Streaming to Protect and Serve: Video in Law Enforcement

几年前, while attending a Saturday morning traffic safety and defensive-driving class, I struck up a conversation with one of the police officers who patrolled a particularly busy stretch of local four-lane highway.

在对话中, he brought up the issue of transitioning from in-car video solutions that used analog video recording on a physical medium to the newer digital, 基于文件的录像机. 他提到, 作为一个军官, he wasn't allowed to take the tape out of the recorder, to avoid any potential conflict of interest or perceived evidence tampering, but that keeping track of a physical tape seemed much easier than keeping track of video files in a world where physical evidence still ruled the day.

In 2019, that issue of collecting and tracking evidence is no longer an issue just for in-car camera systems, but one that covers every step of evidence gathering, 保留, 和演示.

This article covers just a few major points for the streaming industry to consider when it comes to use of streaming video or audio for law enforcement purposes in the United States. There are some interesting problems to be solved, and the opportunity to expand towards global markets, but the potential social and financial rewards for "getting it right" in an era of distrust are critical for both suspects and officers to have access to increasingly media-rich evidence.

摄像头无处不在

From body cameras to in-dash recorders, it seems that law enforcement cameras are proliferating.

One of the largest names in body camera technology is 沃奇卫士视频该公司总部位于德克萨斯州艾伦市. 公司创始人, 罗伯特Vanman, sold his stake in a radar detector company in 2002 and founded WatchGuard to focus on the video needs of first responders.

"We started off in the in-car video space back in 2002,范曼说 during a recent radio interview with KRLD in Dallas, "then we started dabbling with body cameras back in 2010, and we decided to go big in body cameras in early 2013."

Vanman said that WatchGuard had created its own platform for recording body cameras, but that demand for body cameras "exploded" after a 2014 call to action by the family of Michael Brown, 一个弗格森, 密苏里州的青少年, asked protesters to peaceably join in a movement to compel the use of body cameras for police officers.

"We ask that you channel your frustration in ways that will make a positive change," the family wrote in a November 2014 statement, released after a grand jury chose not to charge a police officer in Brown's death. "We need to work together to fix the system that allowed this to happen. Join with us in our campaign to ensure that every police officer working the streets in this country wears a body camera."

Vanman acknowledges that the use of body cameras is both for the protection of the officer and a department's reputation with the general public.

"If you go back 15 or 20 years, police officers were often fairly resistant to having a camera put into their car,范曼说. "But once the in-car video kind of saved their reputation or supported their story, then they become fans and use the system more aggressively."

"We're seeing the same transition with body cameras,范曼说. “出大门, a lot of officers are resistant, kind of feels like Big Brother, but once they see the benefit that it has and it corroborates their story, they don't want to leave the precinct without it."

WatchGuard has a significant competitor in a company called 轴突. The company used to be called Taser, synonymous with the non-lethal shocking device that most law enforcement officers carry on their belts.

"We look at our space as law enforcement video,范曼说. "Between Watchguard and 轴突 we probably make up 80% of the market."

沃奇卫士视频 and 轴突 make up about 80% of the law enforcement video market, according to 沃奇卫士视频 founder 罗伯特Vanman.

填补空白

Not only have officers had to become comfortable wearing their own body cameras, but they also have to contend with the rising use of smartphone video recordings from bystanders, or even the person they're approaching for questioning.

Early efforts by law enforcement to quell the use of bystander recordings in court—arguing, 在某些情况下, that the recordings were edited or only show a portion of the interaction with officers—were met with resistance by judges unwilling to infringe on First Amendment rights.

Without wading too deeply into the debate around what can or cannot be filmed—we're a tech magazine, after all—we will point towards two landmark cases in 2017.

The first was one where bystander-initiated video, 录制并随后播放, can have a positive net effect. 2015年初, bystander Feidin Santana filmed a North Charleston, SC police officer fire at a fleeing and unarmed suspect, striking him in the back five times and ultimately killing him. Santana's video directly contradicted officer Michael Slager's account of shooting Walter Scott in self-defense and, while the local trial ended in a mistrial, Slager pled guilty in 2017 to federal charges of deprivation of rights and the use of excessive force. Slager is now serving a 20-year sentence, having lost a federal appeals case in early 2019.

A second case in 2013 had to do with whether or not a bystander recording a police interaction was covered under the First Amendment. 在这段时间里, there was little precedent that kept pace with the technology of smartphones being able to record and/or live stream video. As such, the initial trial outcome for Fields vs City of Philadelphia, a judge that the mere act of "taking … pictures with no further comments" did not constitute protected "expressive conduct" under the First Amendment since the judge surmised that the defendant was not expressing their opinion by merely recording the act, which itself was allowed by a written policy on the Philadelphia Police Department's website.

The ruling was reversed by the Third Circuit Court, which said the lower court had erred by focusing on intent of the act of recording rather than the act itself. The reversal also noted that citizen recordings fill in the gaps between officer body cameras and dashboard cameras, ultimately enriching an understanding of what is occurring in the moment and spurring "action at all levels of government to address police misconduct and to protect civil rights."

加固摄像机

In prior 文章 around mining, 制造业, and deep-sea drilling or exploration, we've covered the need to ruggedize cameras and other acquisition equipment for harsh operating environments.

The same requirement exists for law enforcement video units. Not only do they demand high-definition video but also wideband audio, both so that command posts can follow the action in real time but also so that the audio and video are clear enough for later use in court.

"We go to pretty herculean efforts to ensure that the cameras are, 几乎, 字面上的, 防弹,范曼说, chuckling and adding that the company has a picture on the wall at its new headquarters of one of its Vista cameras "that actually got shot and survived, but we don't guarantee that they're actually 防弹."

监管链

All those live streams are important, but what happens to the video footage once it's archived as video recordings? How is it collated, can it be retrieved easily, and is it secure? Can it be manipulated (beyond just truncating the video)?

My first exposure to in-dash recorders came way back in 1993, when I worked in public affairs and video production at a military aerospace testing facility. As antiquated as it sounds now, we were the only nearby location that had, among other high-tech capabilities, 录像机.

A local sheriff's office approached the military officer in charge of our production facility, asking us to duplicate a video where a suspect claimed use of excessive force by local police in a routine traffic stop. The video clearly showed that—after repeated warnings to both driver and passenger to stay in the car while the officer ran identifying 信息—that the passenger exited the stopped car, 双手放在前面，并拢, stepped into the officer's face, and dared him to arrest her while saying "you're not a real cop."

The officer complied, with no use of force. Yet the video was necessary to prove his version of events. 幸运的是, 复制的视频, shown on a borrowed VHS player in the judge's chambers before trial started, resulted in the case of excessive force being withdrawn by the suspect's attorney.