Link:http://online.wsj.com/article/APf61b...KEYWORDS=lapelU.S. District Judge Shira Scheindlin ordered a pilot program of the cameras and other major reforms to the New York Police Department's stop-and-frisk policy this week, after she found the NYPD intentionally discriminated against minorities.......In New York, Scheindlin ordered one police precinct per borough where the most stops occur to host the yearlong pilot program. That means possibly more than a thousand officers would be recording with cameras on their eye glasses or lapels.
davidbfpo
Cameras don't lie, at least not without leaving clues showing manipulation.
Technology just gets cheaper and better, so it's more a question of where society will allow the expectation of privacy.
There are ample signs in England that if a criminal prosecution lacks some video footage - if relevant or possibly available - then managers and prosecutors maybe reluctant to press ahead. For example for benefit fraud, where a claim is made for disability, three separate video clips are needed that show the person is able bodied, e.g. lifting heavy weights.
At court it is well known that magistrates will give weight to video evidence. It will be interesting to see if this changes when the defence has their own video. Even in a relatively short incident at Downing Street gates, known as "Pleb Gate", the video record has been challenged.
As a society we are becoming a visual generation; no pictures, nothing there.
davidbfpo
Some years ago I was at an Officer Survival seminar and a defense Attorney was giving a lecture about courtroom testimony, evidence, etc. One of his points was that whenever possible he would use Visual evidence not Testimony or audio evidence. Visual is much more persuasive at least based upon his courtroom experience which was considerable.
I remember hearing a lecture on evidence as to which was more powerful, 100 nuns who say they watched the courtyard all night and never saw anyone cross it or the footprints in the snow across the courtyard demonstrating that someone had crossed it during the night.Some years ago I was at an Officer Survival seminar and a defense Attorney was giving a lecture about courtroom testimony, evidence, etc. One of his points was that whenever possible he would use Visual evidence not Testimony or audio evidence. Visual is much more persuasive at least based upon his courtroom experience which was considerable.
That being said ...
... I was actually just thinking the oposite, that today I cannot trust anything on video.
http://www.noupe.com/inspiration/50-...portraits.html
With the right technology I can prove that velociraptors shot Kennedy...
Last edited by TheCurmudgeon; 08-15-2013 at 08:00 PM.
"I can change almost anything ... but I can't change human nature."
Jon Osterman/Dr. Manhattan
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Something else to wear, more wires to route, another battery to check, more opportunity for your Sgt and anybody on high to bug you, more things to catalog and store and if the durn thing malfunctions in operation, storage or retrieval what you witnessed didnt really happen. And more OJ juries who firmly believe that if it ain't on tape, it didn't really happen.
To me this is just another manifestation of the modern cultural belief that we can make things perfect if we only have another machine. In the long run little good will come of that belief.
"We fight, get beat, rise, and fight again." Gen. Nathanael Greene
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