San Jose police test head-mounted cameras for officers

I used to work for a trucking company that was looking into archiving dashcam video along with left/right lane video. Interestingly, drivers were begging for it. Why? They perceived that big trucks were often blamed unfairly for accidents, so they thought that the net effect would be fewer at-fault accidents -- even if the video occasionally could be used to show their culpability.

Before the trucking gig, I worked for a healthcare software company. One of our hospital clients had locator devices for its floor nurses. One could tell, for example, that Sue was in Room 512 and could use that room's intercom to communicate with her. Apparently, the system was once used to fire an employee for taking frequent smoking breaks, but it also once helped exonerate nurses when a patient claimed neglect. In this case, the mother of a chronically ill child complained that she had to perform a particular treatment herself because the staff never followed through. A review of the location data showed that, even if she was telling the truth, a staff member was in the room watching her each time! The mother recanted her story.

If I lived in San Jose, I would welcome a policy where the police would be forced to release video of a civilian interaction upon request from the civilian involved. The default for police departments ought to be transparency, but I'd take this as a first step.

That seems remarkably expensive, though some of that cost may be due to the difficulties of night recording. On the other hand, it only needs to record standard definition, and real-time compression and storage in consumer devices already offer the technology to record a whole shift.