October 3, 2017 • 44 mins
Cops wearing cameras is a new thing. So new that we aren't entirely sure of all the ramifications that go along with them just yet. In theory they should protect both police and citizens, but as we learned, they are no magic pill against police brutality or the death of cops on patrol. Join us as we dive into this complicated issue today.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from how Stuff Works
dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark.
There's Charles w Chuck Bryant, there's Jerry over there. So
this is stuff you should know, like ever expanding law
Enforcement edition yet another Yeah we just did when didn't we?
(00:27):
Yeah we uh yeah, I can't remember which one it was.
They'll run together now. Yeah, Well we've done a lot yep.
Body cameras. Uh, and I kind of want to pick
this one out. Thought, well, I don't know if there's
a whole lot there, but it ended up being a
little more interesting than I thought to be. Yeah, there's
a lot there, at least culturally too. Totally. So, um,
(00:49):
we're talking body cameras, and they're pretty straightforward at their base. Um,
but once you kind of start looking at like the
cultural baggage associated with them, why they're being used, it
is a pretty mushrooming topic for sure. And apparently back
in two thou five the Brits started using them and
(01:12):
they ran some Yeah, because I mean, like the city
of London, I don't think there's a square inch that
isn't under surveillance, you know. Yeah, they're just pretty uh technologically,
um forward, I think sure, Like the first cell phone
I ever saw was in London. Really yeah, obviously of
like Japan and Korea for that kind of stuff. Well
maybe there too, but I didn't go to either one
(01:33):
of those places in the early nineties, I got you,
So you're like, London's in your head for that. So
um with with I guess the UK in particular, once
they started using body cameras, they started using them more
and more and more. And that's definitely the case with
the United States more recently. Um And apparently there's a
(01:56):
there's a pilot program that really started the whole thing
off back in two thousand and twelve in a little
town called Rialto, California, which is about fifty miles east
of Los Angeles. Yeah, and in Rialto, I'm not sure
what the impetus was, but the police chief and a
criminologist got together and said, let's let's try this. They
(02:17):
gave half of the police force body cameras to wear,
and then switched and gave the other half I guess
the second half of the year, throughout all of two
thousand twelve, Yeah, and what they were mainly tracking were
two different things. Uh, incidences police force and then civilian
complaints against officers. UM, generally after use the police force,
(02:39):
but just complaints period. Yeah, basically, and the results are
pretty surprising. I think. Yeah, they the officers who wore
the cameras used force half as often just generally would
use I get well, not less force. That's a little misleading.
(03:00):
They would use force less of the of the time. Um.
And then the complaints filed, they said they couldn't really Um,
there were so few complaints that couldn't really draw a
good statistical conclusion. But there was a nine reduction compared
with two thousand eleven of complaints. And they found out
(03:20):
other stuff too. I looked into the study. UM, and
this is just the commentary from the research team. These
aren't like facts and figures. But you know, you do
a study like this and then they analyze it, then
they say, well, this is what I think. Um. They
say that their research shows that people tend to adhere
to social norms and change your conduct once they're aware
that their behavior is being observed. Um. And the body
(03:43):
worn cameras can bey a straightforward, pragmatic message. You were
being watched a videotape and expected to follow the rules.
And apparently this uh, what they call a self awareness
effect is a neutral third eye that works on both sides.
They said it suspect tend to cool down their aggressive
actions more and it deters officers from reacting excessively or
(04:06):
unnecessarily with force. So it kind of works both ways.
And uh, the final thing I thought was really interesting
was had what they called a spillover effect, which was
even officers that weren't using the cameras because they did,
like you said, with half the force at a time,
they had fewer incidences of force used. And they speculate
(04:30):
that they just think there's a conscious effort than going
on to make uh, to improve their behavior, so that
the the officers that had the cameras being watched didn't
like have an advantage or a disadvantage, Like they sort
of normalize the whole thing, even if they weren't wearing
a camera at all. Yeah, I mean it's a speculation,
(04:53):
but it sort of makes sense. Well, so this the
rialto study is really um often I died because it
was the first of its kind in the United States
and because the results were so surprising, and then so
we also the city immediately was like, Okay, all officers
now have body cameras. After the results came in, and
(05:16):
it just so happened that this took place. The study
took place um right before a couple of very high
profile police involved deaths, Eric Garner UM and then Michael Brown.
And Michael Brown's death in particular raised the issue of
body warren cameras, which is in the general term for
(05:38):
the cameras police are wearing UM. Because Darren Wilson, who
shot Michael Brown, the police officer who shot him six
times UM what gave one account of the story and
witnesses gave another account of the story. And so when
Michael Brown's death kind of became part of a national conversation,
(05:58):
and especially with Eric Garner's death to which immediately proceeded
I think like a month before, back in two thousand fourteen, UM.
Eric Garner's death was full on video taped by a
guy who was standing there recording it on a cell phone,
and it got out and it was released to the public,
and it started this national conversation about police brutality UM
(06:22):
and but it also had this other real aspect to
it that this conversation might not be happening were it
not for video documentation of these of Eric Garner's death.
So the fact that this is happening at a time
right after rialto has had this study, people are looking
around saying this. There's entire swaths these communities, UM have
(06:47):
had this what was called a simmering distrust of the police,
and they've had it forever. But now all of a sudden,
the rest of the nation's paying attention to this very
important issue. UM and this, these body cameras work so
well for this little town in east of Los Angeles,
maybe we should start to institute those. And all of
(07:07):
a sudden, the Department of Justice starts showing out forty
three million dollars in grants for local law enforcement to
buy body cameras. And there was this this idea that good,
the problem solved. But to a lot of people, and
at least impart myself included, it kind of seems like
this could just be a bandied Does it actually solve
(07:28):
anything or does it actually just underscore the distrust on
both sides, Like I don't trust that you're not gonna
file a false report about me being brutal on you,
so I'm recording you and I have to wear this
because the federal government knows that you don't trust me,
and I might beat you up extra judiciously. So if
(07:51):
if neither side trusts one another and you just have
a video camera observing the whole thing, does that actually
solve anything or does it just underscore the trust. That's
that's probably the biggest question to me that came out
of researching this episode. Yeah, I think for me, it's
it's not a magic pill by any means, but it's
another tool that can help. But but what I think
(08:13):
that then the issue to me then is you can't
just overly rely on that one tool. I think it
kind of has a tendency to lull people into complacency, like, Okay,
we've got this tool out there now, we don't have
to worry about the actual underlying issues. Yeah, and we'll
get into I mean, there's a bunch of reasons why
it's not a magic pill. We'll get into all those later.
(08:33):
But um, as of right now, it was hard to
get statistics, but I got one from about a year
ago that said forty three of the sixty eight major
cities now, have you know that what they call the
major police forces in the US now use body cameras. However,
(08:53):
U say that they will begin to use them, and
are you know, taking steps to do so. Um. But
however they here and this is one of the issues
of why it's not a magic pill. Um. Only three
percent of these and this is a survey, only three
percent of the officers reported recording seven plus hours per day.
(09:18):
And that's in a in a typical I think, what
do they work generally twelve hours at a time? Yeah,
I might, I understand. So only three percent recording seven
of those hours recorded? Uh, less than recorded three or
fewer hours per day. UM. So that's one of the
big issues is some departments, well, I mean, and it
(09:40):
varies from department in locality to locality on what the
rules are. Some of them say, all right, well, here's
your body camera, but you don't have to use it. Um.
Some of them say use it during any um, confrontation
with a citizen, any call you have to make. Some say, well,
you gotta turn them off when you go into a
(10:00):
private residence because, as we'll talk about a little later,
the a c l U. You know, it's a privacy
issue when you're filming people without their consent. That could
potentially be released, but surprisingly a little bit the a
c l U eventually kind of said, no, we will.
We would rather have the officers where these even though
it's a privacy issue for citizens. It's a tricky, tricky thing.
(10:23):
Oh man, it is a can of worms like no other. Um.
But we I mean, I think everyone knows what these are.
We haven't even said yet. These are cameras that police
officers wear on their body. Um. The ones I've mostly seen,
they were sort of on their chest, yeah, like where
there CB used to be. Yeah. Some of them though,
(10:43):
are on the shoulder, on the helmet, um or on
the collar. But mostly I've seen the one that it
kind of actually looks like a little C, B H
whatever you call it. Not a CB handle because that's
rubber Ducky in the in the truck. What you know,
the CB handle is what your name is. And rubber
(11:04):
Ducky was from Convoy. I think when was it? I
think so the movie or the song the movie, well
the songs from them, Oh man, those guys are great.
So what the receiver? But you're talking to it the mouthpiece? Okay,
I just call it the walkie talkie part. The walkie
talkie part anyway, it's generally mounted on the chest and uh,
(11:27):
there are many manufacturers that make these now, um, some
of them or wire wireless. Some of them have high death,
some of them have one touch activation and ultra wide angle.
Because that's one of the issues why it's not a
magic pill. Like the view that they get if it's
not a wide angle, is a chest high view of
(11:48):
whatever the officer's body is pointed at, not necessarily what
their faces looking at, where their eyes are looking. Um,
it's it's okay, but you know it's not. It's not
solve for everything in all issues. No, it's not, because
we'll get into later. You know, if if something happens
off camera that hasn't captured, like a suspect reaching for
(12:12):
a gun and but on camera, all of a sudden,
the cops just standing there and then the next thing
you know, he pulls his gun out and shoots the guy,
it's like, well that that cop just went berserk because
the camera didn't capture that thing. Most of them have
a time and date stamp. Some of them have the
badge number of the cop. Some of them have GPS coordinates.
Some of them take still photos some stream to remote devices.
(12:35):
Very few of them can you actually is it like
a iPhone where you can as a screen that you
can watch it, But some of them can hook up
to an app to your phone where you can watch it. Yeah, advanced.
I read this article about the one that Taser's putting out.
It was largely about that was by It was a
Motherboard article by Alex Pasternak, and he um talks about
(12:56):
how one of the big concerns is in the addition
of facial recognition, like computer facial recognition, because supposedly, I
didn't know this, half of Americans have their face in
a facial recognition database already. So if you're just somebody
walking past one of these cameras and it has facial
(13:19):
recognition attached to it, it will say, oh, well there
when Josh Clark, he was here on this date at
this time and he's wanted for murder, right, Well, that
was part of the point. It's like, well, you know,
the camera can pick it up and then the database can,
let you know, go get that guy he's wanted for murder. Um.
But also, if you're as a private citizen, as you're
(13:41):
the you're right against unlawful search and seizure being UM
violated by that kind of thing, and apparently that is
definitely a direction that that UM these cameras are starting
to go now, like facial recognition will soon be the
next step as they're deployed further and further, it's going
to be like a common UM feature on them. Yeah.
(14:04):
Another feature that uh, most of these cameras have now,
and this is a very interesting one because it's kind
of played out recently to be significant, is a buffering
pre record. So if this cameras on, it's recording, but
it records in thirty second or sixty second intervals with
no audio most of the time. So what's happening is
(14:25):
even if the cop has not pressed record, it's recording
and a racing over itself constantly, um if it's turned on.
So what happens when the cop hits record is it's
gonna have that thirty or sixty seconds tagged onto it
and that gets saved, which can be a big asset
(14:46):
if the cop. Uh you know a lot of times
a cop will see something and turn it on, but
they have just missed what's happened, but it'll grab that
thirty seconds, which can be a big help, or in
the case of Baltimore, it can bust a cop planning evidence. Yeah,
I saw that too, So that to me was more
like interpretation of video. What is your what was your
(15:08):
take on it? Well, no, there were two of them.
The most recent one was interpretation of video. I think
there was one previous to that where it actually caught
the cop planning evidence because he didn't know that the
thirty second buffer was happening. Oh really, I didn't see
that one. Uh. And then that may have been I'm
not sure in this case, but sometimes it's uploaded to
a cloud and it's there right. The second one I
(15:31):
think was what it looks like is that the cops
took a made a concerted effort to organize and deploy
their cameras at specific times to get away with planning evidence.
So that's the speculation. This is all very brand new
in the news. But you know, their cops saying like,
(15:53):
do you have yours on? You're not supposed to have
yours on yet, saying things like that, and of course
the a c, L, EU and and the prosecutors are
saying this is clearly the cops trying to coordinate this
thing with their cameras staging with reality. Yeah, and that's
something that is going to start happening more and more.
I mean, ideally all all cops are doing really good work, uh,
(16:17):
and you don't have to worry about that. But you know,
there's been plenty of cases over the years of bad
cops doing bad things, and now these body cameras, they're
gonna have to find a way to get around it. Yeah,
and I want to can I just say something real quick? So,
so the the whole issue to me is this, right, Like, um,
I think I've probably come off as distrustful of cops
sometimes and to me, um, so, as society, we give
(16:41):
cops like a tremendous amount of power over us, right,
and we give it to them in exchange for them up,
you know, upholding the law and protecting us right. Right.
But the problem is is if that trust is broken,
then that's a huge issue because as you go suddenly
(17:01):
from because you can't do anything about it, and you
go from being a protected citizen to being a hostage
of the state. Right. So that means to me that
police have to be like above reproach, that they they
have to be as angelic as possible right, and that
(17:22):
if they're there, um, if they're that, if they're called
into question for something, there shouldn't even be the slightest
hint that they're being protected or it's being covered up
or anything like that, and government needs to step in
and do something about it. And that has not been
the case. Government has broken down in its role of
(17:45):
overseeing police when the question of trust is brought up,
and what you're left with then is a citizenry that
it says I don't trust the cops any longer, and
just as bad as that, I don't trust the governments
to root out back cops. Um when the trust is broken,
but the power structure is still there. That doesn't exactly exactly,
(18:06):
So we're all hostages now to the cops. That's it's
clearer than ever. Now. That's that's my problem. I'm not
saying that that is necessarily the case, or that even
if it is the case, it's the case across the board.
I think there are plenty of plenty and plenty of
good cops out there who really do hold themselves to
a very high stenator. But the fact is there are
bad cops out there too, And I don't believe that
(18:27):
bad cops are rooted out and prosecuted like they should be,
and that the trust between the citizens and the police
has eroded as a result, and the government has totally
dropped the ball in in repairing that. Yeah, and especially
tough too when like every uh, every bad cop documentary
(18:50):
you've ever seen of them, the first thing you hear
cops saying as well, the first rule is you gotta
cover for your buddy cops. Like, even if you don't
agree with them, you don't ride out a cop. And
so then you're like, I think cops also subscribe almost
across the board to what's right is right though, you
know what I mean, and that they do kind of
(19:10):
tend to to to go toward that. I like to
think that I want to think that. Um, and I
hope I'm not being naive and thinking that you wanna
take a break. Yeah, all right, let's do it. We'll
talk a little more about body cameras. All right, we're
(19:43):
back with a little more of the mundane, which is
the cost of these things. Uh. They can go up
to about nine bucks or as low as the low hundreds. UM,
let's such just say an average of four bucks for
a system. UM, and if you have a large police
force of six cops, that's a lot of dough, Um
(20:05):
it is. But Uncle Sam is offsetting a lot of that. Yeah. Sure,
And and I think everyone is in favor of these
And I think our article points out in a very
astute way, like ideally these things can provide clarity, but
at the very least it's just another measure in place
(20:25):
to help protect citizens and police. Yes, but there's a
group who say, no, these are kind of a bad idea.
And I find it's suspicious that the government is um
supporting this so so wholeheartedly, that it's just um advancing
the surveillance state that much more normalizing the idea of
(20:45):
people being recorded everywhere they go all the time, even
in interacting with other people. Yeah, so I think there
are some people who just don't even like the idea
of of body war and cameras at all. Well, citizens
and cops probably, right, Um, So another big problem or not, Well,
I guess it is sort of a problem or challenge
(21:05):
at least, is is how to store this information, um,
depending on where you are, Like they use Oakland as
a as an example in this article. Six hundred cops,
six hundred body cameras generates about seven terabytes of video
every month and UM Storing the stuff is a big
challenge because depending on where you are, you have a
(21:27):
lot of rules in place because this is evidence potentially
and it's you know, you can't just store it anyway
you like in Oakland they have to keep it for
two years of anything that's involved in an investigation. It's
longer than that. Uh. Duluth Minnesota they point out thirty days. Laurel,
Maryland has six six months. Like that's a lot of data.
(21:51):
And the security standards are really uh strict, and they
gotta figure out how to store this stuff, how to
do it safely. And because people that know how to
make money are are behind this. There are companies that's
very smartly are coming up with complete systems that will
offer a police department and say hey, we got you covered.
(22:13):
We will take care of your storage, we will comply
with all your rules and regulations, will train your people
because you gotta hire in house people just to keep
track of the data. Uh, and we'll do it all
for you, exactly like Taser apparently has one heck of
a system where when the when the UM officer puts
there embody warrn camera on the dock to charge it
(22:36):
simultaneously starts uploading um all of the all of the
day's recording, right, So yeah, and it goes to the
cloud um and multiple people have access to it. But
it's any interaction with the video is logged automatically by
the system. If somebody goes to delete it, like only
(22:57):
certain people have access to delete file aisles, but again
multiple people do, and so if somebody goes to delete it,
they they're the other people who have the ability ability
to delete it are notified. So it's spreads Yeah, it
spreads out accountability. So it's like, well, wait a minute,
I'm going down to for letting you delete it. If so,
(23:19):
what are you deleting this for kind of thing? Um,
it's a pretty smart system. Like from what I read
from Pastor Neck in particular his article, it was like
Taser's got it going on. But if you if you
take the software away from it and the you know,
the LED light attached to it and all that stuff,
it's really what you have is basically a GoPro camera.
(23:42):
It's the it's the highly encrypted and protected software that
goes along with it that really makes it like law
enforcement specific. Yeah. I think in a lot of these
places the d A even has access remotely to this footage,
which is pretty interesting. The thing that that worries me
a little bit is the the situations where the local
(24:06):
police department has their own employees who are responsible for
keeping and maintaining and storing the video. It should be
it should be larger than that. You know, that's too localized. Yeah,
I mean this, it's sort of like it makes me
think of all the movies I've seen where the the
(24:28):
evidence locker is guarded by like a dude, and someone
comes down there and they're like, uh, you know her
in the movie. It's you know her jacked up my hand, man,
I can't sign in today. Just let me in. I
gotta look at look at something for my gaze. And
then they they're in there, you know, taking a part
of gun and putting it in their pants to take out.
(24:49):
What movie was that pounds of cocaine? That's every movie? Yeah,
that's every movie ever made. And yeah, absolutely that Frog's
movie you're talking about that had it in there. Yeah,
it was right. Apparently I added a superfluous exclamation point. Yeah,
what's it called? Just frogs, not frogs. It's just frogs?
(25:09):
Was it? Frogs? Frogs? So um. One of the criticisms
I've seen though, is it's like, well, wait a minute,
why why don't you trust us? Surely we can police
our own video, be trusted to police our own video.
It's like, no, the very fact that the video exists
means that you aren't trusted. So no, you shouldn't have
(25:29):
full jurisdiction over it. Because if this video is meant
to if it's meant because we don't trust you the citizens,
and we don't trust you the cops, but you, the
cops are the ones who are actually in control of
this video. That's lopsided. That's not a good solution. It's
not a full solution, I should say, right, because they
(25:49):
wouldn't turn that over to the citizens. So why don't
you keep track of this? No, that's a big issue too,
is who gets to see it? Yeah, well, a lot
of a lot of cities have have law in the
books where if you like a like a TV station
can ask for it and they have to give it
to him. Yeah, through uh, not FOIA, but local state
(26:10):
um disclosure lass, which is another big can of worms.
It is because you got to give the other side
as well too, right, So like if a if a
police officer dies in the line of duty and their
body cameras recording it, which happened in Arizona, I did.
It was his head anxiety the whole time watching it.
(26:32):
It was an officer named Tyler Stewart. Yeah, very sad.
It was extremely sad to see he was murdered by
some guy named Robert Smith who just drew a gun
after like three minutes of questioning. Yeah, and I didn't.
I don't know about you, but I didn't see that coming.
I didn't either. It was just like everything's normal, normal. Yeah,
it looks like super shady. Uh. And then of course
you find out afterwards that like he had been kind
(26:53):
of plating suicide and he you know, like the reason
he was there is because he trashed his girlfriend's apartment
and he had a lot of problems going on. But yeah,
I mean I was putting myself in the cop shoes,
and I'm like, I would have not suspected anything out
of this guy. Now, he was disarming, for sure, but
the but Tyler officer Stewart recorded his own death at
(27:15):
the hands of this guy and the local media was like, well,
we want to see it, and apparently Arizona has um
foil laws that are um that'd say, okay, well the
media gets it. You have to you have to release that,
which is apparently pretty rare. But in this case, it's
like it doesn't. Doesn't the doesn't the family of the
(27:38):
of the officer have any rights to be spared? This
being out there on the internet for any anybody who
wants to see this guy's death, you know, forever? Yeah,
I mean, of course they cut it, but still, you know,
like if anyone can look this up on YouTube, that's
just three I don't know. It's shameful. So the the
issue cuts both ways, especially privacy, like you do you
(27:59):
protect the citizen? Since privacy? Do you protect the cops?
Privacy do you protect no? What? Do you take the
wiki leaks approach and protect nobody's privacy like it happened?
Just keep it raw and and and if it's open
new interpretation, then settle it in court kind of thing,
you know, who knows? All right, you wanna take another break, man,
(28:21):
I keep working to send a breakes man. I'm sorry,
you know you're doing great. All right, We'll take another
break and talk a little bit about how these things
work and um, why they're not magic pills. Right after this. Okay, Chuck,
(28:52):
we're back. You know, I'll tell you one thing. I
looked up Taser's stock. Yeah, if you bought in two
ells and I think ten, you're doing pretty good. Yeah,
because of their body warn camera program. Yeah, it was
like five dollars and before this, I think they just
only made like tasers and non lethal weapons. But when
(29:15):
they got into the body camera market, their stock went
from like five bucks. I think it peaked at like
thirty five or forty. Yeah. Not bad, not bad at all.
Good for them. Yeah, but and again I can't remember
the name of it, but if you read that as
Alec pass your nach article, it's it's really sharp system.
And I own zero stock and Taser, Like, I'm just
(29:37):
a fan. I'm not a fan even if their non
lethal weapons, but their their body warrn camera systems is
pretty smart. It seems like, Yeah, I mean, I'm a
fan of smart things. Sure, if you're going to design
a system, it should be full proof and work well
and story everything you needed to not break down. It
seems like they got it going on Um. So one
(29:58):
of the other reasons that uh, like I said earlier,
this is it's not a magic pill, because you're only
getting this one. It's not. Our article points out very
astute lee that it's not an unbiased view. Still, Um,
if you had six or eight, like if you were
in London, you had six or eight cameras and different
(30:18):
angles on different light posts, and you could coordinate this
thing and fully see everything that happened, it may be unbiased, truly,
but just a single shot from a body camera sing
that single angle is not unbiased by any means. And
that's about it. Did you see the nurse wobbles arrest
(30:39):
m h The Utah nurse who refused to draw the
blood of the suspect was unconscious. So if you just
watched um, the arresting officers Jeff Paine's body camera, yeah,
I mean, like because it's up close and personal, it
goes like suddenly just basically goes dark when it's pressed
up against her act and it shows like very little
(31:03):
of anything. It was because of the other officer that
was with him his body camera. Um, that you get like,
oh wow, that really was a lot of force, unnecessary
force that this guy was using on this lady that
you wouldn't have gotten just from the footage from his
body camera, and that having supporting video evidence definitely expands
(31:27):
the the context one way or the other. It's interesting, though,
we're getting to a point where you're gonna have, um,
I say, a crime on a on a officer stop
of a car with a car camera, dashboard camera, let's
say two officers, body cameras, the people inside the car
filming with their iPhones, let's say two, So you've got
(31:50):
five different points of view going on that people courts
and juries are gonna have to sift through. D a's
defendants are gonna have to look at all this stuff
and try and piece together what happened. And this is
all new like previously you did this from testimony only
exactly So, like, are we opening ourselves up to a
(32:11):
time when d A s are are less willing to
bring up charges unless there is footage? You know? Yeah,
I wonder, but I mean it doesn't sound like there's
going to be much a lack of it. There's a
company called um Wolf Com who makes body warrant cameras
for police, is also releasing one for civilians. It's basically
(32:32):
the same thing without their police software that like just
somebody just wears it all times. Yeah, basically to film
the police while the police are filming them. And they
say it's perfect for protests, improving legality, and there's like, um,
there's like a button, the power button or stop or
the record button has to be pressed a certain way,
so even if like somebody bumping into your beating you up,
(32:55):
your camera won't stop recording. It's like, good lord, Like
the act that this is the climate that that's like
a selling point is really unsettling and sad, you know.
It is like, hey, everybody, come get your body warn
cameras because you need to film the people who are
filming you, because you can't trust the even this measure
(33:18):
that's being used to supposedly protect your rights. It's crazy
that it's crazy that we're in the state in this country.
That raised another point to me to chuck the idea
of having all these different points of view or video documentation.
This is also coming at a time when we are
(33:38):
starting to see editing software where you can kick video
and make it do anything. You can make it say anything,
you can make it, you can do anything with video.
The moon landing. How is that going to affect you know,
the use of video and in documentation for court cases
too well, and we've already seen just with Baltimore, you know,
(33:59):
what can happen and cops now have to wear these
and where they're trying to coordinate who's got who's camera on?
Did you have your camera on? What about that thirty
second buffer? Um? Geez. It's all just sad that we're
at that state now to where but you know, it's
also a good thing that, like, for how many years
were bad things happening without any uh citizen? Uh? I
(34:26):
mean there was no recourse, you know, for so long
and there still isn't to a large degree. This is
just a little small thing. No, it's true, But I
mean that has to be a certain level of at
least gratification among people who have lived with distrust of
the police or have been abused as a whole by police,
(34:47):
um for decades that people are now finally starting to
be like, oh man, this is crazy. You how long
has this been going on? You know, because there's a
light being shined on it, um. And so in that sense, yes,
it's crazy that we're at this state right now. In
our our country, but you know, maybe it's just a
(35:08):
growing pain towards moving to a better place. Yeah, you
know that rialto study too. And their summation, they also
said something about, um, I can't remember exactly only put it,
but something about how they found that it They think
that it also requires police to take to take more
verbal abuse from people, um, which you know isn't fun,
(35:31):
but sort of like the days are over where if
you're smart off to a cop, they can't just throw
your face on the ground and put their knees through
your cheekbone because you've smarted off to them. Um, So
they did. I don't think they weighed in either way
on what that means. They just said, what, you know,
it looks like cops are going to have to start
enduring a little more talk back from the drunk guy
(35:53):
at the bar without diving right into excessive force because
they were piste off. Now drunk kind of bar, notwithstandard
What are the big things that that these body cameras
are touted for, and I think you said it early on, um,
is that people behave differently when they know they're being recorded,
so that officers won't have to take verbal lashings from
(36:15):
people as often, and so that might that that the
very presence of the cameras supposedly um can keep situations
from escalating, or it can actually de escalate a situation.
Just if if the officers like need you to know
you're being recorded right now, people supposedly straighten up. I
(36:36):
don't know if they have to or not. Well, we're
in such the early nascent days of this, it's um. Yeah,
this is sort of an early podcast to see what
ramifications are gonna happen later on, you know who knows. Yeah,
And one of the things that I saw was that
this is a situation. This is a technology that's gotten
a lot of press, but it's still very early on
(36:59):
in actual academic study of it, supposedly, and including the
rialto study. Most studies are not published in journals and
aren't peer reviewed. They're just you know, studies largely carried
out by like criminologists or scientists, but also by the
local police departments carrying the studies out on their own department.
(37:20):
Right There's supposedly only been two peer reviewed journal studies
published on body warrant cameras so far, UM, and one
of them was on the effect of giving an officer
leeway on wind to press record. How how does that
impact things like, um, the use of violence and this
(37:42):
This two thousand and sixteen study in the Journal of
Experimental Criminology found that, compared to the control group, UM,
if the officer had very little leeway and deciding wing
to record, meaning they had to record all the time,
UM that physical the use of physical violence decreased by
thirty seven. But in situations where officers had a lot
(38:05):
of leeway in deciding when to press record or not,
UM it was higher than the control group. Yeah, that
this whole win. Is it recording and when is it not?
Is the seems like the biggest sticking point right now?
And are we going to move to a future where
they are absolutely required to record any interaction with a
(38:25):
citizen or they get suspended or something like who knows
what we're headed towards. Yeah, Like it's a big deal
if they're not recording, not like a you know, you
gotta you're supposed to be recording kind of thing. I mean,
I guess it from a good cops point of view,
they should say, like, man, I want to record this
thing because this is what's gonna exonerate me in this
(38:46):
atmosphere we have today. Yeah, but I think it right.
I think cops are also scared that that that footage
that it could also be in like footage can be
used against them, even if it doesn't show anything. Yeah,
you know what I mean. I think Yeah, I think
it's a it's a man, it's just so fraught as
a technology to be to be used like this, you know.
(39:10):
And again the fact that we're using it says, hey,
you guys don't trust you guys, So we're gonna keep
these cameras here so everybody be cool. Like that solves anything.
I wonder when cars are gonna come equipped with built
in cameras that, you know, record all around the car.
Let's say, I mean the camera's already there with you
(39:32):
know a lot of these uh safety features. All that's
lacking as a record button. Well, the cops have those
for um, running license plates while they're driving down the street.
Their cameras are are just looking at license plates over
the cars they're driving past to to run them. And
there was one other thing I saw in that um
fast Co Motherboard pastor Knack article. Um he just kind
(39:56):
of casually made mention that department stores, how spittles airports,
they're already using video facial recognition systems. So if you
walk into like Macy's or something, I don't know this specifically,
but I'm just picking on Macy's that when you're on camera,
your face is being run against the database to see
if you're somebody that they should be worried about, or
(40:18):
maybe even call the cops about to say that somebody
that likes neckties. And they may have that too. It
depends on whether they got their software from Taser or
from Marcus. Yeah, I did not know that, and that
that just takes profiling to a higher level. Huh. Yeah, well,
or maybe not if they're getting good information. I mean,
(40:43):
that's not profiling, is it. It's ultra tailored profiling. If
someone walks in and they're like, well, this guy committed
three acts of of shoplifting in the past year, they
might want to watch him. Is that profiling? No, because
it's specific to you, not say your race or something
like so, yeah, it's it's difficult to argue that that
(41:03):
at that point of it. It's more just like the
man you know that being surveiled everywhere. So this is
a good one. Yeah, you got anything else. No, I'm
interested to see where this goes. Plenty of follow up
stories over the years. I'm sure ye will happen. Yes,
I'm sure as well. Um, if you want to know
(41:24):
more about body Warren cameras, police cameras, just look up
police body cameras. They'll bring up this really good article
by Julia Layton on how stuff works. Since I said
that it's time for listener mail, I'm gonna call this, well,
I'm gonna call it a very cute email from a
little kid. Maybe I shouldn't read that one on this one, right,
(41:46):
He's got a slog through this and be like, this
is the future I have ahead of me? All right?
So this was from Noah. He is five years old
and is Scottish. Um and his mom sort of supplemented
the email with some little thing here and there, and
then at the end she said, you know, he really
I wanted to write into you guys personally, so I
let him use my email account and otherwise it is
(42:08):
just his words. And then a PS from mom, Dear
Josh C h O s H. Very cute. I like
listening to your podcast. I listened to it in the
car and before I fall asleep. My favorite facts is
about an iceberg as big as Jamaica and what to
do in a tornado, And then mom says in parentheses,
(42:29):
he reminds me frequently to not go in a tunnel
during a tornado. We live in Scotland, where there are
no tornadoes. You're funny and I like learning about disasters
as long as they're not too scary. And my mama says,
I'm too little. Can you do an episode about the
different kinds of bridges and engineers? I listened to that
(42:49):
one you did, but I'd like another because I'm going
to be a structural engineer and build bridges. Love Noah parentheses.
I'm five and I live in Scotland, which is in Europe.
Thanks thanks for the tip. Noah, Noah, that is great.
You're wonderful. We appreciate you. The mom adds this, ps,
I'm afraid there's one in the family who's not a fan.
(43:12):
Every time Stuff you Should Know comes on in the car,
my three year old daughter cries, no, not Stuff you
should Know. I can't sing to that. Oh that's cute,
and she says, sorry, guys, you can't compete with Disney
and me personally Uh, Mom, if you can record your
daughter screaming about how she doesn't like stuff you should know,
(43:35):
and then record Noah talking about how he does love
stuff you should know in that lovely Scottish accent, I
for one would like to hear that. Yeah, same here
and we'll even play it. Um. Yeah, thanks a lot. No,
you're the bomb buddy in America. That means you're terrific.
Uh and thanks to mom too for fostering the email. Yes, wait,
(43:57):
wait to go? Mom is great. You're all great. If
you're a cute kid who wants to tell us high,
we love hearing from you. Um. You can tweet to
us at josh um Clark or at s y s
K podcast. You can hang out with Chuck on Facebook
dot com slash stuff you Should Know or slash Charles W.
Chuck Bryant. You can take the traditional route and send
(44:18):
us an email at stuff Podcast. How stuff Works dot
com has always join us at our home on the web,
Stuff you Should Know dot com for more on this
and thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff Works
dot com
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from how Stuff Works
dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark.
There's Charles w Chuck Bryant, there's Jerry over there. So
this is stuff you should know, like ever expanding law
Enforcement edition yet another Yeah we just did when didn't we?
(00:27):
Yeah we uh yeah, I can't remember which one it was.
They'll run together now. Yeah, Well we've done a lot yep.
Body cameras. Uh, and I kind of want to pick
this one out. Thought, well, I don't know if there's
a whole lot there, but it ended up being a
little more interesting than I thought to be. Yeah, there's
a lot there, at least culturally too. Totally. So, um,
(00:49):
we're talking body cameras, and they're pretty straightforward at their base. Um,
but once you kind of start looking at like the
cultural baggage associated with them, why they're being used, it
is a pretty mushrooming topic for sure. And apparently back
in two thou five the Brits started using them and
(01:12):
they ran some Yeah, because I mean, like the city
of London, I don't think there's a square inch that
isn't under surveillance, you know. Yeah, they're just pretty uh technologically,
um forward, I think sure, Like the first cell phone
I ever saw was in London. Really yeah, obviously of
like Japan and Korea for that kind of stuff. Well
maybe there too, but I didn't go to either one
(01:33):
of those places in the early nineties, I got you,
So you're like, London's in your head for that. So
um with with I guess the UK in particular, once
they started using body cameras, they started using them more
and more and more. And that's definitely the case with
the United States more recently. Um And apparently there's a
(01:56):
there's a pilot program that really started the whole thing
off back in two thousand and twelve in a little
town called Rialto, California, which is about fifty miles east
of Los Angeles. Yeah, and in Rialto, I'm not sure
what the impetus was, but the police chief and a
criminologist got together and said, let's let's try this. They
(02:17):
gave half of the police force body cameras to wear,
and then switched and gave the other half I guess
the second half of the year, throughout all of two
thousand twelve, Yeah, and what they were mainly tracking were
two different things. Uh, incidences police force and then civilian
complaints against officers. UM, generally after use the police force,
(02:39):
but just complaints period. Yeah, basically, and the results are
pretty surprising. I think. Yeah, they the officers who wore
the cameras used force half as often just generally would
use I get well, not less force. That's a little misleading.
(03:00):
They would use force less of the of the time. Um.
And then the complaints filed, they said they couldn't really Um,
there were so few complaints that couldn't really draw a
good statistical conclusion. But there was a nine reduction compared
with two thousand eleven of complaints. And they found out
(03:20):
other stuff too. I looked into the study. UM, and
this is just the commentary from the research team. These
aren't like facts and figures. But you know, you do
a study like this and then they analyze it, then
they say, well, this is what I think. Um. They
say that their research shows that people tend to adhere
to social norms and change your conduct once they're aware
that their behavior is being observed. Um. And the body
(03:43):
worn cameras can bey a straightforward, pragmatic message. You were
being watched a videotape and expected to follow the rules.
And apparently this uh, what they call a self awareness
effect is a neutral third eye that works on both sides.
They said it suspect tend to cool down their aggressive
actions more and it deters officers from reacting excessively or
(04:06):
unnecessarily with force. So it kind of works both ways.
And uh, the final thing I thought was really interesting
was had what they called a spillover effect, which was
even officers that weren't using the cameras because they did,
like you said, with half the force at a time,
they had fewer incidences of force used. And they speculate
(04:30):
that they just think there's a conscious effort than going
on to make uh, to improve their behavior, so that
the the officers that had the cameras being watched didn't
like have an advantage or a disadvantage, Like they sort
of normalize the whole thing, even if they weren't wearing
a camera at all. Yeah, I mean it's a speculation,
(04:53):
but it sort of makes sense. Well, so this the
rialto study is really um often I died because it
was the first of its kind in the United States
and because the results were so surprising, and then so
we also the city immediately was like, Okay, all officers
now have body cameras. After the results came in, and
(05:16):
it just so happened that this took place. The study
took place um right before a couple of very high
profile police involved deaths, Eric Garner UM and then Michael Brown.
And Michael Brown's death in particular raised the issue of
body warren cameras, which is in the general term for
(05:38):
the cameras police are wearing UM. Because Darren Wilson, who
shot Michael Brown, the police officer who shot him six
times UM what gave one account of the story and
witnesses gave another account of the story. And so when
Michael Brown's death kind of became part of a national conversation,
(05:58):
and especially with Eric Garner's death to which immediately proceeded
I think like a month before, back in two thousand fourteen, UM.
Eric Garner's death was full on video taped by a
guy who was standing there recording it on a cell phone,
and it got out and it was released to the public,
and it started this national conversation about police brutality UM
(06:22):
and but it also had this other real aspect to
it that this conversation might not be happening were it
not for video documentation of these of Eric Garner's death.
So the fact that this is happening at a time
right after rialto has had this study, people are looking
around saying this. There's entire swaths these communities, UM have
(06:47):
had this what was called a simmering distrust of the police,
and they've had it forever. But now all of a sudden,
the rest of the nation's paying attention to this very
important issue. UM and this, these body cameras work so
well for this little town in east of Los Angeles,
maybe we should start to institute those. And all of
(07:07):
a sudden, the Department of Justice starts showing out forty
three million dollars in grants for local law enforcement to
buy body cameras. And there was this this idea that good,
the problem solved. But to a lot of people, and
at least impart myself included, it kind of seems like
this could just be a bandied Does it actually solve
(07:28):
anything or does it actually just underscore the distrust on
both sides, Like I don't trust that you're not gonna
file a false report about me being brutal on you,
so I'm recording you and I have to wear this
because the federal government knows that you don't trust me,
and I might beat you up extra judiciously. So if
(07:51):
if neither side trusts one another and you just have
a video camera observing the whole thing, does that actually
solve anything or does it just underscore the trust. That's
that's probably the biggest question to me that came out
of researching this episode. Yeah, I think for me, it's
it's not a magic pill by any means, but it's
another tool that can help. But but what I think
(08:13):
that then the issue to me then is you can't
just overly rely on that one tool. I think it
kind of has a tendency to lull people into complacency, like, Okay,
we've got this tool out there now, we don't have
to worry about the actual underlying issues. Yeah, and we'll
get into I mean, there's a bunch of reasons why
it's not a magic pill. We'll get into all those later.
(08:33):
But um, as of right now, it was hard to
get statistics, but I got one from about a year
ago that said forty three of the sixty eight major
cities now, have you know that what they call the
major police forces in the US now use body cameras. However,
(08:53):
U say that they will begin to use them, and
are you know, taking steps to do so. Um. But
however they here and this is one of the issues
of why it's not a magic pill. Um. Only three
percent of these and this is a survey, only three
percent of the officers reported recording seven plus hours per day.
(09:18):
And that's in a in a typical I think, what
do they work generally twelve hours at a time? Yeah,
I might, I understand. So only three percent recording seven
of those hours recorded? Uh, less than recorded three or
fewer hours per day. UM. So that's one of the
big issues is some departments, well, I mean, and it
(09:40):
varies from department in locality to locality on what the
rules are. Some of them say, all right, well, here's
your body camera, but you don't have to use it. Um.
Some of them say use it during any um, confrontation
with a citizen, any call you have to make. Some say, well,
you gotta turn them off when you go into a
(10:00):
private residence because, as we'll talk about a little later,
the a c l U. You know, it's a privacy
issue when you're filming people without their consent. That could
potentially be released, but surprisingly a little bit the a
c l U eventually kind of said, no, we will.
We would rather have the officers where these even though
it's a privacy issue for citizens. It's a tricky, tricky thing.
(10:23):
Oh man, it is a can of worms like no other. Um.
But we I mean, I think everyone knows what these are.
We haven't even said yet. These are cameras that police
officers wear on their body. Um. The ones I've mostly seen,
they were sort of on their chest, yeah, like where
there CB used to be. Yeah. Some of them though,
(10:43):
are on the shoulder, on the helmet, um or on
the collar. But mostly I've seen the one that it
kind of actually looks like a little C, B H
whatever you call it. Not a CB handle because that's
rubber Ducky in the in the truck. What you know,
the CB handle is what your name is. And rubber
(11:04):
Ducky was from Convoy. I think when was it? I
think so the movie or the song the movie, well
the songs from them, Oh man, those guys are great.
So what the receiver? But you're talking to it the mouthpiece? Okay,
I just call it the walkie talkie part. The walkie
talkie part anyway, it's generally mounted on the chest and uh,
(11:27):
there are many manufacturers that make these now, um, some
of them or wire wireless. Some of them have high death,
some of them have one touch activation and ultra wide angle.
Because that's one of the issues why it's not a
magic pill. Like the view that they get if it's
not a wide angle, is a chest high view of
(11:48):
whatever the officer's body is pointed at, not necessarily what
their faces looking at, where their eyes are looking. Um,
it's it's okay, but you know it's not. It's not
solve for everything in all issues. No, it's not, because
we'll get into later. You know, if if something happens
off camera that hasn't captured, like a suspect reaching for
(12:12):
a gun and but on camera, all of a sudden,
the cops just standing there and then the next thing
you know, he pulls his gun out and shoots the guy,
it's like, well that that cop just went berserk because
the camera didn't capture that thing. Most of them have
a time and date stamp. Some of them have the
badge number of the cop. Some of them have GPS coordinates.
Some of them take still photos some stream to remote devices.
(12:35):
Very few of them can you actually is it like
a iPhone where you can as a screen that you
can watch it, But some of them can hook up
to an app to your phone where you can watch it. Yeah, advanced.
I read this article about the one that Taser's putting out.
It was largely about that was by It was a
Motherboard article by Alex Pasternak, and he um talks about
(12:56):
how one of the big concerns is in the addition
of facial recognition, like computer facial recognition, because supposedly, I
didn't know this, half of Americans have their face in
a facial recognition database already. So if you're just somebody
walking past one of these cameras and it has facial
(13:19):
recognition attached to it, it will say, oh, well there
when Josh Clark, he was here on this date at
this time and he's wanted for murder, right, Well, that
was part of the point. It's like, well, you know,
the camera can pick it up and then the database can,
let you know, go get that guy he's wanted for murder. Um.
But also, if you're as a private citizen, as you're
(13:41):
the you're right against unlawful search and seizure being UM
violated by that kind of thing, and apparently that is
definitely a direction that that UM these cameras are starting
to go now, like facial recognition will soon be the
next step as they're deployed further and further, it's going
to be like a common UM feature on them. Yeah.
(14:04):
Another feature that uh, most of these cameras have now,
and this is a very interesting one because it's kind
of played out recently to be significant, is a buffering
pre record. So if this cameras on, it's recording, but
it records in thirty second or sixty second intervals with
no audio most of the time. So what's happening is
(14:25):
even if the cop has not pressed record, it's recording
and a racing over itself constantly, um if it's turned on.
So what happens when the cop hits record is it's
gonna have that thirty or sixty seconds tagged onto it
and that gets saved, which can be a big asset
(14:46):
if the cop. Uh you know a lot of times
a cop will see something and turn it on, but
they have just missed what's happened, but it'll grab that
thirty seconds, which can be a big help, or in
the case of Baltimore, it can bust a cop planning evidence. Yeah,
I saw that too, So that to me was more
like interpretation of video. What is your what was your
(15:08):
take on it? Well, no, there were two of them.
The most recent one was interpretation of video. I think
there was one previous to that where it actually caught
the cop planning evidence because he didn't know that the
thirty second buffer was happening. Oh really, I didn't see
that one. Uh. And then that may have been I'm
not sure in this case, but sometimes it's uploaded to
a cloud and it's there right. The second one I
(15:31):
think was what it looks like is that the cops
took a made a concerted effort to organize and deploy
their cameras at specific times to get away with planning evidence.
So that's the speculation. This is all very brand new
in the news. But you know, their cops saying like,
(15:53):
do you have yours on? You're not supposed to have
yours on yet, saying things like that, and of course
the a c, L, EU and and the prosecutors are
saying this is clearly the cops trying to coordinate this
thing with their cameras staging with reality. Yeah, and that's
something that is going to start happening more and more.
I mean, ideally all all cops are doing really good work, uh,
(16:17):
and you don't have to worry about that. But you know,
there's been plenty of cases over the years of bad
cops doing bad things, and now these body cameras, they're
gonna have to find a way to get around it. Yeah,
and I want to can I just say something real quick? So,
so the the whole issue to me is this, right, Like, um,
I think I've probably come off as distrustful of cops
sometimes and to me, um, so, as society, we give
(16:41):
cops like a tremendous amount of power over us, right,
and we give it to them in exchange for them up,
you know, upholding the law and protecting us right. Right.
But the problem is is if that trust is broken,
then that's a huge issue because as you go suddenly
(17:01):
from because you can't do anything about it, and you
go from being a protected citizen to being a hostage
of the state. Right. So that means to me that
police have to be like above reproach, that they they
have to be as angelic as possible right, and that
(17:22):
if they're there, um, if they're that, if they're called
into question for something, there shouldn't even be the slightest
hint that they're being protected or it's being covered up
or anything like that, and government needs to step in
and do something about it. And that has not been
the case. Government has broken down in its role of
(17:45):
overseeing police when the question of trust is brought up,
and what you're left with then is a citizenry that
it says I don't trust the cops any longer, and
just as bad as that, I don't trust the governments
to root out back cops. Um when the trust is broken,
but the power structure is still there. That doesn't exactly exactly,
(18:06):
So we're all hostages now to the cops. That's it's
clearer than ever. Now. That's that's my problem. I'm not
saying that that is necessarily the case, or that even
if it is the case, it's the case across the board.
I think there are plenty of plenty and plenty of
good cops out there who really do hold themselves to
a very high stenator. But the fact is there are
bad cops out there too, And I don't believe that
(18:27):
bad cops are rooted out and prosecuted like they should be,
and that the trust between the citizens and the police
has eroded as a result, and the government has totally
dropped the ball in in repairing that. Yeah, and especially
tough too when like every uh, every bad cop documentary
(18:50):
you've ever seen of them, the first thing you hear
cops saying as well, the first rule is you gotta
cover for your buddy cops. Like, even if you don't
agree with them, you don't ride out a cop. And
so then you're like, I think cops also subscribe almost
across the board to what's right is right though, you
know what I mean, and that they do kind of
(19:10):
tend to to to go toward that. I like to
think that I want to think that. Um, and I
hope I'm not being naive and thinking that you wanna
take a break. Yeah, all right, let's do it. We'll
talk a little more about body cameras. All right, we're
(19:43):
back with a little more of the mundane, which is
the cost of these things. Uh. They can go up
to about nine bucks or as low as the low hundreds. UM,
let's such just say an average of four bucks for
a system. UM, and if you have a large police
force of six cops, that's a lot of dough, Um
(20:05):
it is. But Uncle Sam is offsetting a lot of that. Yeah. Sure,
And and I think everyone is in favor of these
And I think our article points out in a very
astute way, like ideally these things can provide clarity, but
at the very least it's just another measure in place
(20:25):
to help protect citizens and police. Yes, but there's a
group who say, no, these are kind of a bad idea.
And I find it's suspicious that the government is um
supporting this so so wholeheartedly, that it's just um advancing
the surveillance state that much more normalizing the idea of
(20:45):
people being recorded everywhere they go all the time, even
in interacting with other people. Yeah, so I think there
are some people who just don't even like the idea
of of body war and cameras at all. Well, citizens
and cops probably, right, Um, So another big problem or not, Well,
I guess it is sort of a problem or challenge
(21:05):
at least, is is how to store this information, um,
depending on where you are, Like they use Oakland as
a as an example in this article. Six hundred cops,
six hundred body cameras generates about seven terabytes of video
every month and UM Storing the stuff is a big
challenge because depending on where you are, you have a
(21:27):
lot of rules in place because this is evidence potentially
and it's you know, you can't just store it anyway
you like in Oakland they have to keep it for
two years of anything that's involved in an investigation. It's
longer than that. Uh. Duluth Minnesota they point out thirty days. Laurel,
Maryland has six six months. Like that's a lot of data.
(21:51):
And the security standards are really uh strict, and they
gotta figure out how to store this stuff, how to
do it safely. And because people that know how to
make money are are behind this. There are companies that's
very smartly are coming up with complete systems that will
offer a police department and say hey, we got you covered.
(22:13):
We will take care of your storage, we will comply
with all your rules and regulations, will train your people
because you gotta hire in house people just to keep
track of the data. Uh, and we'll do it all
for you, exactly like Taser apparently has one heck of
a system where when the when the UM officer puts
there embody warrn camera on the dock to charge it
(22:36):
simultaneously starts uploading um all of the all of the
day's recording, right, So yeah, and it goes to the
cloud um and multiple people have access to it. But
it's any interaction with the video is logged automatically by
the system. If somebody goes to delete it, like only
(22:57):
certain people have access to delete file aisles, but again
multiple people do, and so if somebody goes to delete it,
they they're the other people who have the ability ability
to delete it are notified. So it's spreads Yeah, it
spreads out accountability. So it's like, well, wait a minute,
I'm going down to for letting you delete it. If so,
(23:19):
what are you deleting this for kind of thing? Um,
it's a pretty smart system. Like from what I read
from Pastor Neck in particular his article, it was like
Taser's got it going on. But if you if you
take the software away from it and the you know,
the LED light attached to it and all that stuff,
it's really what you have is basically a GoPro camera.
(23:42):
It's the it's the highly encrypted and protected software that
goes along with it that really makes it like law
enforcement specific. Yeah. I think in a lot of these
places the d A even has access remotely to this footage,
which is pretty interesting. The thing that that worries me
a little bit is the the situations where the local
(24:06):
police department has their own employees who are responsible for
keeping and maintaining and storing the video. It should be
it should be larger than that. You know, that's too localized. Yeah,
I mean this, it's sort of like it makes me
think of all the movies I've seen where the the
(24:28):
evidence locker is guarded by like a dude, and someone
comes down there and they're like, uh, you know her
in the movie. It's you know her jacked up my hand, man,
I can't sign in today. Just let me in. I
gotta look at look at something for my gaze. And
then they they're in there, you know, taking a part
of gun and putting it in their pants to take out.
(24:49):
What movie was that pounds of cocaine? That's every movie? Yeah,
that's every movie ever made. And yeah, absolutely that Frog's
movie you're talking about that had it in there. Yeah,
it was right. Apparently I added a superfluous exclamation point. Yeah,
what's it called? Just frogs, not frogs. It's just frogs?
(25:09):
Was it? Frogs? Frogs? So um. One of the criticisms
I've seen though, is it's like, well, wait a minute,
why why don't you trust us? Surely we can police
our own video, be trusted to police our own video.
It's like, no, the very fact that the video exists
means that you aren't trusted. So no, you shouldn't have
(25:29):
full jurisdiction over it. Because if this video is meant
to if it's meant because we don't trust you the citizens,
and we don't trust you the cops, but you, the
cops are the ones who are actually in control of
this video. That's lopsided. That's not a good solution. It's
not a full solution, I should say, right, because they
(25:49):
wouldn't turn that over to the citizens. So why don't
you keep track of this? No, that's a big issue too,
is who gets to see it? Yeah, well, a lot
of a lot of cities have have law in the
books where if you like a like a TV station
can ask for it and they have to give it
to him. Yeah, through uh, not FOIA, but local state
(26:10):
um disclosure lass, which is another big can of worms.
It is because you got to give the other side
as well too, right, So like if a if a
police officer dies in the line of duty and their
body cameras recording it, which happened in Arizona, I did.
It was his head anxiety the whole time watching it.
(26:32):
It was an officer named Tyler Stewart. Yeah, very sad.
It was extremely sad to see he was murdered by
some guy named Robert Smith who just drew a gun
after like three minutes of questioning. Yeah, and I didn't.
I don't know about you, but I didn't see that coming.
I didn't either. It was just like everything's normal, normal. Yeah,
it looks like super shady. Uh. And then of course
you find out afterwards that like he had been kind
(26:53):
of plating suicide and he you know, like the reason
he was there is because he trashed his girlfriend's apartment
and he had a lot of problems going on. But yeah,
I mean I was putting myself in the cop shoes,
and I'm like, I would have not suspected anything out
of this guy. Now, he was disarming, for sure, but
the but Tyler officer Stewart recorded his own death at
(27:15):
the hands of this guy and the local media was like, well,
we want to see it, and apparently Arizona has um
foil laws that are um that'd say, okay, well the
media gets it. You have to you have to release that,
which is apparently pretty rare. But in this case, it's
like it doesn't. Doesn't the doesn't the family of the
(27:38):
of the officer have any rights to be spared? This
being out there on the internet for any anybody who
wants to see this guy's death, you know, forever? Yeah,
I mean, of course they cut it, but still, you know,
like if anyone can look this up on YouTube, that's
just three I don't know. It's shameful. So the the
issue cuts both ways, especially privacy, like you do you
(27:59):
protect the citizen? Since privacy? Do you protect the cops?
Privacy do you protect no? What? Do you take the
wiki leaks approach and protect nobody's privacy like it happened?
Just keep it raw and and and if it's open
new interpretation, then settle it in court kind of thing,
you know, who knows? All right, you wanna take another break, man,
(28:21):
I keep working to send a breakes man. I'm sorry,
you know you're doing great. All right, We'll take another
break and talk a little bit about how these things
work and um, why they're not magic pills. Right after this. Okay, Chuck,
(28:52):
we're back. You know, I'll tell you one thing. I
looked up Taser's stock. Yeah, if you bought in two
ells and I think ten, you're doing pretty good. Yeah,
because of their body warn camera program. Yeah, it was
like five dollars and before this, I think they just
only made like tasers and non lethal weapons. But when
(29:15):
they got into the body camera market, their stock went
from like five bucks. I think it peaked at like
thirty five or forty. Yeah. Not bad, not bad at all.
Good for them. Yeah, but and again I can't remember
the name of it, but if you read that as
Alec pass your nach article, it's it's really sharp system.
And I own zero stock and Taser, Like, I'm just
(29:37):
a fan. I'm not a fan even if their non
lethal weapons, but their their body warrn camera systems is
pretty smart. It seems like, Yeah, I mean, I'm a
fan of smart things. Sure, if you're going to design
a system, it should be full proof and work well
and story everything you needed to not break down. It
seems like they got it going on Um. So one
(29:58):
of the other reasons that uh, like I said earlier,
this is it's not a magic pill, because you're only
getting this one. It's not. Our article points out very
astute lee that it's not an unbiased view. Still, Um,
if you had six or eight, like if you were
in London, you had six or eight cameras and different
(30:18):
angles on different light posts, and you could coordinate this
thing and fully see everything that happened, it may be unbiased, truly,
but just a single shot from a body camera sing
that single angle is not unbiased by any means. And
that's about it. Did you see the nurse wobbles arrest
(30:39):
m h The Utah nurse who refused to draw the
blood of the suspect was unconscious. So if you just
watched um, the arresting officers Jeff Paine's body camera, yeah,
I mean, like because it's up close and personal, it
goes like suddenly just basically goes dark when it's pressed
up against her act and it shows like very little
(31:03):
of anything. It was because of the other officer that
was with him his body camera. Um, that you get like,
oh wow, that really was a lot of force, unnecessary
force that this guy was using on this lady that
you wouldn't have gotten just from the footage from his
body camera, and that having supporting video evidence definitely expands
(31:27):
the the context one way or the other. It's interesting, though,
we're getting to a point where you're gonna have, um,
I say, a crime on a on a officer stop
of a car with a car camera, dashboard camera, let's
say two officers, body cameras, the people inside the car
filming with their iPhones, let's say two, So you've got
(31:50):
five different points of view going on that people courts
and juries are gonna have to sift through. D a's
defendants are gonna have to look at all this stuff
and try and piece together what happened. And this is
all new like previously you did this from testimony only
exactly So, like, are we opening ourselves up to a
(32:11):
time when d A s are are less willing to
bring up charges unless there is footage? You know? Yeah,
I wonder, but I mean it doesn't sound like there's
going to be much a lack of it. There's a
company called um Wolf Com who makes body warrant cameras
for police, is also releasing one for civilians. It's basically
(32:32):
the same thing without their police software that like just
somebody just wears it all times. Yeah, basically to film
the police while the police are filming them. And they
say it's perfect for protests, improving legality, and there's like, um,
there's like a button, the power button or stop or
the record button has to be pressed a certain way,
so even if like somebody bumping into your beating you up,
(32:55):
your camera won't stop recording. It's like, good lord, Like
the act that this is the climate that that's like
a selling point is really unsettling and sad, you know.
It is like, hey, everybody, come get your body warn
cameras because you need to film the people who are
filming you, because you can't trust the even this measure
(33:18):
that's being used to supposedly protect your rights. It's crazy
that it's crazy that we're in the state in this country.
That raised another point to me to chuck the idea
of having all these different points of view or video documentation.
This is also coming at a time when we are
(33:38):
starting to see editing software where you can kick video
and make it do anything. You can make it say anything,
you can make it, you can do anything with video.
The moon landing. How is that going to affect you know,
the use of video and in documentation for court cases
too well, and we've already seen just with Baltimore, you know,
(33:59):
what can happen and cops now have to wear these
and where they're trying to coordinate who's got who's camera on?
Did you have your camera on? What about that thirty
second buffer? Um? Geez. It's all just sad that we're
at that state now to where but you know, it's
also a good thing that, like, for how many years
were bad things happening without any uh citizen? Uh? I
(34:26):
mean there was no recourse, you know, for so long
and there still isn't to a large degree. This is
just a little small thing. No, it's true, But I
mean that has to be a certain level of at
least gratification among people who have lived with distrust of
the police or have been abused as a whole by police,
(34:47):
um for decades that people are now finally starting to
be like, oh man, this is crazy. You how long
has this been going on? You know, because there's a
light being shined on it, um. And so in that sense, yes,
it's crazy that we're at this state right now. In
our our country, but you know, maybe it's just a
(35:08):
growing pain towards moving to a better place. Yeah, you
know that rialto study too. And their summation, they also
said something about, um, I can't remember exactly only put it,
but something about how they found that it They think
that it also requires police to take to take more
verbal abuse from people, um, which you know isn't fun,
(35:31):
but sort of like the days are over where if
you're smart off to a cop, they can't just throw
your face on the ground and put their knees through
your cheekbone because you've smarted off to them. Um, So
they did. I don't think they weighed in either way
on what that means. They just said, what, you know,
it looks like cops are going to have to start
enduring a little more talk back from the drunk guy
(35:53):
at the bar without diving right into excessive force because
they were piste off. Now drunk kind of bar, notwithstandard
What are the big things that that these body cameras
are touted for, and I think you said it early on, um,
is that people behave differently when they know they're being recorded,
so that officers won't have to take verbal lashings from
(36:15):
people as often, and so that might that that the
very presence of the cameras supposedly um can keep situations
from escalating, or it can actually de escalate a situation.
Just if if the officers like need you to know
you're being recorded right now, people supposedly straighten up. I
(36:36):
don't know if they have to or not. Well, we're
in such the early nascent days of this, it's um. Yeah,
this is sort of an early podcast to see what
ramifications are gonna happen later on, you know who knows. Yeah,
And one of the things that I saw was that
this is a situation. This is a technology that's gotten
a lot of press, but it's still very early on
(36:59):
in actual academic study of it, supposedly, and including the
rialto study. Most studies are not published in journals and
aren't peer reviewed. They're just you know, studies largely carried
out by like criminologists or scientists, but also by the
local police departments carrying the studies out on their own department.
(37:20):
Right There's supposedly only been two peer reviewed journal studies
published on body warrant cameras so far, UM, and one
of them was on the effect of giving an officer
leeway on wind to press record. How how does that
impact things like, um, the use of violence and this
(37:42):
This two thousand and sixteen study in the Journal of
Experimental Criminology found that, compared to the control group, UM,
if the officer had very little leeway and deciding wing
to record, meaning they had to record all the time,
UM that physical the use of physical violence decreased by
thirty seven. But in situations where officers had a lot
(38:05):
of leeway in deciding when to press record or not,
UM it was higher than the control group. Yeah, that
this whole win. Is it recording and when is it not?
Is the seems like the biggest sticking point right now?
And are we going to move to a future where
they are absolutely required to record any interaction with a
(38:25):
citizen or they get suspended or something like who knows
what we're headed towards. Yeah, Like it's a big deal
if they're not recording, not like a you know, you
gotta you're supposed to be recording kind of thing. I mean,
I guess it from a good cops point of view,
they should say, like, man, I want to record this
thing because this is what's gonna exonerate me in this
(38:46):
atmosphere we have today. Yeah, but I think it right.
I think cops are also scared that that that footage
that it could also be in like footage can be
used against them, even if it doesn't show anything. Yeah,
you know what I mean. I think Yeah, I think
it's a it's a man, it's just so fraught as
a technology to be to be used like this, you know.
(39:10):
And again the fact that we're using it says, hey,
you guys don't trust you guys, So we're gonna keep
these cameras here so everybody be cool. Like that solves anything.
I wonder when cars are gonna come equipped with built
in cameras that, you know, record all around the car.
Let's say, I mean the camera's already there with you
(39:32):
know a lot of these uh safety features. All that's
lacking as a record button. Well, the cops have those
for um, running license plates while they're driving down the street.
Their cameras are are just looking at license plates over
the cars they're driving past to to run them. And
there was one other thing I saw in that um
fast Co Motherboard pastor Knack article. Um he just kind
(39:56):
of casually made mention that department stores, how spittles airports,
they're already using video facial recognition systems. So if you
walk into like Macy's or something, I don't know this specifically,
but I'm just picking on Macy's that when you're on camera,
your face is being run against the database to see
if you're somebody that they should be worried about, or
(40:18):
maybe even call the cops about to say that somebody
that likes neckties. And they may have that too. It
depends on whether they got their software from Taser or
from Marcus. Yeah, I did not know that, and that
that just takes profiling to a higher level. Huh. Yeah, well,
or maybe not if they're getting good information. I mean,
(40:43):
that's not profiling, is it. It's ultra tailored profiling. If
someone walks in and they're like, well, this guy committed
three acts of of shoplifting in the past year, they
might want to watch him. Is that profiling? No, because
it's specific to you, not say your race or something
like so, yeah, it's it's difficult to argue that that
(41:03):
at that point of it. It's more just like the
man you know that being surveiled everywhere. So this is
a good one. Yeah, you got anything else. No, I'm
interested to see where this goes. Plenty of follow up
stories over the years. I'm sure ye will happen. Yes,
I'm sure as well. Um, if you want to know
(41:24):
more about body Warren cameras, police cameras, just look up
police body cameras. They'll bring up this really good article
by Julia Layton on how stuff works. Since I said
that it's time for listener mail, I'm gonna call this, well,
I'm gonna call it a very cute email from a
little kid. Maybe I shouldn't read that one on this one, right,
(41:46):
He's got a slog through this and be like, this
is the future I have ahead of me? All right?
So this was from Noah. He is five years old
and is Scottish. Um and his mom sort of supplemented
the email with some little thing here and there, and
then at the end she said, you know, he really
I wanted to write into you guys personally, so I
let him use my email account and otherwise it is
(42:08):
just his words. And then a PS from mom, Dear
Josh C h O s H. Very cute. I like
listening to your podcast. I listened to it in the
car and before I fall asleep. My favorite facts is
about an iceberg as big as Jamaica and what to
do in a tornado, And then mom says in parentheses,
(42:29):
he reminds me frequently to not go in a tunnel
during a tornado. We live in Scotland, where there are
no tornadoes. You're funny and I like learning about disasters
as long as they're not too scary. And my mama says,
I'm too little. Can you do an episode about the
different kinds of bridges and engineers? I listened to that
(42:49):
one you did, but I'd like another because I'm going
to be a structural engineer and build bridges. Love Noah parentheses.
I'm five and I live in Scotland, which is in Europe.
Thanks thanks for the tip. Noah, Noah, that is great.
You're wonderful. We appreciate you. The mom adds this, ps,
I'm afraid there's one in the family who's not a fan.
(43:12):
Every time Stuff you Should Know comes on in the car,
my three year old daughter cries, no, not Stuff you
should Know. I can't sing to that. Oh that's cute,
and she says, sorry, guys, you can't compete with Disney
and me personally Uh, Mom, if you can record your
daughter screaming about how she doesn't like stuff you should know,
(43:35):
and then record Noah talking about how he does love
stuff you should know in that lovely Scottish accent, I
for one would like to hear that. Yeah, same here
and we'll even play it. Um. Yeah, thanks a lot. No,
you're the bomb buddy in America. That means you're terrific.
Uh and thanks to mom too for fostering the email. Yes, wait,
(43:57):
wait to go? Mom is great. You're all great. If
you're a cute kid who wants to tell us high,
we love hearing from you. Um. You can tweet to
us at josh um Clark or at s y s
K podcast. You can hang out with Chuck on Facebook
dot com slash stuff you Should Know or slash Charles W.
Chuck Bryant. You can take the traditional route and send
(44:18):
us an email at stuff Podcast. How stuff Works dot
com has always join us at our home on the web,
Stuff you Should Know dot com for more on this
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