San Jose police to get uniform camera
It will fit over an officer’s ear, like a Bluetooth device, and it will record an entire incident from the officer’s point of view in high definition.
By Amy Hollyfield
SAN JOSE, CA (KGO) — The recent cell phone video of San Jose police beating an unarmed suspect only tells part of the story, according to an officer’s lawyer and police say it underscores the need for a new piece of technology.
San Jose police are about to become the first in the nation to have HD cameras integrated with their uniforms.
The video of the arrest of a San Jose State University student shows enough, to make you want to look away. It shows police hitting the unarmed 20-year-old man with a baton more than 10 times, Tasing him, and you can hear his cries.
Still, it doesn’t show everything investigators would like to see.
“If you notice, it was grainy, it was from a long distance and that doesn’t give us the full picture of what was going on,” says Bobby Lopez, President of the San Jose Police Officers Association.
But San Jose police say they have an answer for the imperfect and incomplete cell phone video.
“We will be the first department in the nation to do this,” says San Jose Police Chief Rob Davis.
Chief Davis says he has been working with the Taser company to bring a new camera to San Jose police. It will fit over an officer’s ear, like a Bluetooth device, and it will record an entire incident from the officer’s point of view in high definition.
In the San Jose beating case, he says it would have made a huge difference.
“We would have had the video from the moment they walked in the house. So it would answer a lot of questions that we have,” says Chief Davis.
“This is big brother that has come to San Jose,” says Steven Clark, a defense attorney.
Clark says this raises a few privacy issues. He does like the idea of having concrete evidence to use in court, but he’s concerned about the side effects.
“What about children that may be present during an arrest? What about other innocent people who are now going to be videotaped every time the police have an arrest?” says Clark.
He’s not the only one with concerns; some of the officers are worried about their own privacy and that simple things like a personal phone call will be recorded.
“I think it’s a great idea,” says Lopez. Lopez hopes to persuade the rank and file that this technology is in their best interest. He also adds “It’s going to vindicate many officers.”
He wishes the cameras were in place for the SJSU arrest that has now generated a criminal investigation into the police officers’ actions.
Phuong Ho is the 20-year-old man seen beaten in the cell phone video. He is suing the police department for excessive force. The department’s investigation should be turned over to the district attorney by Friday and the officers involved are on paid leave. Regardless, the attorney for one of the officers told the San Jose Mercury News they did nothing wrong.
The attorney said the entire video shows Ho being combative and non-compliant which he says “raised the stakes of the game.”
2 responses so far ↓
Crush The Talmudic Zionist Serpent // October 27, 2009 at 7:20 pm
This is a classic example of technology based social engineering as part of the planned scientific evolutionary transition from Homo Sapiens into Homo Cyborgs.
The use of ever increasing sophisticated technology to monitor and watch people 24/7 won’t have any affect on ever escalating criminality. Fighting crime is the Hobgoblin they have let loose into the public domain as the perfect excuse for the continued expansion of the panoptic Orwellian Police State.
If a government truly wished to reduce crime they would have to deal with the decades of Fabian Socialist and Marxist ideas and philosophies that have led to family and societal breakdown.
“Destroy the family and destroy society” – Sociopathic mass murdering Bolshevik Lenin.
pjwalker911 // October 28, 2009 at 2:02 am
Yes, the UK, with five million cameras capturing each individual 400 times a day watching their every move, even listening to their conversations as they did in East German Stasiland, admits that the cameras only help with about one tenth of a per cent of crimes. In other words, totally useless expediture of billions of the tax-zapped public’s hard-earned coin. They were first installed under the pretext of fighting terror (psyops), and later changed over to “fighting crime” yet the only purpose of cameras is to intimidate and condition a cowed citizenry into obeying and learning to love being herded and prodded like cattle down the slaughter chutes. Government is a cesspool of evil manipulating snakes (sorry to the snakes!) and the sooner the people understand this and get upset about it, I mean really upset instead of just going along to get along, the sooner we can have a world of freedom.