Redding Police Body Cameras
Redding Police Body Cameras: Audio automatically transcribed by Sonix
Redding Police Body Cameras: this mp3 audio file was automatically transcribed by Sonix with the best speech-to-text algorithms. This transcript may contain errors.
Katie:
Welcome to a City of Reading podcast. I'm Katie.
Steve:
And I'm Steve. And today we connect with Redding Police Lieutenant Jeff Schmidt to hear where the police department is in the process of body camera implementation and why it has taken so long to get here. Lieutenant Schmidt discusses community outreach coordination with other law enforcement agencies, how the cameras work and data storage challenges.
Katie:
Also, he discusses how this technology helps protect police as well, and why many at RPD are looking forward to the new body cam system, too. If you've got questions about body cameras for local police, we've got answers.
Lieutenant Jeff Schmidt:
I'm Lieutenant Jeff Schmidt with the Redding Police Department.
Steve:
Thank you for joining us today, Jeff. We appreciate it. We're here to talk about body cameras. The department has been researching body cameras for use for a little while now. And we want to touch base with you to learn more about where we are in the process and what the next steps are. So maybe just fill us in a little bit on where we currently stand with regard to body cameras.
Lieutenant Jeff Schmidt:
Yeah, so we've done demos with four different companies for body worn camera systems. We have moved two of those into a process where we're actually going to put them out on the street for a trial and evaluation. We just began one on the 31st of January with Axon. They offer both body cameras and Taser devices, and we're also going to start a trial and evaluation period with another company called Lens Lock.
Katie:
And then I guess, what's the difference between the two cameras? Like why even trial them out? How different are the systems really?
Lieutenant Jeff Schmidt:
Actually, both vendors, Axon and Lens Lock will tell you that essentially the cameras themselves are essentially the same ruggedized. They have to meet certain standards for being submerged in water and resistant to dust. The big difference between some of the cameras is they have detachable or swappable batteries. Some of them do not. Axon does not. So like if you have to charge on the go, you literally have to plug in a usb-c cord to the device to charge it where lens lock actually offers a swappable battery. So you get the device in a couple of batteries to make sure you have plenty of battery life. And with battery technology coming as far as it has over the past few years, most of them will go 14 hours without a problem as far as battery life goes. And then when you actually get into the two systems, what happens on the back end, their cloud service, the software services that they provide, along with the cameras themselves, are where the big differences come. One of these companies offers offsite redaction. So you send your video to them. They have a team of people that will do redaction for you and then they'll send it back.
Lieutenant Jeff Schmidt:
They also offer kind of a light program for some quick redaction that you can do in-house. And other company offers like a full redaction suite as part of their software. And then you get into adaptability and user configuration. What we get a program, the cameras to operate the way we want. So we've chosen to do a pre event buffer with the camera. So when you turn the camera on, you get the last 30 seconds of video with no audio. That's kind of the industry standard for most agencies. And then they offer other integrations where gunshots and sirens and unholstered your weapons and stuff can create automatic activations. Both of those are add on things with both companies. So you got to pay extra for those. And then we have to mount units in the cars themselves to support some of that stuff. And that's when things really start taking off price wise to when you start adding on additional features, you can get everything you want, but you're going to pay the price for that. So we're trying to be realistic and find that happy medium of what works for us.
Steve:
That makes sense. And Jeff, other cities have been wearing body cameras for some time now. Obviously not all, but many that utilize body cameras. What's taken many police departments so long to begin to look into adopting these as well?
Lieutenant Jeff Schmidt:
The greatest factor for the city has been the cost. We originally looked at body cameras back in 2015. We ran a short pilot program. During that time, I think we had one person wearing a body camera. Back then, technology was still emerging. A lot of the cameras, if you talk to agencies, they didn't function that well. One company had this sliding lens that you popped up and down to turn the camera on and off. And that wore out over time. And there was a lot of things. And then storage, you know, back then it was like you pretty much had to host the server yourself and video ads up quick and you run out of space and then you start dumping stuff. We're now almost every company offers a cloud solution where they're hosting your data and see just compliant servers. You have full access to it. Actually, with Axon, they can't even see our videos without us giving them permission to see them. That's how they build in the securities with them. So storage of body camera video back then was an issue along with the cost costs were exponentially going up. I think now a lot of these companies have the whole storage thing figured out. You know, these companies are looking for five year contracts and you get unlimited storage during that five years. And the only time they really complain is like if you're retaining everything forever, but you have unlimited storage. And I can tell you, just looking at what we have over the past three days, it's crazy how much stuff builds up and how quickly why are we doing it now? I think we have outlived some of the growing pains with a body camera system, and the funds just really weren't there.
Lieutenant Jeff Schmidt:
It wasn't a huge priority as the city got money. There were other things that I think were a more important factor. One of those being. Coming out of a time where our fleet was completely falling apart. We didn't have cars, so we had extra money. That's what we'd spend it on because that's what was important at the time. And then recently, well, about a year ago, they're doing some budget planning. We had some money. And so the chief said, Hey, this is our chance. You want to do body cameras or do you want to spend this money elsewhere? And that's when they committed to going to a body cam program. But that funding doesn't actually kick in until July 1st of this year. So I set out on this project essentially eight months ago, shortly after the money was approved, and we knew it was coming. I happened to be at a class down in Folsom for Public Records Act, and half of the Lasso body camera unit was there. And so I'm like, This is a great time to start talking to agencies. So me and Captain Cole actually pulled a bunch of those guys aside and started talking about it. What what went right? What went wrong? What would they do different, what they thought of their vendor. The timing kind of worked out at that time to to really kind of dive into it. We were in Folsom, got a copy of the policy while I was sitting in class from a lieutenant who was running their program at the time. So it worked out timing wise, getting the money and starting this program kind of right place, right time.
Katie:
And I just kind of wanted to go back to something you said about redaction, because people might not be clear about why that's necessary or why it's needed. I mean, it's not an arbitrary process. What gets redacted or not.
Lieutenant Jeff Schmidt:
Now I'm kind of learning as I go as far as redaction goes, I went to that PRA class, which was in response to dealing with pros on a daily basis around here and helping our records manager who was doing them at the time, that's now fallen under me also. And the Government code has specific things that have to be redacted anytime we release it. And not everything is releasable, not all body camera video is releasable, not all police reports are releasable. But when we do release it, we have to redact names and identifying information, credit card numbers, stuff like that. Especially like when it comes to a body camera. Case in point, if we're videotaping while we're walking through the hospital, I mean, there's all kinds of issues going on there where patient rights and just general privacy rights on top of that that ever gets released because for some reason it has to be released. You know, there's a lot of redaction that has to go in there and blurring out faces and background noises and anything that might be identifiable of a person has to be withheld. I actually invited a member from the district attorney's office to sit through the training with us for Axon, and it was interesting to hear from her.
Lieutenant Jeff Schmidt:
When a DA goes into a case with video evidence that they will take time, they'll be in chambers with a judge and the judge will be like, you need I need this out of it. I want that out of it. I don't want this included in the video. So that's a whole different set of rules with these the redaction software that's built into it. We can literally sit there on a on a laptop, in an office, and as long as we have wi fi, we can sit there with a judge and redact what he wants, redacted and have a presentable video for a jury when we need it. As you know, doing video editing, it's not easy to clip out, you know, small pieces or just audio or just face the technology that they have built into their program uses AI. So it's it's helping with the heavy lifting part does object object tracking. It identifies faces and license plates and computer screens. And so it helps you out quite a bit to make that process pretty smooth.
Katie:
I guess people would just be concerned that you could redact out whatever you wanted. I guess that would be the the negative feedback. We're like, Oh, well, you can just redact out something you don't want us to see.
Lieutenant Jeff Schmidt:
Well, in all of these companies have very robust audit trails. So any time you do something to a video, it's capturing that in the background. And they have these programs set up where even as the superuser admin in the system, I cannot go in and just arbitrarily change anything without it being audited somewhere. It's very well protected in that regard. Even the deletion of a video, if you delete a video, there's an audit log that lives forever in their system that says that a video was deleted. Who deleted it when it was deleted? You know, the IP address it was deleted from. They built in as many securities as possible to make sure that if anything is done to it, it's track both of the systems. The original raw video never changes. So if you start doing redactions, it's saving a redacted version separate from the original version version. So you can truly do four or five different types of redaction. You can have one for court and one for public release and one for social media. Whatever you're doing, you can have all these different versions of it and all of that is tracked. So even an officer reviewing their own video to write a report or prepare to testify in court, it shows that that officer watched the video and when and where they were. It's very robust in that auditing system. So, yes, you can manipulate and cut out a face or you can even cut out a snippet of complete time. But the system says, Oh, Jeff Schmidt removed. 4 seconds of this video on this date and this time. And he was at this computer when he did that. So it knows when you're doing something to it.
Steve:
Interesting. And Jeff, from the community perspective, two part question, Does an officer have to stop recording if a community member asks them to? And also, how will that community member know if they're speaking or encountering an officer? How will they know that they're being recorded.
Lieutenant Jeff Schmidt:
Well out in public? They wouldn't know if they're being recorded, although the cameras do have like an audible tone or vibrate that they will emit every 2 minutes. The officers can silence that because that can be a safety issue for them. They also have lights on the front of them that would show if it's recording or not. Most of the time that is turned off. If a community member ask an officer if they're being recorded, the officer is going to be honest with them. You know, in a public place, there's no right to privacy. One of the things in our policy is that they got to balance that, though, prior to call for service And somebody is like, I don't want you in my house recording, but it's important for us to go in their house and get their statement and document evidence and whatever the crime is, there's a balancing act there. To us, it's more important to document the crime that occurred than it is to make sure that we videotaped it. You know, there's other options. We can just do an audio only recording and take photos of the scene or, you know, maybe just have a conversation with them and explain to them why we're videotaping it and how that release procedure works and who might see it in the future and stuff like that. But that's a balance the officers have on the street is what's more important going in, taking the report, documenting the crime or videotaping it, just like going into a hospital, the same direction I gave them. Going into a hospital, they can record inside a hospital. I've met with the hospitals. They know that we're wearing these cameras now, but there's a balance there. Like, do we need to be recording when we're in the hospital? Potentially? Not like if we're just dealing with a victim of a crime and there's no need to videotape it, Maybe an audio recorder is the better option.
Katie:
So so that might be a good time to talk about how these body cameras work, because they're not just like any old video recording device. I know they have special capabilities. So how are they used when are they used? What's the structure there?
Lieutenant Jeff Schmidt:
Yeah. So the cameras are essentially like any other recording device. I mean, they're using high quality lenses, saving it to this little computer that lives in the in the body camera itself. You know, for us, it's all manual activation and manual deactivation. So the officer has to physically turn on the camera. It does not automatically turn on it does not store all this data for the last 24 hours. It's like it stores the previous 30 seconds on a loop and that's it. So when the officer activates it, you capture that previous 30 seconds with no audio and then to turn it off, you know, they have the long hold and it will turn off.
Katie:
When are they required to turn them on and off? If you say you have a choice to turn it on and off in a hospital, at what point do you realize like, oh, I should have my body camera on right now?
Lieutenant Jeff Schmidt:
Right. Generally every time they show up for a call for service or they're taking any type of enforcement activity, they need to turn the camera on. That's what the policy states. There's times where having conversations with certain people, we don't want them. If the officer is conversing with hospital staff and the situation is completely stable, you know, and they're not investigating necessarily a crime that's occurring right at that moment, they can turn that camera off for that. So it's not like they're going to be walking around for an entire 12 and a half hour day running their their body camera. It's they're going to turn it on and off, as policy dictates. So if they're doing a car stop, they're going to turn it on, do their car stop. And it may even come to a point during that car stop where it's stable and everything's fine and they're going to release them and they turn off the camera and tell them, hey, have a good day. And they go on their day and the camera's off. The idea of the camera is to capture evidence of crimes, statements from victims, suspects, and then obviously use of force. That stuff is the stuff that we want. We don't necessarily want every single conversation that they have throughout the day. You walk up to an officer in a coffee shop to say hi or something. They're not going to turn the camera on.
Katie:
I imagine that takes a little bit of training and memory, though, to because I don't know, I'm speaking for myself here, not a police officer in any way, shape or form. I feel like I'd forget to like, turn it on or off. I'm probably going to have to be a practiced or a trained.
Lieutenant Jeff Schmidt:
And it's funny, I was earlier today, I was talking to one of our guys who came from an agency where they were wearing cameras and he was there when they first implemented this body worn camera program. And all these old guys were like, Oh, I've been doing this for 30 years. How am I supposed to remember to turn this camera on? And he's like, within a week they all had it figured out. Like, you know, when you're wearing it and it's new, it's kind of in the forefront of your mind, so you get used to turning it on. We actually had laterals that have come here from other agencies where they did wear body cameras. And it's funny talking to their field training officers because they're like, yeah, every time he gets out of the car, he taps his chest twice because he thinks he's turning on his body camera because, you know, that muscle memory is there even after they've left and they've come to an agency where they're not wearing a camera, it's still ingrained. So we use SAC PD, we use our academy for some of our recruits. And in the academy down there, they're wearing fake body cameras and they're expecting. To activate that camera when they're doing roles or role playing and scenario training. So they're ingraining it into their trainees at their academy because they wear body cameras. You know, those academy recruits are coming out and it's already in their memory. So, yeah, these older guys, they'll catch up in older guys. I'm in that group too. You change how you operate a little bit, but it's no different than any other changes that we've made over the years. And radio systems have changed in computer system. Like when I first got into a police car, there was no computer in it. We had no pads. We had really cool notepad holders. You know, you had to remember like, Oh, I need to grab a notepad because I'm out of paper on my notepad holder.
Steve:
So we had to manually spin the siren.
Lieutenant Jeff Schmidt:
I'm not quite that old.
Steve:
Jeff I'm curious too. I mean, I think if you were to ask your average community member, I think they would say, sure, body cameras are a great thing to be able to see what's happening. But I've got to imagine from an officer perspective, I mean, I know not being an officer, like I wouldn't necessarily want my day to day being recorded at all times. What's the overarching feeling about body cameras by the department? And then also you mentioned lateral transfers and other transfers. Historically, Have you seen lateral transfers coming in appreciative of the fact that there were no body cameras here or not? And do you anticipate that changing down the road with now we're implementing body cameras?
Lieutenant Jeff Schmidt:
Yeah. So, I mean, speaking to that, it's kind of funny because we actually have laterals here who, since they heard this program was coming, the constant question I get is, hey, when are we getting these things? When am I getting my body camera? You know, we have all these laterals. When you work at an agency where you wore one and you see the benefits of using one and you go to an agency where they don't have them, there is that well, I used to have a body camera to help me out, you know, especially like with citizen complaints. You know, people call and say, well, he was rude or he was cussing the whole time and that's completely untrue. And we get those complaints frequently. And I've been the victim of those where you have nothing to defend yourself. And it's just my word versus their word. If you're lucky, you ran an audio recorder to record that incident. So a lot of these guys know people, Oh, he was rude. This is what I want, a body camera because I'm not rude. I wasn't rude to them. And speaking from my own experience, being on the street just a few years ago as a fairly new supervisor and I get called to a pedestrian that was stopped for jaywalking and he's yelling and screaming at the officers. I get there and he wants to complain about them.
Lieutenant Jeff Schmidt:
And I'm like, okay, what's your complaint? And he's like, You're not going to do anything about it. And he starts cussing at me while I'm running my audio recorder the whole time because I kind of knew what I was walking into. And he later calls my supervisor to say that I was ordering him to do things that he felt were unlawful. And I was cussing at him the whole time. And I was extremely rude and discourteous. And I'm like, Here's my audio recorder, listen to it yourself. Supervisor listened to it and called him back and was like, Nope, he recorded the whole thing. To me, that's the big benefit. And so going back to that whole, what's the tone? Do people want them or not want them? I can tell you seven years ago I was not a fan working in the street because my thing with body cameras then is that new technology people could start and stop a video and be like, Oh, see, this guy doesn't have a gun or this was a cell phone in his hands. And so I'm like, Well, it's not fair to an officer who's making that split second decision out on the street to be Monday morning quarterback by somebody who had the luxury of pressing pause on a video to prove that somebody wasn't armed.
Lieutenant Jeff Schmidt:
But I've also seen the flip side of that now talking to these agencies where they're like, Yeah, but we've paused it to prove that somebody did have a gun in their hand or they were armed. And I mean, so I think one as time has gone on and technology and especially like the clarity of video has come so far, I mean, just looking at the axon cameras, like when they did their demo, they show, hey, here's our last version of camera and here's our new version, and they're both 720. But the clarity on the new ones is so much better than it was even just a generation ago with cameras, which is for them like two years. They're pretty much updating stuff every couple of years. A lot of departments have been wearing them for a long time. You're always worried that it's going to be, Oh, this is always going to get used against me. And really, I think it benefits us as an agency and the evidence that we gather for a criminal case, regardless of what kind of criminal case outweighs that whole Monday morning quarterbacking or being worried about being second guessed, I think a lot of that is gone now, and we've learned from the technology that it's more beneficial than it is detrimental to everybody, citizens to the officers. Everybody benefits from it.
Katie:
I actually find that a little bit surprising. I didn't expect to hear from the police side of things because I'm so used to hearing about how body cameras affect the use of force side of things. So I guess in your opinion, do body cameras reduce use of force by law enforcement in in the citizens?
Lieutenant Jeff Schmidt:
I've talked to agencies about this and you get both answers. So does it. Sometimes I think it does. I think somebody who is not going with the program or acting a fool and you're like, Hey, you're being recorded. And suddenly they're like, Oh, my mom might watch this video one day and is this how I want to act? Or this is going to get played in front of a jury? I think for some of those people, it will definitely change their behavior. I have seen videos where that occurs, but I've also seen videos where it had no effect on somebody. It's no different for using dogs. So I worked a police dog for ten years on the street and there was plenty of guys that wanted to be tough and bad. And then you're like, Hey, I got a dog, you're going to get bit. And they're like, Nah, I don't want to. I'm not I'm not that tough. I don't want to take on a dog. But there's other people that are like, Let's do this. How it affects certain people. I mean, it depends on just who they are. So does it reduce it? I don't know that it does for sure. Reduce. Is it going to be beneficial or is it potentially going to diffuse the situation? Yes. And any victory is a victory, even if it's just one or two, even if it's a small percentage of those situations, to me, that's worth it.
Steve:
With regard to the recent use of force incident that's under investigation currently, did that incident factor into the police department's decision to move forward using body worn cameras?
Lieutenant Jeff Schmidt:
No, I like I said, I've been on this endeavor for almost a year now. You know, as soon as we got that funding, like I said, I reached out to some agencies. It's funny talking to the guys from from Lasso, they're rolling it out. And there were 10,000 deputies or whatever. Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's huge, huge agency. And so they're kind of pushing these cameras out to lower call for service areas so that they could kind of get an idea of what's going on. And and it was it's funny, they said it became infectious to the point where everybody was against them. You know, all these old guys were like, oh, this is wrong. We shouldn't have to wear these. We should be taken at our word. So they pushed some of these cameras out to divisions that just aren't as busy. And the deputies were realizing complaints were going down or the complaints they did get were unfounded. And we can get through a complaint process much, much faster with a body cam. And then all their specialized like their crime suppression teams, their gang units, Hey, when do we get our cameras? Because people complain about us all the time and everything we do and we're doing the right thing, but we have no proof that we're doing it the way we should be doing it.
Lieutenant Jeff Schmidt:
And we want our body cameras. They were actually surprised that these units were like, Oh, hey, we want ours. When do we get our cameras? As far as us? I reached out to our first vendor July or August, so that was the first time I sat down and watched a quick demo and they came back and did it for a group of guys that volunteered to wear the cameras and try them out for a while. In that time, we reached out to the the unions or the Redding Police Officers Association, the Police Managers Association. We met with them, actually met with the attorney on occasion. He provided us copies of policies. You know, we got all these policies together. We started talking about it. What we wanted to do, started looking at what the systems will do and what we wanted and what we didn't want. And just to get to where we are now. It has been six months of pretty intense work to get.
Katie:
Here, but there are conversations before then too, right, like years ago of how to bring it in. What would that look like? What would the cost be? And because I know that there were conversations going on, at least at the director level and city council talking about what that cost would be and how how it would be funded. Right.
Lieutenant Jeff Schmidt:
Yeah. And I mean, and ultimately I think it was March of last year is when they decided to go on the adventure of body cameras, allotting about 750,000 a year for the next five years or something to fund this program. And that includes the cameras themselves. And then we had to add on three additional bodies just to deal with evidence requests and redactions and just dealing with the volume of digital evidence that we get from it. They made that commitment and we kind of jumped in with both feet. And it wasn't just me. You know, there's lieutenants and officers from other agencies and they were getting policies for me and we'd have laterals come in from another agency who wore body cameras, and I'd drag them in here and be like, okay, what did you like? What what didn't you like? What company did you guys use? What problems did you have? Every lateral since then, I'm like, I need to grab on to that guy and talk to him and see what he. And we recently hired a guy from Roseville and they wore a lens lock camera. So I'm like, Hey, how would you think of those cameras? Have they work for you guys? And we actually have a guy in background now who works for LAPD and he wears an ax on that body camera.
Lieutenant Jeff Schmidt:
So I'm like, Hey, how does that work? And lo and behold, he actually works in their body cam units. So, you know, I got to hear about it from both ends. And it's like as those things come up and, you know, we have lieutenants who have friends or family members that are police officers elsewhere. And you can get this raw information, not a sales pitch from a company or a guy who's getting ready to retire and wants to work for one of these companies. You're talking to the line level guys who have worn body cameras and what works, what doesn't work, and what we can do better because. We actually drafted a policy. We pushed it out about a week before we went live with this trial and evaluation period. And we thought we had pretty much thought of everything that you could think of, and we thought we had it dialed in. And three days into it we're like, Holy mackerel, There's a lot of things we didn't think about. And I actually look at other agencies policies and I'm like, How come they hadn't thought about this? And so this policy, it's kind of like this living document at this time. We're going back to the whole DSOs were recording phone conversations while sitting in their car.
Lieutenant Jeff Schmidt:
Is this really what we want to be recording? And the answer is 99% of the time, no, that's not what we want. So that's going to create policy change. And, you know, there's there's kind of a catch 22 in there where you had to activate your camera when you're at a call for service, which included for us being at a call for service is making that phone call. Well, she's making a phone call from inside the department and you're not supposed to record inside the department. So she's like, What do I do? She did the right thing. She turned the camera off. But, you know, I mean, so it's like something we hadn't thought of. We hadn't accounted for that. So that's something we're going to have to change. And hopefully by July one, when we are live, we will have all those little bugs worked out. And I mean, that's that's the other side of this trial period is not just to decide what cameras work best for us and what software works best for us, but also to kind of vet out our policy and make sure it fits our agency and our community and it works well for us.
Steve:
With that July one goal date. How will the decision be made? I mean, it sounds like obviously you're in a couple of different products at this point. Who will be making the decision and how we finally.
Lieutenant Jeff Schmidt:
So a lot of this is going to rest on the guys that are wearing them. They're the end user. They're the ones that are going to be dealing with it the most. I can sit here and tell you which software I like better. That's pretty easy out on the field. What works best for that? Because one of the things they have to do is they have to tag the video. So they actually, you know, the cameras connect to their department cell phone and they have to go through and they have to label the videos. Well, both companies do it totally different. So how one company does it and how the other company does it and how they can integrate with our computer aided dispatch system is different. So that's part of it. What works better for them on the field so that they can still efficiently do their job and not spend 2 hours of their day worrying about going into the office and labeling all the videos and put in the right retention categories on them. What's going to work better for them in the street? And then from our side, what's going to work for us on back side as the administrator of this program as far as redaction goes, evidence sharing and then auditing of the system to make sure that the cameras are functioning correctly, that we're getting the video that we need. You know, we're not having a bunch of technical difficulties out on the street. So, I mean, that's the other part of this. So and then we'll sit down as a leadership team. We'll talk about the pros and cons and kind of come to a decision as to to which way we want to go.
Katie:
And then starting July one, every officer on the street will be wearing one of these body cameras.
Lieutenant Jeff Schmidt:
Every sworn member of this department and every CSO will be issued a body camera. So the chief and I, even though we sit in our offices all day long, we will have a body camera that is sitting on a charger right here on our desk just in case we find ourselves going out to something where enforcement action may be necessary.
Katie:
And then what's the process after that? Are you going to continually review the program after July one? Just make sure that it's doing what you expect it to do and everybody's following the rules and the policy works and all of that.
Lieutenant Jeff Schmidt:
Yes, that will go on for as long as we have the system. It's like any other technology, like it's constantly changing. Both these companies offer every two years or three years or year and a half, you get brand new equipment. And so with that comes software changes and assigning cameras and cops break everything they touch. Like even body cameras can break and companies give you an extras. So there's that constant, you know, checking your inventory, making sure it fits the department. If we size up and we get more officers, we've got to add more cameras to that. So it's constantly under evaluation. The reporting programs built into these systems are very robust. You can drill it down to this shift, activates their camera more frequently than this shift. And it can even compare like how many calls for service were going on during that time. And they recorded 90% of their contacts or 90% of their calls. They activated their cameras and then they have performance goals that we set as an agency. So the system will be like, Hey, you got a problem, because this guy's been to 27 calls for service. He's only turned his camera on three times. So it makes managing not just the data simpler, but it also helps manage to make sure that the guys are complying with the policy and they're turning the cameras on.
Steve:
Well, and on that note, too, I'm guessing with this new policy, there will be things in place for those officers who, if they forget or aren't turning their their I don't want to say repercussions, but how do you deal with that if officers are either, again, forgetting or for whatever reason, not turning on the cameras?
Lieutenant Jeff Schmidt:
So I'll use Axon as the example because that's the one that we have going on right now. Like I got a generated email about the performance of cameras not being powered on, and that's because they're just sitting in a bank charger. But you know, it's like, Hey, this. Tamara hasn't been turned on. Well, it just happens to be one that's not being grabbed at the charger, you know? But the performance status for the ones that have been turned on is that they're meeting the 80% goal of actual recording time. I haven't figured out all the reports, but it will tell you where the problems are. But it doesn't just tell me with a live system, everybody will have their own assigned camera. So if they have untagged video or they're not meeting a performance standard that we set, the system will tell them, Hey, just so you know, you're below the 80% mark for activations based on your calls for service. So the system reminds them. So hopefully I don't have to. It's like anything else, we'll deal with somebody who's not complying with the policy. I really don't think that's going to be a problem. We have policies and procedures in place for dealing with that.
Katie:
I was going to ask about public records requests and how the community can access these videos. What does that process look like If they're like, I want to see what happened on my call for service or my stop or my whatever. How do they go about requesting for that?
Lieutenant Jeff Schmidt:
Right? So they can actually fill out a request through? There's a link on the city's website and I think it's on the police website. Also generate an email that will come to me and we'll evaluate that based on the law that applies and whether or not it can or cannot be released. Some things just can't be released because they're part of a criminal investigation. There's a lot of stuff that can be released, but we have to redact that before it gets sent out. The big one I think people are going to be looking for is if an officer is involved in critical incident, they're involved in a shooting or they're involved in a significant use of force or somebody has great bodily injury, we are required by law. Senate Bill 1421 requires that we disclose those after we go through the investigation process. We have several responsive records for those right now. So with the change, with body cameras, the video is going to come along with that. So you'll be able to see the videos. Sb 16 changed some of the timelines that we had to operate in. If you go to any website for any big agency, they kind of have a whole web page dedicated to that.
Lieutenant Jeff Schmidt:
We're building that out. Also, we're going to have that so you can go to the website, you'll be able to click on the video, you'll be able to see the documents that are associated with it and any video that is associated with that critical incident. Also, there will be redacted versions that are publicly accessible right on our website. So you don't have to go through the whole PRA process and ask to come in here and look at documents or get copies of them. You can just go to the website, you can click on the link, you can read the internal investigation, the criminal investigation, you can watch the videos that are associated with it. Redacted. It's easier for me because I don't have to sit here and manage every single request that comes in. But something doesn't fall within those parameters and somebody wants it. They can file a PRA request and we'll deal with each of those individually and see if they they fall into a parameter where we can release them. Usually anything that's part of an active criminal investigation is not releasable. So a lot of that is working with our district attorney and and what they are willing to release or not.
Steve:
Want even to on a lesser extent as a community member. What if, say, hypothetically, I got pulled over for a traffic violation and it was recorded on body cam? Is that something that I could request to be redacted so that others couldn't see that video or that doesn't quite qualify?
Lieutenant Jeff Schmidt:
Yeah, that's a gray area. So again, I mean, if you get arrested, that's a it's a criminal investigation. So it isn't necessarily on face value, a releasable event. You know, there are times where the government code sections says something about when such time is elapsed that, you know, I think they're worried about jury pools, that you can release it. And I don't know the full answer to how that's going to work. A lot of that is going to be trial and error and meeting with the city attorney. And what are they okay with and what are they what is their interpretation of that law? And getting a copy of a police report. Generally, if we can give you a copy of your own police report or photos associated with a case against you, then you're going to get body camera video with that. I mean, that's kind of the guideline that I have in my mind, is if you can get a copy of your police report. I mean, if you're the if you are the subject of a criminal investigation, your defense attorney will get your report. He will get all the evidence, including the body camera evidence that is associated with that case.
Steve:
And for footage that isn't deemed criminal or necessary long term, how long does that get stored for? Is that indefinitely stored or is it deleted at some point now?
Lieutenant Jeff Schmidt:
So so anything that is general video that isn't necessarily attached to a crime, it's a 90 day retention policy. So if we make a contact with somebody who's jaywalking and we have a conversation with them and we give them a warning and we send them on their way, there's no citation, there's no criminal case, that's a 90 day retention, and then it gets dropped. Anything that's criminal in nature, there's evidence retention schedules based on the type of crime that it is. So like homicides are the one like the retention on that is like forever and a month, you know what I mean? It's like we hold on to homicide evidence forever. So some of that stuff will be here in our video system for. That long, you know, and there's other crimes. As soon as they adjudicate, we can get rid of it and we'll get rid of body cam video. Also, because of the sheer volume of space that video takes up, we will be purging it as quickly as we can just because it becomes unmanageable at some point.
Steve:
I'm curious to on the technology front, obviously, you mentioned that these cameras as of today are pretty state of the art with their technology elements and video quality and sound, etc.. Where do you see the future of body cams going or the technology elements that you'd like to see implemented or, you know, maybe are down in the pipeline a few years away that you'd love to see come to fruition?
Lieutenant Jeff Schmidt:
I guess when I looked at body cameras, I'm thinking I'm just looking at a camera. And when these companies come in and they start giving you demos and they start talking about what their future looks like, you're like mind blown. There will be a day where a drone launches from the top of your car and follows you around wherever you go to videotape from high angle. It's crazy. Where is it going to be even in five years when I'm getting ready to retire? I have no idea. I mean, it is crazy the things that they think of. Again, going back to that whole what did their previous version of Body Camera look like and what is today's version look like? And that jump, which for that company, it's two and one half years. Every two and a half years, they do like a major upgrade. So they're not just looking at what their next camera is going to look like, but they're looking at what the camera after that is going to look like. Also, I mean, that's how far ahead they're planning. So where is it going to go? I don't know. I think it's going to get interesting with technology and what it can do and how it integrates with what we do every single day. It's both scary and kind of exciting at the same time, just to see look at where drones have come, just, you know, little UAVs and where they were five years ago and now and I mean, the resolution of the cameras, I think, is where the big thing is.
Lieutenant Jeff Schmidt:
One of these companies actually had built in IR technology into their cameras, but they also saw that quickly that that's kind of an unfair advantage to a viewer of the camera as opposed to what the officer could see. So where they focus their efforts now is low light clarity as opposed to increasing overall visibility in the dark. So instead of using infrared to help show everything that lens and the system is just you get better clarity in the dark. And what they say is their goal is to match the human eye like we want the camera to eventually be as good as the human eye is in the exact same conditions, because the camera should be seeing what the officer is also seeing. If you advance the technology beyond what the human can do, are you really accurately capturing what the officer was presented with? Yeah, because you go into I.R., you get that grainy green screen, which. Yeah, I mean, and you know, when you're watching the video, you're seeing something completely different than what the officer was seeing at the same time. So but yeah, I think the clarity of the cameras is just going to continue to increase along with the storage capabilities of the cameras, which is really just going to put more pressure on the servers that are hosting all of this. I mean, the cameras, both companies offer 1080 resolution. They suggest 720 for storage. But even at 720, it's amazing how clear the video is just in that little technology gain over a two and one half year period.
Lieutenant Jeff Schmidt:
They do side by sides of here's a previous version camera in today's camera in the same exact room, same exact lighting. And what you saw with the new one was so much better than what you saw with the old one. I mean, it's still dark. You can make it out much, much easier. What's going on in the room? And there's people walking around and, you know, the old version, you couldn't even count how many people. You just saw a shadow here and there where you could actually make out the fact that the guy was wearing a baseball hat and a heavy coat with the new one, which is probably closer to what the human eye was seeing in the same exact conditions. So I think that's that's what they're chasing, is how do we make the camera see. Exactly. And then you get into like frame rates and how much faster can you make the frame rate? There's one company I looked at online where they're trying to do like run simultaneous cameras at a matched frame rate but opposite of each other to try to fill in every last gap. So there's no yeah, there's no brakes. You know, every camera has a frame rate, so you can frame from 1 to 1, you know, one frame to the next where their whole idea was, well, let's match these cameras to their frame. Rates are opposite so we can fill in every gap in there.
Katie:
Wow.
Lieutenant Jeff Schmidt:
So, yeah, I mean, data on that's probably astronomical because you're essentially getting the same video twice. But but again, there's no gap in what happened. There's no that shutter speed. You're not missing even a millisecond of time. I think that's where some companies are putting their time and effort and also looking at, well, what's the next best thing that we can do?
Katie:
As a reminder, we are really looking. For community feedback for this podcast. If you have questions, comments or suggestions for episodes, please email us at podcast at City of Redding dot org. We'd love to hear from you and incorporate those questions into future episodes.
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