Before I left, the SF Police Commision changed policy to require supervisory review and documentation (written on a template form) of every instance of 'Drawing and Exhibiting a Firearm'. This included BWC video review. So.....5 cops search a warehouse after a silent alarm goes off. Takes 30 minutes to search and clear this large building (not at all uncommon). That's 2.5 hrs of video to review.....for one incident.Originally Posted by Erick Gelhaus
They are pretty terrible. We ditched them. Half of them never worked, the other half would turn on multiple times a shift without the gun being unholstered and activate body cams. Strongly would not recommend
Activating the camera upon drawing the gun is going to miss whatever the officer saw that caused that officer to draw the gun. This seems like a great way to miss critical information.
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The Axon systems "remember" what they saw for 30 seconds prior to activation.
"Knowledge is good." Emil Faber, date unknown.
Axon runs a continuous 30 second buffer. You’ll miss the first 30 seconds of audio, but you’ll have video of whatever the camera saw.
You’ll also have views from whoever else’s camera was nearby too.
I’ve had my bodycam activate when an officer across the street hit his emergency lights on the squad, and also when someone turns on their taser across the room.
We don’t have the holster camera triggers, but a coworker had them at his former dept and apparently locking up your gun at the jail or booking room was fun, since whoever wasn’t ready to disarm their camera got there’s turned on too.
My agency began issuing BWC's and Axon Signal devices in early 2023.
I've had mine for about eight months now.
I have an overall general ambivalence towards it. It creates a small degree of annoyance in my daily routine of press checking the gun prior to the beginning of my shift as I have to deactivate the device. Forgetting, activates my camera which I then have to deactivate and classify the video. It's not a huge deal, it's just another thing to be aware of in a sea of shit that I have to be aware of.
We only have a layer of "supervisor review" for weapon displays, ie when a weapon is pointed at a suspect. I can draw my firearm and activate that camera eighty two thousand times a night if I see fit. There's no mandatory review...yet.
I don't think it's a bad thing. I generally like my BWC so on the off chance that I can't physically activate it, at least on the surface, id like another method in place to turn the camera on. I don't think i'm naïve but i'd like to think that the camera is going to help me rather than hurt me in a deadly force encounter.
We have physical(?) on-site storage instead of cloud based, so we have to purchase the storage device(s).
"It's surprising how often you start wondering just how featureless a desert some people's inner landscapes must be."
-Maple Syrup Actual
Outside of reliability issues, probably not a big deal. Most departmental policies these days are such that officers are required to activate cameras at any public contact anyway. I will guess that a lot of the time the camera will already be on when the pistol clears plastic.
For those times when it is not already on, nowadays most officers I know will be glad to have it automatically activated. We have a county DA who actually ran with the promise to put cops in jail for shooting minorities. That recording may be the most accurate (understanding that they don’t capture everything) evidence presented at Grand Jury. We have a 2 minute look back, but in the heat of battle one may not remember to hit the button after a shooting. We just had one officer in a gunfight that lasted over two minutes. If his camera had not been on, nothing would have captured the start of it.
I have been around long enough that I have done this job without cameras, before cell, phone, video, and with cameras. In my humble opinion, the cameras help far more than they are a hindrance.
Polite Professional
Assuming technology and agency policy somehow collide in the spectrum of reality and common sense, I agree with PDSgt. The cameras help cops more often than hurt them.
I'm not completely up to date as my current security job doesn't have BWC's, but the biggest issue I've seen is positioning of the camera to capture the most important aspects of the encounter. Viewing the bottom of the officer's arms or the magazine of an AR-15 seems of little help in second-guessing an officer's decision.
At least, this idea seems less stupid than the Tasercam that I had to confront back at my real job. I remarked that the Tasercam was unlikely to capture much of the bad guy's actions. It might have also encouraged pointing Tasers at people unnecessarily as the camera was in the Taser rather than mounted to the officer.
After a lieutenant who endorsed the idea fried the electronics of three Tasers trying to mount the Tasercam, this idea floated away with the Good Idea Fairy.
This is an issue. Our current issued vest does not come equipped to properly mount the camera's. My BWC footage shows a very top down perspective and I tend to cut a lot of heads off. I'm 6'0 and I would imagine on shorter Deputies, the issue is even worse. Oh well...nothing I can do about that.
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