Gun Cameras

DaleA · August 21, 2017, 08:42 AM

Now that police have squad car cameras and body cameras I suppose it was inevitable that they would get gun cameras too. Viridian (of laser fame) is making a 3.2 ounce, 3 inch long camera that would fit onto the rail of a handgun and start recording voice and video whenever the gun was drawn from the holster. It’s primarily for police use and might go into trials as early as October 2017.

The story is here:
http://www.startribune.com/a-maple-p...uns/441197703/

It really does seem amazing the amount of data that will soon be generated, moved and stored by our police departments.

And even with all this data, disputes will still occur.

P.S. I just read the first six comments to the story and I am almost in tears that my fellow Minnesotans are either illiterate or technically obtuse. Maybe they are being deliberately dumb (for reasons I can't understand). Makes me very, very sad.

TXAZ · August 21, 2017, 09:15 AM

I wouldn't blame all the misunderstandings in the comments on dimwits, it wasn't exactly a Pulitzer Prize quality / clarity article.
I like the idea of gun cams. It provides another level of CYA for cops.
And I believe there are several rail mount cameras available now.

Don P · August 21, 2017, 10:17 AM

Quote:

I like the idea of gun cams. It provides another level of CYA for cops.

Nothing will take the place of the officer in the moment with regards to what he is experiencing, seeing and his decision to use deadly force. My opinion bad idea camera on gun.

DPI7800 · August 21, 2017, 06:45 PM

Cameras are a waste of money! And putting one on a gun for a police officer is ridiculous. So great, it actives as soon as the officer draws, so what, it doesn't catch all the events prior to the draw, which often can be more important.

All these cameras are going to eventually cost the departmets or should I say the tax payers millions of dollars annually in taxes.

Understand that every second of footage is public information that must be stored. Which is the cheap part. Now every time someone does a public information request for footage someone from that agency and typically a swarm person must review and listen to the entire piece of footage and now redact (edit) all personal information out. Think about how long it would take to review and redact a 30 minute interview in a victims house that has personal photos, mail and other information that is protected. All for what that one screwed up cop out of hundreds more like thousands and the reality he won't last long anyways.

No thanks I prefer to keep my money in my wallet instead of paying for senseless work. Oh and in case you didn't know for the majority of departments there is no to exceptionally low fees to process public information request, and that won't change.

Let's face it with the proliferation of smartphones everyone these days is Johnny on the spot with their cameras recording stuff as soon as they suspect stuff is going sideways. Oh and that footage doesn't need to be redacted if the media gets it first, which they do. Let's allow the citizens to continue to police the police and video the heck out of events.

SC4006 · August 21, 2017, 10:18 PM

I also do not like the idea of a gun mounted camera. Body cameras are good enough, and are already recording the events that led up to a gun being drawn. A camera mounted on the rail of a pistol is taking the place of something more useful like a light.

ATN082268 · August 23, 2017, 09:22 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by SC4006

I also do not like the idea of a gun mounted camera. Body cameras are good enough, and are already recording the events that led up to a gun being drawn. A camera mounted on the rail of a pistol is taking the place of something more useful like a light.

I agree. Overall, I would say cameras have benefited the public more than police given the courts seem to default to the word of a police officer over that of joe public. Anything beyond a department dash/body camera for a police officer doesn't seem like it would be more helpful. Besides, if a police officer wants to, they can direct a person out of view of the dash camera of their vehicle after turning off their body cam/mic. Does that violate department policy? Sure but so does whatever shifty stuff they plan on doing, only more so...

Double Naught Spy · August 23, 2017, 09:31 AM

Gun cameras have been around and were tested a few years ago. DPI's point that they don't record everything that went on before the gun was drawn is correct and was a major shortcoming of the program.

**44 AMP** · August 23, 2017, 09:38 AM

Gun cameras are for recording kills in fighter combat. I suppose they could perform the same function for police officers, as well.

On a fighter plane? ok
On a police gun? not so much, I'm thinking.

Besides the already mentioned storage and editing for release issues (cost, & man hours needed), what do you think is the likelihood of any video that does NOT favor the police being "lost" or "corrupted" ???

I'm thinking the possibility is well above 0.0%...

DaleA · August 24, 2017, 12:07 AM

Yeah, I'm thinking cameras on an officer's handgun is of marginal usefulness. What's it going to show that the body camera on the cop itself wouldn't show?

On a slightly different note, how about body cameras on our elected officials?

**Spats McGee** · August 24, 2017, 05:39 AM

What strikes me is that unless this gun cam has an exceptionally wide field of vision (for lack of a better phrase), the officer will have to point the gun at someone to record them....

carguychris · August 24, 2017, 09:31 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Spats McGee

...the officer will have to point the gun at someone to record them....

I believe that's the whole point—to ascertain at whom the officer is pointing the gun.

I don't think the idea is for the officer to record peoples' alarmed reactions and post them on YouTube.

rpseraph · August 24, 2017, 10:17 AM

"It doesn't catch what happens before the drawing of the weapon"
These won't replace body cams, nor car cams, but supplement them.
Not to mention, the cop who shot the woman that called 911 in MN... had his gun drawn for a while before he fired, apparently that is SOP when checking out alleys, so the gun cam would have been recording.

"It'll cost too much money"
Yeah, it'll be a hefty investment... but think of the multi-million dollar settlements that my state of MN has paid out to Philando Castile's family and will pay out to the more recent woman's family. These could save a ton of money... I suppose they could cost us even more if more shootings are clearly shown to be bad police shootings. Yeah, it'll be pricey.

"Body cams are good enough"
Really? Because it seems like they are often NOT on. Maybe we don't need more cameras, but better guidelines on when to use them? I have a camera that records 7 days of HD footage on a 32GB micro SD card, for $40... how can we not have body cams on more often?

I think this will vindicate police more than anything. And if DOES reveal some lapses in judgement/training, we can try to train better. I side with the cops, they have their lives on the line, but we can always get better.

Double Naught Spy · August 25, 2017, 11:42 PM

Quote:

What strikes me is that unless this gun cam has an exceptionally wide field of vision (for lack of a better phrase), the officer will have to point the gun at someone to record them....

Well, they do have a wide FOV, as do most action cams. They are great for shorter distance video (say, inside 25 yards), okay out to maybe 50, but not great for greater distances.

Part of the idea of the gun cams is to see where the gun is pointed. This is probably of limited utility. The camera will tell the basic direction the gun is being pointed, but not necessarily indexed on the POA/POI. Depending on how mismatched they may be, the camera may given the impression that the gun is pointed at a person when it is only pointed in the general direction.

**Spats McGee** · August 26, 2017, 04:45 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by carguychris

Quote:

Originally Posted by Spats McGee

...the officer will have to point the gun at someone to record them....

I believe that's the whole point—to ascertain at whom the officer is pointing the gun.

Personally, I think a body cam is probably far more useful for purposes of giving us some background about events that happen prior to the act of unholstering.

That said, in all my years around police officers, I've also never seen much confusion over who was on the receiving end of the gun-pointing. I don't recall ever hearing one say, "I wasn't pointing my gun at this doofus. I was pointing it at his buddy." IME, they're far more likely to say,"Well, yeah, I pointed my gun at him, and let me tell you why . . . "

JimPage · August 26, 2017, 06:50 AM

Seems to me that a gun cam would hinder operation of a handgun. There's enough going on in a 'situation' without more junk hanging on your weapon.

**44 AMP** · August 27, 2017, 12:02 AM

Quote:

The camera will tell the basic direction the gun is being pointed, but not necessarily indexed on the POA/POI. Depending on how mismatched they may be, the camera may given the impression that the gun is pointed at a person when it is only pointed in the general direction.

again, going back to fighter planes, if the camera isn't "boresighted" meaning lined up to view the bullet impact, its not much good.

If you can hang a laser pointer off your pistol and line it up with the bullet impact, you can do it with a camera.

However, the unit shown is on the rail, which means that nothing actually USEFUL can go on that rail. If the camera isn't lined up to "see what the gun sees" and not just the general direction the gun is pointed, its kind of useless, as a tool its only possibly useful as evidence. Like wise if the camera is easily moved off target if it gets bumped.

At a guess, dept lawyers & administrators might love it but I find it difficult to think that line officers will.

Double Naught Spy · August 27, 2017, 09:02 AM

Quote:

again, going back to fighter planes, if the camera isn't "boresighted" meaning lined up to view the bullet impact, its not much good.

Well, going back to gun cameras on planes, their purpose was to assess damage and what the plane was shooting at, the planes shooting tracers which allow the cameras to see where the bullets were going. The analogy does not work very well because police don't shoot tracers.

The cameras on police guns, like plane cameras, are pointed in the basic direction the guns are shooting. You don't need a laser to do it given the wide field of view. The camera definitely sees what the gun sees, and then a whole lot more.

Prndll · August 27, 2017, 10:08 AM

There is no reason to think that cameras can't be integrated into the same light weight rail mounted device as lasers and flashlights.

There is however, every reason to believe that this might be the first meaningful step in 'cloud connected, IP addressable, 24-7 monitored' guns. Certainly the technical capability is there and can be dome with perfect weight considerations and controlled by software in the cloud through a CDN somewhere owned by who-knows-who. Before anyone starts thinking 'conspiracy theory'....we should all be quite familier with the fact that smart phones are already there and are in the hands of everyone from little children to senior citizens to terrorists. It isn't all that much of a stretch to think that handgun laser guided trajectory and audio/video uploads could be easily controlled/manipulated/accessed via Apple or Youtube or Facebook. There are guns out there that electronically keep track of the number of shots fired. How far are we to an electronically tagged bullet at the time of breach lock? How far are we to a point where our firearms can actually be 'hacked' the way cars can now be? At that point; how do we really 'trust' what we see in these video files?

lol....
None of this is even to mention the muzzle blast creating unusable video to start with. We could end up convicting someone that missed when the kill shot came from someone close by (just happening at the same time).

August 21, 2017, 08:42 AM	#1
DaleA Senior Member Join Date: September 12, 2002 Location: Twin Cities, MN Posts: 5,313	Gun Cameras Now that police have squad car cameras and body cameras I suppose it was inevitable that they would get gun cameras too. Viridian (of laser fame) is making a 3.2 ounce, 3 inch long camera that would fit onto the rail of a handgun and start recording voice and video whenever the gun was drawn from the holster. It’s primarily for police use and might go into trials as early as October 2017. The story is here: http://www.startribune.com/a-maple-p...uns/441197703/ It really does seem amazing the amount of data that will soon be generated, moved and stored by our police departments. And even with all this data, disputes will still occur. P.S. I just read the first six comments to the story and I am almost in tears that my fellow Minnesotans are either illiterate or technically obtuse. Maybe they are being deliberately dumb (for reasons I can't understand). Makes me very, very sad. Last edited by DaleA; August 21, 2017 at 08:51 AM.

August 21, 2017, 09:15 AM	#2
TXAZ Senior Member Join Date: September 5, 2010 Location: McMurdo Sound Texas Posts: 4,322	I wouldn't blame all the misunderstandings in the comments on dimwits, it wasn't exactly a Pulitzer Prize quality / clarity article. I like the idea of gun cams. It provides another level of CYA for cops. And I believe there are several rail mount cameras available now. __________________ Cave illos in guns et backhoes

August 21, 2017, 10:18 PM	#5
SC4006 Senior Member Join Date: June 27, 2012 Location: New Hampshire Posts: 525	I also do not like the idea of a gun mounted camera. Body cameras are good enough, and are already recording the events that led up to a gun being drawn. A camera mounted on the rail of a pistol is taking the place of something more useful like a light. __________________ I don't always go to the range, but when I do, I prefer dosAKs. They say 5 out of 4 people are bad at math.

August 23, 2017, 09:31 AM	#7
Double Naught Spy Senior Member Join Date: January 8, 2001 Location: Forestburg, Montague Cnty, TX Posts: 12,717	Gun cameras have been around and were tested a few years ago. DPI's point that they don't record everything that went on before the gun was drawn is correct and was a major shortcoming of the program. __________________ "If you look through your scope and see your shoe, aim higher." -- said to me by my 11 year old daughter before going out for hogs 8/13/2011 My Hunting Videos https://www.youtube.com/user/HornHillRange

August 23, 2017, 09:38 AM	#8
44 AMP Staff Join Date: March 11, 2006 Location: Upper US Posts: 28,846	Gun cameras are for recording kills in fighter combat. I suppose they could perform the same function for police officers, as well. On a fighter plane? ok On a police gun? not so much, I'm thinking. Besides the already mentioned storage and editing for release issues (cost, & man hours needed), what do you think is the likelihood of any video that does NOT favor the police being "lost" or "corrupted" ??? I'm thinking the possibility is well above 0.0%... __________________ All else being equal (and it almost never is) bigger bullets tend to work better.

August 21, 2017, 06:45 PM	#4
DPI7800 Senior Member Join Date: July 15, 2014 Posts: 208	Cameras are a waste of money! And putting one on a gun for a police officer is ridiculous. So great, it actives as soon as the officer draws, so what, it doesn't catch all the events prior to the draw, which often can be more important. All these cameras are going to eventually cost the departmets or should I say the tax payers millions of dollars annually in taxes. Understand that every second of footage is public information that must be stored. Which is the cheap part. Now every time someone does a public information request for footage someone from that agency and typically a swarm person must review and listen to the entire piece of footage and now redact (edit) all personal information out. Think about how long it would take to review and redact a 30 minute interview in a victims house that has personal photos, mail and other information that is protected. All for what that one screwed up cop out of hundreds more like thousands and the reality he won't last long anyways. No thanks I prefer to keep my money in my wallet instead of paying for senseless work. Oh and in case you didn't know for the majority of departments there is no to exceptionally low fees to process public information request, and that won't change. Let's face it with the proliferation of smartphones everyone these days is Johnny on the spot with their cameras recording stuff as soon as they suspect stuff is going sideways. Oh and that footage doesn't need to be redacted if the media gets it first, which they do. Let's allow the citizens to continue to police the police and video the heck out of events.

August 24, 2017, 12:07 AM	#9
DaleA Senior Member Join Date: September 12, 2002 Location: Twin Cities, MN Posts: 5,313	Yeah, I'm thinking cameras on an officer's handgun is of marginal usefulness. What's it going to show that the body camera on the cop itself wouldn't show? On a slightly different note, how about body cameras on our elected officials?

August 24, 2017, 05:39 AM	#10
Spats McGee Staff Join Date: July 28, 2010 Location: Arkansas Posts: 8,821	What strikes me is that unless this gun cam has an exceptionally wide field of vision (for lack of a better phrase), the officer will have to point the gun at someone to record them.... __________________ I'm a lawyer, but I'm not your lawyer. If you need some honest-to-goodness legal advice, go buy some.

August 24, 2017, 10:17 AM	#12
rpseraph Senior Member Join Date: October 23, 2015 Location: MinneSNOWta Posts: 454	"It doesn't catch what happens before the drawing of the weapon" These won't replace body cams, nor car cams, but supplement them. Not to mention, the cop who shot the woman that called 911 in MN... had his gun drawn for a while before he fired, apparently that is SOP when checking out alleys, so the gun cam would have been recording. "It'll cost too much money" Yeah, it'll be a hefty investment... but think of the multi-million dollar settlements that my state of MN has paid out to Philando Castile's family and will pay out to the more recent woman's family. These could save a ton of money... I suppose they could cost us even more if more shootings are clearly shown to be bad police shootings. Yeah, it'll be pricey. "Body cams are good enough" Really? Because it seems like they are often NOT on. Maybe we don't need more cameras, but better guidelines on when to use them? I have a camera that records 7 days of HD footage on a 32GB micro SD card, for $40... how can we not have body cams on more often? I think this will vindicate police more than anything. And if DOES reveal some lapses in judgement/training, we can try to train better. I side with the cops, they have their lives on the line, but we can always get better.

August 26, 2017, 06:50 AM	#15
JimPage Senior Member Join Date: February 21, 2010 Location: Rome, NY Posts: 941	Seems to me that a gun cam would hinder operation of a handgun. There's enough going on in a 'situation' without more junk hanging on your weapon. __________________ Jim Page Cogito, ergo armatum sum

August 27, 2017, 10:08 AM	#18
Prndll Senior Member Join Date: July 24, 2017 Location: Texas Posts: 123	There is no reason to think that cameras can't be integrated into the same light weight rail mounted device as lasers and flashlights. There is however, every reason to believe that this might be the first meaningful step in 'cloud connected, IP addressable, 24-7 monitored' guns. Certainly the technical capability is there and can be dome with perfect weight considerations and controlled by software in the cloud through a CDN somewhere owned by who-knows-who. Before anyone starts thinking 'conspiracy theory'....we should all be quite familier with the fact that smart phones are already there and are in the hands of everyone from little children to senior citizens to terrorists. It isn't all that much of a stretch to think that handgun laser guided trajectory and audio/video uploads could be easily controlled/manipulated/accessed via Apple or Youtube or Facebook. There are guns out there that electronically keep track of the number of shots fired. How far are we to an electronically tagged bullet at the time of breach lock? How far are we to a point where our firearms can actually be 'hacked' the way cars can now be? At that point; how do we really 'trust' what we see in these video files? lol.... None of this is even to mention the muzzle blast creating unusable video to start with. We could end up convicting someone that missed when the kill shot came from someone close by (just happening at the same time).