I am but a humble reserve patrolman on a small, underfunded department. I’m interested in buying my own bodycam. We have dashcams, but no bodycams.
I know that Axons are the gold standard. Has anyone else bought their own? Does Axon do individual officer sales?
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We have Body Cam by Pro Vision. Video quality is good enough, but it has way too many buttons, and is not user friendly. I prefer the Taser cam.
Hopefully they will one day make a small, reliable, Body Cam that has plenty of storage and is easy to use.
Personally, I would not. If I was really gung ho about it, I would clear it with whatever your version of city legal is. If you don't have city legal, default to "don't".
An audio recorder can end most complaints, is much easier to store the files for, and is much more difficult to hang you with. Your camera will see things you don't and vice versa. A recorder isn't as likely to hear things you didn't and vice versa.
Sorta around sometimes for some of your shitty mod needs.
Good points. I saved the model you use, somewhere in my notes. I’ll dig it out.Originally Posted by BehindBlueI's
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What retention schedule would you use? Where would you store the video? What will the dept's stance on you doing it be? Are the first three big questions I'd ask - long before I looked at which one. After that you get into other personal policy questions.
Absent a dept camera, the old style micro / digital audio recorders would be a solid bet.
Take a look at the Harvard Law study done on the pursuit video from the Scott v. Harris SCOTUS ruling. The most interesting take-away I had from that was Who saw it was far more important than What they saw.
I've used both VieVu and two generations of Taser/Axon chest cameras. Each has pros & cons from a user perspective.
Last edited by Erick Gelhaus; 09-15-2018 at 09:45 PM. Reason: typo
What BBI said.
I was involved in a lawsuit for use of force that ended in arbitration. The holding cell camera caught it all. The Bureau dismissed the civil rights complaint within hours of viewing the tape (that is another story). The City failed to keep a copy of the tape, leaving the only copy in the hands of the plaintiff's attorney. My attorney sat in my living room and went over the tape with me frame by frame. We agreed on what the tape showed before the use of force. The morning of arbitration the Judge claimed to have watched the tape on her home bigscreen in preparation for the arbitration. Several times and frame by frame and claimed she did not see what we plainly saw. This was a VERY pro LE judge, that my attorney was very pleased to draw. We were sitting in the courtroom the morning of arbitration, and my attorney wanted to play the video one more time. We did, and left it playing long enough to watch the prisoner's response to pepper spray, which was to square off, wipe his eyes, raise his hands, and say "bring it, motherfucker". Attorney's heads at both tables popped up. Neither sets of cousel had watched the video after the application of force, and were viewing the belligerance of the plaintif as though for the first time. Plaintiff's counsel started making excuses, and how there was no way to be absolutely sure that their client had said it. My attorney stammered a bit, clearly embarrassed at being caught flat footed. We won the arbitration, but I was very surprised at what everyone saw in the same video, and how a very important part of the video was skipped because everyone assumed that the moments leading up to the use of force were the only ones that mattered.
Also, in this state, audio and video are public records and subject to IPRA requests.
pat
Last edited by UNM1136; 09-15-2018 at 10:36 PM. Reason: Typos
Sending a PM on some things that may be applicable.
I love my body cam, but that will probably end up being a LOT of data to save if you use it for every interaction. It could get expensive when you’re footing the bill.
Sherm I got one you can have. If you want it PM me. Uses a micro SD card.
Formerly known as xpd54.
The opinions expressed in this post are my own and do not reflect the opinions or policies of my employer.
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Thanks for the info, everyone.
One thing that I love about this place is that it gives the starting points for a lot of further investigation that often gets no attention when someone around the coffee pot says, “We should buy our orb badge cams like (BLANK) does!”
Great answers.
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