That would help in some cases. But even in the case of third-party control, if an officer really wanted the camera to stop recording, a plausibly excusable way to accomplish that would be found.

Also, many police unions would accuse the third party of anti-police bias.

As a politician in Germany recently said, we’re one terrorist attack away from losing our right to anonymity.

Dean, at least to me, while a officer is on duty (breaks are not duty time) they have little entitlement to privacy. Therefore, what they see, say, hear or do while on duty is public domain.

Possibly — hadn’t thought about that.

I don’t know what Amazon does with the data collected from their Echos — I don’t have one and don’t have an Amazon account for anything. I do have a Google Home, and Google is quite clear with what they do with your data — selling it isn’t on the list, and they would be stupid to do that, since it’s worth far more to them for crafting ads to you than it would be to sell. I think Apple follows roughly the same guideline.

But worrying about those devices collected data is a little late — especially if you’ve had a smart phone (or even a cell phone before that) for any length of time.

Having a third party, whether within or outside of the PD would hopefully prevent abuse of the camera systems.

As you said having the camera on also protects the officer from accusations of abuse that are not truce.

Other than in your own home, I don’t know if the right to privacy really exists anymore with the number of cameras located everywhere. With devices such as Echo, I am not sure, at least with sound, privacy in your home exists now.

If the officer or department can control the on off function, then the cameras become more a cya tool than a tool see or prevent police from doing the wrong thing.

Partially agree — leaving control of the cameras to the officers is a weak link, but I think having it in the hands of a third party would complicate things immensely (and would lead immediately to questions of privacy for the officers, with the “film” being in control of the third party). And I’m not sure the thought is that these cameras will prevent anything: I can imagine the likelihood is for the officers predisposed to extremes will either react without thinking, or will deactivate the camera first, act, and claim it was damaged during the confrontation.

Also, if the camera is off, what the other party is doing is unknown whether good or bad.

True, but this should be an enticement for most officers to keep the camera on, as it would provide evidence to support any claims of resistance or attack from civilians.

Exactly. There is some evidence that turning the cams off is a thing. Also, police unions are very nice to cities by insisting that always on will use up too many resources for the city, so let’s not do that!