car. It activates when they are more than a few feet from the base station (inside this range, they are presumably in range of the dash cam, at least for audio), and automatically uploads the recording when they return.

I would think with current technology, an always-recording system could be put into place at a fairly low cost. Certainly an interesting idea for anyone looking for a new starup idea involving cameras and bullet proof vests.

With the police unions fighting it every step of the way.

I think the effort is better spent making the equipment reliable and easy to use, and then making it widely available. Then when an officer chooses not to use it, you can ask them why they made that choice. People might believe lots of things the first few thousand times, but eventually it will make the officer look pretty bad if they walked into an adverse situation without their documentation device running.

I also sort of like that this preserves some discretion for the officer; if I can't trust them to have a reasonable amount of discretion, I don't think I can trust them at all, and I don't think technology is going to help me with that.

> People might believe lots of things the first few thousand times, but eventually it will make the officer look pretty bad if they walked into an adverse situation without their documentation device running.

This isn't some hypothetical about the future. What you describe is very common today, with no loss of credibility having attached to the police.

No, I'm pretty sure police don't have universal access to (reliable, effective) recording devices.

I'm also pretty sure that large segments of the population don't trust them at all.

Indeed. The Ferguson police in fact have a couple dashboard cameras and body cameras for officers to wear, however none have been installed due to the $3k/per expense (no link, easy to google).

It's staggering how low accountability is on law enforcement's priority list, especially given the amount of money available for "crowd control" military hardware.

> It's staggering how low accountability is on law enforcement's priority list

Huh? Why would they want to be accountable? Accountability would be a priority of the populace.

Priorities can be mandated. Dealing with externally-set priorities is a fairly regular subject on this very forum (damn you, marketing!).

No government agency should be solely responsible for selecting what is and is not its job.

Of course accountability isn't a priority. Their priority is to arrest and detain as many people as they can, and being accountable might cut into their revenue.

I wonder how the police measure their 'shifts', maybe a rule change to make it on-by-default and timed breaks with auto switch on after 20 min of 'off time' for bathroom breaks etc, during this time the officer should be considered 'not on duty' hence cannot respond to incidents.

they are required to document things, why not step up to technology and use everything else available? i'm sure there was similar complaints when notebooks and reports became a requirement... hopefully momentum switches.