SF fire chief bans helmet cameras in wake of crash | Hacker News Reader

SF fire chief bans helmet cameras in wake of crash

sfgate.com

130 pointsjamesjyu49 comments

The SF Fire Chief needs to be invited to find a new job. All public servants should be mandated to have video and audio recordings taken during their interactions with the public. If the recordings are inappropriate for public release then that's a different matter than trying to prevent their valuable existence.

Her excuse that it "protects privacy" is not only ridiculous, it's insulting (that they think people will buy it).

I feel that this happens more and more, where leaders and elected officials will present completely transparent bold-faced lies to the public, with a straight face, when everyone involved (the speaker and the audience) knows it to be a lie, but because there is no practical or legal way to disprove the lie, it is presented anyways..

Whatever happened to integrity?

Whatever happened to integrity? Do you really think it just recently vanished?

To quote from Machiavelli's Il Principe, from the 1500's: "The promise given was a necessity of the past: the word broken is a necessity of the present."

Want to go earlier? Let's get Julius Caesar: “If you must break the law, do it to seize power: in all other cases observe it.”

And I'm sure he wasn't the first one to say or think so, either. Integrity is not a quality we can ever assume in existence - the only thing that will guarantee a semblance of it is accountability.

Too cynical, and perhaps dangerously so, yet plausible.

Everyone is subject to temptation and self-justification. Anyone given too large a pass for "integrity" will start to veer to self-aggrandizement of some sort. That doesn't make people inherently bad, it does mean we all benefit from perspective and inspection.

To me the take-away is that an assertion of incorruptibility is a leading indicator of trouble. Anything you aren't allowed to question or discuss is a breeding ground for trouble.

I'd be cynical if I assumed integrity didn't exist. Some people seem to have it, and many more strive for it.

But I'd be hopelessly naive if I ever assumed it to exist, or if I assumed public displays of "integrity" were connected to an internal state.

These latter assumptions might be true, but the cost of them being not true is too high, and the occurrence of "not true" is too frequent. Or, shorter, "Trust, but verify" :)

> Whatever happened to integrity?

That's a really good question. I think the answer is partly that it was never there to begin with, just a thin veneer to cover the filth underneath. The difference is that there is now not even a pretence at integrity any more.

No, the difference is that we now have the Internet, which serves as a safe place to point these things out and spread the word. In the past, it was a lot easier to sweep it under the rug.

I seriously encourage you to watch this documentary: http://movies.netflix.com/WiMovie/Ken_Burns_Prohibition/7019.... The veneer used to be a lot thinner.

In this case, privacy could be a concern. If an officer is wearing a body camera during a search, suddenly there's a permanent record of the inside of your home and plenty more opportunity to spot unrelated crimes to hold against you.

Searches generally include extensive photography and video recording anyway, I don't think much would change in that regard.

I was thinking more of the barge-down-the-door-without-a-warrant sort of search.

I'm overly sensitive to it because I live in a college town with a 4th amendment violating county ordinance. If the police suspect underage drinking, they can enter the premises and arrest occupants for any other violations they see.

Exactly. If privacy is the true concern, the solution is to forbid the unofficial mass release of helmet-cam footage, and set up specific exceptions: to expose wrongdoing, when subpoenaed by a judge, etc.

In the recent "I am a Seattle cop, AMA" over in /r/seattle, the officer said: "I'm torn on body cameras and confused about the public perception of them. People really didn't want us to have a drone that could fly for 10 minutes but they want us to bring cameras into their homes." [1]

I will admit that I am both pro-body cam and anti-drone, but I'd never thought of it that way.

[1] http://www.reddit.com/r/Seattle/comments/1jp0hu/iama_spd_off...

I didn't think of it that way either, and I agree that it's a good point.

I think the difference is that the drone is more of a mass-surveillance device where the individual cameras aren't (quite as much).

A good analogue might be a police dash camera versus car-mounted license plate readers. They are similar but meant for very different uses.

I don't want police officers in my home. However if police officers do come into my home then I absolutely want them to have a body camera so they can be held responsible for any actions they take.

I agree on the first claim, but to the second, it is a two-edged sword. If the police are in your home, they may or may not see anything interesting. If they have video to play back, they may get a second chance to look for something that they wouldn't have had.

I don't deny the benefit we seek, but there are risks, as well.

But shouldn't it be the case that if police is given a search warrant, we (as people, in general) want them to notice anything and everything there is to notice?

This is also something I would reply to your sibling comment as well, I think many would prefer a footage of their state instead of a description of it from a police officer who might be confused/distracted/filling-up-the-gaps. It is both more objective and more just. Jury should be allowed to see as it was and not just as it is displayed during the trial.

I admit I wasn't thinking of search warrants. I was thinking of the times where I've had police in my domicile, all of which were in response to calls for assistance.

I fear the police more when they are in my home than after the fact. Police brutality, planted evidence, and plain old dishonesty have more potential to harm me than the truth.

'RyJones made an argument in response to you that is at least something to think about; another that I have heard is that without cameras, if you get arrested, then your lawyer at least has the chance to clean you up and get you in a suit before the court and jury see you. No such chance if your arrest was recorded.

The difference is the balance of power. I'm anti-drone because I believe they'd be used for indiscriminate surveillance or to gather specific evidence the police want. I would find it implausible that they'd be used to vindicate a civilian or to "watch the watchers". The presumption is different with body cameras. If standard practice is to wear them and record at all times, they should be used as evidence of the truth either way - whether that condemns the police of justifies their actions. I'm okay with anything that would prove the truth neutrally and impartially, as long as it respected reasonable bounds of privacy. If body cameras could only be used when the police chose to, I would be against them as though they were drones.

I think it's interesting that none of the other replies to this have hit on what I think is the truly pertinent difference.

When implemented in an ideal fashion, body cameras would go straight to archival storage that could not be opened without a warrant. The idea is not to be watching it all the time, but to preserve a record that can be used to investigate complaints.

I don't know if that's likely. But even absent that, simple numbers dictate that most of the footage will go unwatched. You'd need a number of officers similar to those out in the field to see it all.

With drones, every moment is being watched and analyzed. There is little chance that drone footage will serve to help someone in a complaint against the police.

Please see this https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6235004 (JshWright's comment, buried down in the comments) The camera was a personal camera (Like a GoPro), not an officially provided one.

I think this completely validates the fire chief's actions.

> All public servants should be mandated to have video and audio recordings taken during their interactions with the public.

That would become extremely complicated when you consider the fact that vast majority of interactions firefighters and paramedics have are considered protected health information under HIPAA

I'd like to share my perspective as a firefighter...

This wasn't some officially sanctioned camera, there for the purpose of accountability. It was a personal camera a firefighter had placed on his helmet. My guess is, it was already in violation of department policy, and only tacitly allowed (every department I know of has a policy against using personal cameras on scenes). This is likely just a clarification that they will now be enforcing this policy.

I'm shocked this policy wasn't enforced sooner. The number of HIPAA violations that must have resulted from the use of these cameras must be staggering, and I'm surprised they haven't been sued yet.

We're not law enforcement officers. We're not there with a warrant, we're there to provide care and compassion. Shoving a camera in someone's face without their consent is neither good 'care', nor is it compassionate.

It's disappointing that most of the discussion on this post has entirely missed this crucial fact, and assumes we are talking about mandated cameras.

Disgusting. The moment it's about exposing their fuck-ups they are all suddenly concerned about everyone's privacy and rights and it becomes "fairly clear".

If the camera is there to catch you, then it's good and you have no right or reason to expect privacy.

But if it's about catching them, uh-oh!

I'd hardly be surprised. The first N articles of policy of any government agency are "In case of trouble, cover your ass."

Everyone involved in this blatant attempt at covering up, not only this error, but all future errors, should immediately lose their job, including ALL (bloated) pension benefits.

Then you're going to have to fire just about everyone in government.

We've banned helmet cams for years. It's not about covering anything up, it's about not getting sued for HIPAA violations.

I wear a GoPro at training events, but would never wear one on an actual incident. We often show up in someone's most vulnerable moment. We're there to provide care and compassion. Making a video recording of someone who is sick or injured is neither necessary for their care, or compassionate.

They banned helmet cams for years too. "Banned", in that the rule was apparently widely ignored. Nobody cared until they showed the department in a bad light.

Just because there are good reasons for banning them doesn't mean the reasons for banning them in this particular case are good.

Your argument for compassion and respecting people's vulnerability when providing general emergency services and fire fighting is a good one. I wonder, however, if this case shows that there are different needs for airports and responses to large scale disasters?

A crash site is a hugely complex and chaotic event; wouldn't it make sense to have more data and awareness if that's what cameras can provide? Helmet cams, truck cams could all provide additional data for investigators.

You notice 'privacy' is only a concern when observation makes powerful people look bad?

What a lying scumbag.

    "I think it is fairly clear," she said. "Without someone's permission, videos are not to be taken."

When will the same courtesy be applied to "We the People?"

Trust can only be established with transparency. The second we start hiding things from each other, we have a real reason to distrust each other.

In general I trust my neighbors, but I don't object if they put down their blinds. As far as I know they trust me, even though the blinds are down a fair bit of the evening.

I could have sworn that the line was: you have nothing to fear if you're not doing anything wrong.

Good for the goose, good for the gander.

How will stop them from running over more people?

If a firetruck runs over a schoolgirl in the forest, and nobody is around to see it, did it really happen?

Easy: without video proof, they have a better chance of arguing that injuries came from something else.

Well, if you can hide the fact you ran over someone, did you really run them over?

Jesus christ, what is wrong with all you people? Somehow, firefighters in america have become the bad guys? They fucked up in an incredibly difficuly situation, and because of it, a young girl is dead. Do you have any idea how traumatic this must be for the officers involved? This policy is not about "if you've got nothing to hide, you've got nothing to worry about", it's about protecting the people who literally risk their lives for the rest of us; protecting them and the families of those affected from public exposure of horrific events such as these. If your daughter was killed in a horrific accident like this, would you want video of the event and her mutilated corpse shown to people around the world? I have a feeling most of you would not. And the same would be said if you had been the person who was responsible for killing them.

Clearly one, or several, people fucked up on the ground, and somehow this has turned into a debate about how bureaucrats are trying to protect themselves from "their fuckups". This had nothing to do with the bureaucrats, it has to do with the men on the ground, and the whole situation is truly horrific for them.

I'm all for police officers wearing cameras (at least in the US where abuses of power seem to be the norm), but I am also vehemently against the idea that emergency service officers should be subjected to the same treatment. Their job is incredibly difficult and dangerous. Sometimes mistakes happen, and sometimes those mistakes are incredibly regretful, but I feel that these officers being forced to fear every action they make will mean they cannot do their job effectively. We do not live in a society where we can expect 100% perfection 100% of the time, form anyone at all. I would rather have firefighters who occasionally screw up, than none at all.

The sentiment in these comments has I find deeply disturbing, and completely misdirected, and I feel that many of the commenters here should stop and think about who is most affected by their statements. I'd hate to be one of the officers involved, and then to see the sort of crap that's been said here.

Firefighters aren't generally called 'officers' (I agree wholeheartedly with your point though).

"Why yes, I shall protect myself and others who work for the public from accountability by banning cameras that document our work."

Perfect, you can just watch the culture trickle spread from the Federal Government to the local ones.

This is incredibly tone-deaf in light of recently released results that show huge benefits from police wearing body cams.

Firefighters are not cops. I'm fully in support of cops wearing recording devices. I think firefighters/paramedics wearing recording devices is a bad idea (speaking as the latter).

There are plenty of reasons, but I'll list a couple: -This would generate _huge_ amounts of HIPAA protected data, that would be a nightmare to keep and protect. -There are plenty of occasions where I need someone to be honest with me, without fear of legal repercussions (i.e. what drugs did you take?). A camera in their face is going to make them a lot less likely to answer truthfully. -People call us at their most vulnerable. If someone is sick or injured, the last thing they need is a camera in their face.

I don't think there's a widespread lack of accountability in Fire/EMS. Obviously there are issues, but they are generally handled well. There's no 'thin blue line' effect. If I screw up to the point of negligence, my career is over, I face a hefty fine, and potentially significant civil lawsuits.

Once the police get past the first order effects where cameras encourage both the cops and the people they deal with to de-escalate confrontations, I think they will keep wearing body cams in order to study safety and effectiveness, even though you could say much the same about confidentiality in some situations.

For that matter, if I'm in a hospital I would want a camera recording my room 24/7 to record, for example, whether a nurse washed their hands before handling something that could get me a nasty infection, especially if I am incapacitated.

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