[U184]

I am presenting an Act, at State level, here in Missouri. I am looking for others to gather signatures and submit the Act to their State Legislature. The goal is to have as many States pass the Act into law as possible so that it can be presented to Congress.

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
The Act, in part, pertains to the mandatory placement and use of personal video and audio recording devices on the person of all Law Enforcement personnel and vehicles. These personal and vehicular devices will become part of the mandatory equipment for Law Enforcement Officers that engage in civilian contact of any kind.

The Act will further this to require all officers of all kinds, both at the State and Federal levels and in all stations that deal with civil contact of any kind, arrest, response, investigation, interrogation, evidence, transport and probation/parole, etc.

Furthermore, this Act will call for the immediate implementation of both personal devices and vehicular devices to be installed for the greater good and safety of the people. Pursuant to the public needs, the Act will be funded by a Federal, joint program, for each State to ensure proper funding.

Such devices have been used in squad cars for many years and have had an overwhelmingly positive impact on society. These devices ensure officer safety and uncontested evidence in court proceedings. All the States in the USA have some portion of their police force already using these devices in their vehicles and the trend has also started for personal devices on officers themselves.

To ensure public safety, it will also be set in the Act, to include that all monitoring systems for officers/vehicles be done via live feed. This feed will be sent to a separate unconnected State and or Federal Agency, that already exists or one that is created for this purpose. Such an agency will be responsible for observation, report and dispatch as, and when needed, as well as to forward the recorded video/audio feeds when needed for litigation.
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

The Act is finished and is being reviewed by my Lawyer and will be ready to go by mid September, at the latest. Please contact me if you would be willing to help in this action.

Thank you for your time and effort in this matter.

~KF

[U184]

Anyone up for this?

[grassroots1]

I'm definitely in favor of having cameras on each cop, I think it's a crucial step. What can I do?

[lubbockjoe]

Sorry Kflint....

I think it's a bad idea. Sounds like the beginning of a police state to me. An uncorrupt government with the beefed up power you describe would be acceptable. A corrupt government with such power is scary.

Do you have any economic motivators for this activity?

[grassroots1]

What do you imagine is the danger here, lubbockjoe?

[lubbockjoe]

I’m concerned about increased police powers The Act would grant. How can we be sure those increased police powers would not be used for other purposes in the future? What if our country experienced civil breakdown? Could those powers be somehow used against innocent citizens?

We need to be thoughtful about what we ask for.

Some dialogue would be nice. Why [The Act] now?

[U184]

Gr1, send me over a PM with your State (so I can count it as covered) and a contact email (unless you want to do it via PoFo) and I will get you all the paper work you will need, as soon as it is all ready. Mostly it will be setting up ways for gettings sigs, 500 is usually enough and a free website should do that easily. I will try to set up a basic free theme site for everyone. The actual Act has to be submitted to each State Rep by a resident of each State, that is why I need extra feet on the ground.

Thanks for the interest!

lubbockjoe, there is no money to be made here. Also there is no "special police powers" just a monitoring system where the cops being monitored have no control over the data being monitored and that said data is looked over by investigative agencies.

Video cams in Police cars have shown themselves to be a major deterrent to police corruption, as long as they are in front of their car...
The reality is, these devices make it all but impossible to skirt the law. The 3rd party monitoring service will send information to internal investigations at both the State and Federal levels per the Act.

Look at NY in the late 80's 70% of the force was indited and several hundred officers, judges, etc went down. This type of corruption is wide-spread and is protected by the boys in blue, rating on another cop is a bad idea... This way there is no need to inform on another Officers activities as it is all recorded.

Law enforcement makes to damn little in comparison to their duties, this opens them up for corruption. The hard, sad fact is, Cops will not be seeing large wage increases anytime soon, if ever. That being the case, this option removes the "easy factor", most cops are good, at heart. This will keep the honest ones honest and make it a LOT harder for those who are not.

There is no police state here, no real way to manipulate the system.

So now that the "special police powers" has been removed, what do you see as a negative?

[lubbockjoe]

Occupation: US Federal Contractor

This kinda concerns me.

[grassroots1]

Lubbock, seems to me that it would only be used to reduce police corruption on individual officers, because these videos could be reviewed when there is a question about what occurred in a particular case. I'm not sure how this could be used to violate the privacy of individuals, unless those individuals are police officers!

[U184]

What concerns you about my occupation, exactly?

[lubbockjoe]

My concern about your occupation is that you are using The Act to facilitate sales of personal video and audio recording devices to the US government [since you are a US Federal Contractor].

My concern is admittedly speculative.

it would only be used to reduce police corruption

That was not clear in the OP. The word 'corruption' is not even mentioned in the OP.

These devices ensure officer safety and uncontested evidence in court proceedings.

In the OP, the devices "ensure officer safety and uncontested evidence in court proceedings."

[U184]

The wording is to get the House to pass the law...
That can not be done if it is worded in such a way that it puts off its main voters.

I work mostly with NASA and the DOD. Doing video stuff is not in my field and though it would be nice to make a profit, it is not my driving factor, nor would it really be feasible for me to do so in this regards.

[Thunderhawk]

Live feed implies transmissions. Even if others cannot break the transmission's encoding (which you know people will try and eventually succeed, and the subsequent privacy problems that entails) the transmissions could be used to determine where police are.

[U184]

That is already a factor in squad cars now. I belive they have a good encryption setup in place. One will never be able to stop all the high level criminals. Also a simple scanner could be used to do all that and always has.

[Thunderhawk]

Unless squad cars are transmitting, scanners have nothing to detect. Streaming means a constant transmission and a HUGE amount of bandwidth.