As far pairs of cops, they are occasionally paired and I believe that the S.O.P. is to dispatch the paired patrols to the worst sounding calls and the singular cops to the rest.
Partnered cops is unarguably better in every way and while it's logically the right thing to do, what's logical is not necessarily financially feasible. To ensure all patrols are paired, you'd need to cut the number of patrols per shift in half (that'll be good for crime rate) or hire even more new cops (that'll be good for the training issue that's been discussed).
Tibertus 说:
As far as body cams go. If Russian drivers have figured out the logistics, I'd hope our police forces could do the same.
Well, I know you're a smart dude so I'm guessing this is mostly tongue-in-cheek but I feel the need to clarify a few things anyway.
Dash cams aren't the same as body cams, or we wouldn't be having this discussion, nor do civilians have anywhere near the same requirements to operate a camera as a working police officer. Civilians basically have no rules while cops are drowned in them.
So, financially, there are
nearly a million peace officers active in the United States. If we incredibly roughly say that a third of them (can be transferred between the three shifts of the day) need cameras, and just say they'll all get $250 dollar Go-Pro, that's around 85 million dollars for the cameras alone. That'll come out of the pockets of departments that haven't purchased Tasers yet, too.
Secondly, the logistics, are the cameras monitored by someone else at all times? I think many would agree this is unnecessary, but at the same time I've heard plenty of people say that's exactly what they mean by bodycams for every cop. So we'd need to pull a million professional camera watchers out of thin air, and they can't be random joes, they need to be versed in basic law and procedure.
Add in the technical aspects, how much footage will be stored, if not the entire shift? Where will it stored? I guarantee you the average Police Department does not have the server capabilities and storage space to start recording entire shifts of every patrol. Who even has access to these files? Is it restricted to prevent tampering and protect privacy or more general so that people can actually get their jobs done?
What kind of camera should it even be? Is a high resolution camera necessary? Many would say yes, but that would make the cameras more expensive, require considerable maintenance and complicate that computer storage problem even further. What about night vision, or zooming?
Which brings me to the legal problems, if the above is all resolved now
every single police officer is a walking high-resolution night cam. Holy ****, the privacy infractions. I remember when people were outraged that cameras were being installed at intersections, and the talks of how we're becoming like nanny-state England and their endless CCTV coverage. In my opinion, this would be a one-up on England.
Not just civilian's privacy either, what about the cop's privacy? Does he get to turn the camera off when he's taking a ****?
To further the legal aspect, there's also the fact of what of this footage is admissible in court? Only a judge can really say, but no judge has time to watch an 8, 12 or even 16 hour shift worth of video footage, and that's assuming that only one day is applicable to the case.
That was pretty rambly, but it's a lot of thoughts that have come to me while people clamor 'body cams body cams!' without really thinking about how complicated that would really be.
Edit; in conclusion it all comes down to taxes. Taxes need to be higher to get this done, and no one will vote for more taxes, so it will take as long as it takes for technology to drag the government along with it.
