9 years ago
5
White House offers $263 million in funding for police body cameras
In case it wasn't glaringly clear, police accountability is a major concern these days -- and the White House is convinced that technology can help solve the problem. It's now promising up to $263 million in matched funding for law enforcement agencies that want to buy body cameras for their officers. About $75 million of the fund is for purchasing the cameras themselves (up to 50,000 of them); the rest is devoted to storage, training, and outreach programs meant to renew the level...
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I love this idea. It keeps the cops safe by making sure that bad actors can't make false claims. It keeps the people safe for the very same reason.
The critical part will be to make sure that the officer cameras can't be turned off, or otherwise tampered with. There's been a few too many cases where cops turned them off right before something happened.
I think the cameras will be the cheapest part of the whole deal. Networking, video storage and processing and security will be a huge part of the infrastructure that needs to be expanded.
Yeah. the biggest concern is making sure the video is quickly uploaded via the cloud so that it cannot be removed. The problem is, if there is corruption(and we all know there is), you never know how far it can go and what it can effect.
I like to think that most people, even cops, can understand why something like this is important going forward. The technology is out there. It's not going away, and it makes everyone a little bit safer by making sure the data is available for impartial evaluation and review.
Likewise, it will make the 'rogue' members of the police force stand out like sore thumbs. Dodgy cop guy keeps turning off his camera right before horrible things happen. Even if the evidence is circumstantial, it's enough to make people sit up and take notice pretty quickly.
Yeah, and by safety, even cops benefit from this technology. Literally, everyone wins.
And the bad apples get removed from the barrel.