April 23: Beth and Melanie have finally accepted that they cannot bring their own guns
I was ready to crawl under the table, thanks to Beth’s question about bringing our own guns. However, I had forgotten that Beth has the ability to turn strangers into accomplices. I think she uses pheromones.
Two men made their way to the front of the room and started up the laptop on the podium. One was smiley and blocky and wore a fully loaded police vest. The other was lean, bald and wore sarcasm and glasses.
The smiley guy was Sergeant Brian Ellithorpe, and although he claimed he’d been working for the Clark County Sheriff’s Office for over thirty years, I am not certain this is actually the case, because that would make him far older than he looked. When he removed his police vest (these vests trap body heat like a layer of blubber on a walrus, apparently) there was still a geometric quality to him, as if the years had planed away everything about him that wasn’t cop. He asked us to let him know if he was speaking too softly or loudly, as he was losing his hearing. He mentioned this in the same sheepish tone one might use to say they’d lost their keys.
Folks, guns are loud.
His cohort, the sarcastic guy, was Deputy Feller. I was gratified to see that Deputy Feller was having trouble with the overhead projector. He was doing the things people usually do when having trouble with a projector: squinting at the ceiling, pacing over to look at the laptop, then pacing over to squint at the ceiling again.
Sergeant Ellithorpe: “You need a boost, there, buddy?”
Deputy Fuller: “Yeah, can I stand on your back?”
(They are men, so I knew this meant they were good friends.)
Sergeant Ellithorpe poked at the laptop a few times, and the projector came on. Which was when Beth’s pheromone spoor kicked in:
“You, sir,” Deputy Fuller said, “may bring a gun on Saturday.”
Honestly, Elizabeth.
Ellithorpe and Feller were there to talk about body cams. The cams have only been in use since November of last year, but they are making such a difference in the way officers do their jobs, there is a department devoted to them. Right now, there are 132 body cams in use.
The cams are part of a package that also contains other goodies like tasers and VR helmets; Sergeant Ellithorpe told us, in a giddy tone, that they weren’t even done unpacking all the things included in the purchase. The public safety sales tax paid for the items, as well as a custom domain, hosting and tech support, for the next five years. (Cost? Five and a half million.)
The domain is evidence.com (catchy!) The site has secure, cloud-based storage and can upload footage from any Axon camera with the right protocols. Whether you can access that data once uploaded depends on your permissions level and department; every department has a unique login. Sergeants and Commanders have high-level access.
Deputy Feller: “We should probably revoke Commander Barsness’ permissions because he won’t let these people use their own guns.”
[Beth, seriously.]
Sergeants are tasked with sorting video footage into categories—theft, noise, burglary, etc.—for better searchability. (This sounds cooler than it actually is. Video footage is listed on a spreadsheet, and you click a box to assign a category.) Examples of retention rates: a traffic stop with a verbal warning is three years. A complaint about an employee is ten years. Footage of an officer-involved shooting is never deleted.
Some body cam specs:
- 13 hours of battery life
- Video at 30 frames per second (30 fps is also the standard for tv news and anything broadcast live.)
- 160 degree diagonal view camera lens (it can capture anything within a space the width and height of a movie theater screen. This is more than earlier models could do; the field increased because video footage and officer testimony in court didn’t always match up.)
- IP68 dust and water resistant (no dust can get in, and it can remain undamaged in up to 1.5 meters of water for thirty minutes. iPhones have this rating, as do higher-end Android phones.)
- Multi-camera playback
- Stealth Mode (mutes beeps and switches off screens.)
- Embedded GPS, LTE, Bluetooth and wifi
Note: These little guys can also drop a pin at a GPS location, ensuring that an officer can testify that a crime happened at a precise location. Exactly where someone dropped a gun, for example.
The body cams have two speakers on top, a wide-view camera lens, programmable shortcut buttons (not used), and five microphones. They have charging docks like phones do, and they sync with the more powerful cameras in the patrol Tahoes. It’s the vehicle cams that upload data to evidence.com; the Tahoes all have gigantic roof-mounted antennas. You can send footage via body cam as well, but it drains the batteries. Footage is transmitted over a secure cell connection; the cars are equipped with Verizon cards.
Deputy Feller played a video about a gang shooting. Actually, he started playing the video, but then Sergeant Ellithorpe remembered to warn us that some of the footage was graphic, so Deputy Feller added an additional warning that some things might be disturbing to some viewers, and then he played the video.
It was more surreal than disturbing. In the movies, when someone gets shot, everything slows down. In real life, if you blink, you might miss it. Then again, law enforcement looks at these things differently. There was even someone in the class who chose to narrate events as they happened:
“Okay, he’s coming around the corner. . . He’s turning. . . He’s pulling the trigger. . . There it is.”
The footage might have been more disturbing without the play-by-play. As it was, I couldn’t help imagining a stadium full of cheering fans.
To turn the body cam on, you do two quick taps on the big honkin’ button on the front. You have to do it quickly; early on, there was some confusion about the tapping speed. Luckily, the cameras have an auto-log, so the tapping speed problem was readily identified.
Question from the class: “What if somebody forgets to press the button?”
Cops are trained to the point that pressing the button is muscle memory. The difficulty lies in remembering to turn the recording off. Once you begin recording, the camera must remain on all the way to the end of the incident, and anything it records is stored as evidence, including that crass joke you just told your buddy. There are signs on the front door of the Sheriff’s Officers warning deputies to switch off their body cams. Per policy, if your camera is still running ten seconds after you enter the Sheriff’s Office, you will get a reprimand.
Wait, hold up! You know who we haven’t heard from, yet? Tangentia!
Tangentia: “How bad are the reprimands?”
It depends on the severity of the infraction. It’s easy to forget they’re on when they’re in stealth mode. But if the camera isn’t on when it should be on (for example, during an arrest) that’s grounds for disciplinary action. The Prosecutor needs the footage for the courtroom, the deputy needs the footage to jog his memory before he’s called to testify, and the sergeant needs to compare cam footage to written reports.
Tangentia: If an officer is ambushed, does something turn it on?
No.
Tangentia: What if he’s in the car?
No. Nothing turns the body cam on for ambushes.
The cameras record audio, as well. They can also be used like walkie-talkies, and if a deputy doesn’t answer a Code 4 check (a confirmation that the scene is secured and the threat is neutralized), his sergeant can log in remotely to view the scene in real time.
Tangentia: “What if his mamma calls?”
The video recording begins immediately, but there is a thirty-second delay before audio recording begins, ensuring that a deputy on patrol has enough time to politely end a conversation with his mother.
The cams automatically switch on if a deputy pulls his gun or taser, and any Axion cam within bluetooth range will also switch on. This has caused some problems, because the VPD also uses Axion body cams, and there have been instances where a VPD officer pursuing a suspect has accidentally activated the body cam on a deputy within bluetooth range.
Sergeant Ellithorpe: “I start my camera when I’m two blocks away from the scene. I don’t care if they see my speedometer or hear me grunt—oof—when I get out of the car. Whoops. Did I say that out loud?”
Deputy Feller added his two cents: “And the cameras transmit audio as well, so if you are riding with Sergeant Ellithorpe, you will also hear him moan as he gets out of the car, through your own body cam.”
There is currently eighteen terabytes of data on evidence.com. The Sheriff’s Office is paying for unlimited storage, but even so, any footage that is not evidence or subject to public records requests is discarded. Future generations will not be obliged to listen to Sergeant Ellithorpe groan his way out of the driver’s seat.
The cams can also record whether you were holding your taser at a 45 or 90 degree angle, how far the shells traveled, how long it took them to connect and when the taser was reholstered.
Deputy Feller: “The tasers we use have a range of twenty-one feet. In fact, I think I can get Sergeant Ellithorpe from here.”
Cameras are worn for a number of reasons aside from patrol duty, such as acting as a courthouse deputy or helping another tactical unit (Such as SWAT.)
Sergeant Ellithorpe: “They mount them on the front of SWAT vehicles. Have they brought those out to show you guys, yet?”
No sir, but Beth and I are now so excited we might die.
Body cams are worn in different ways, depending on whether you are a detective, undercover or a deputy. Deputies wear them front and center, and never below their shirt pockets.
Tangentia: “So if we want to know if someone is impersonating a deputy, we should assess their uniform to see whether they’re a real deputy or not.”
If you have a question about that, please call 911.
“She never disappoints,” Beth murmured happily.
Someone (not Tangentia, this time) pointed out that the body cams must make a big difference when training deputies. By his tone, he considered that a Very Clever Comment.
Sergeant Ellithorpe: “Oh, yeah. Especially with stuff like use-of-force. It provides good opportunities to learn from our mistakes.”
It’s so hard to feel clever when your target is humble.
Question from the class: “Are they bulletproof?”
Deputy Feller lit up. “I don’t know. They won’t give me one to shoot up. You should take one to the range on Saturday!” He waved the camera he was using as a demo. “Take this one, it has Sergeant Ellithorpe’s name on it.”
Another from the class: “Do they have body cams for the dogs?”
They actually tried to make that work a few times, but there’s no good way to secure a camera so that it doesn’t slide all over.
Animal Control Girl: “Do they put GPS on the dogs?”
Sergeant Ellithorpe: “Yeah, it’s called a leash. It has a range of about thirty feet.”
Things wound down with an interesting anecdote or two (Deputy Feller had a “Tactical Tape Reload of 100 Miles and Hour,” whatever that meant.) And then Deputy Feller tried to turn the laptop off, and Windows decided to install some updates, which the projector helpfully displayed.
“You know,” Beth said, “if the officer is wearing a camera, that’s how you know he isn’t impersonating an Amish police officer.”
“Good thinking!” I said. “Because that could happen.”
“I’m trying to think of a Weird Al-ish song for ‘Amish Body Cam,’” Beth said.
Turns out, “Body Cam” and “Spider Man” have the same number of syllables.
Body cam, body cam. . .
Next up: Collaborating with CRESA!
