Sorry, body camera. I have read about the Axon brand, the ones that make the Taser. One of the features they also offer is cloud storage of the video, so even if the chief of police personally deleted the video there would be a record somewhere else.

No system is fullproof of course but generally the idea is making it harder to cheat or abuse.

You're missing the fundamental issue.  I'm not saying video evidence is easy to delete.  When the video is captured, it's just a filename that might have some metadata with officer badge#, officer name, precinct, GPS location, etc.  What is not automatically captured is the case number.  That gets assigned manually, usually stating out as a report control number.

It's up to someone to enter that data for each video file.  Otherwise, the evidence isn't tied to the case, making searching for evidence in any particular case harder.

What's been reported already is Cops are hiding video by inputting a bogus case number.  So, when the prosecutor, defense, or whoever might be investigating a complaint against that officer requests that evidence, the relevant video won't be included in a search of the real case number.  It would take some effort to locate the relevant footage assuming you know it should have been made available.

None of that is related to the camera brand, features or storage location.

You say no system is perfect, but that's because most systems are designed with the operator in mind ahead of security.  The design problem in these types of products revolves around the need  to share the data among officers, prosecutors, the police higher-ups, etc.

The worst thing we can do is make the system harder to work with than is absolutely necessary.  Once security becomes a burden, people start finding shortcuts and workarounds to make their jobs easier.  Think: writing down passwords that are too long and cryptic to remember.  That's a major security hole, but so is creating easy-to-pronounce and short-enough-to-remember-(and crack) passwords.  Until everyone has an RFID chip embedded in their body somewhere, and all access is granted on a retina scan and RFID verification, no system will be secure AND easy to access for those with authorization.

Keeping a record of each change is relatively minor, but to make it fool proof, you need to cross-reference that with facility entry logs, video cameras for all devices on the network, and so on.  Login credentials are too easy to "borrow", and even biometrics fail when someone is careless -- leaving a screen unlocked while they leave their desk for a minute.

Even voice print security has it s limitations....   first 25 seconds .....

Don't forget the good ole "I forgot to turn my bodycam on" as reason why there's no file.  Which is not illegal, just against department policy.  Then the OK to turn off when cops are talking amongst themselves away from who they're in contact with.

I know a guy who submitted a FOIA and got the body cam from his traffic stop.  There is a huge gap when the 2 cops are talking away from him.  Not only did he get a BS citation, but his middle name was spelled wrong.  So when someone tries to find the citation by name, nothing comes up. It is not a hard middle name to spell either.  And his first and last name are very common.  So the middle name is important if not you get tons of people with the same name. Is it impossible to find, no .  But it takes way more time.

Don't forget the good ole "I forgot to turn my bodycam on" as reason why there's no file.  Which is not illegal, just against department policy.  Then the OK to turn off when cops are talking amongst themselves away from who they're in contact with.

I know a guy who submitted a FOIA and got the body cam from his traffic stop.  There is a huge gap when the 2 cops are talking away from him.  Not only did he get a BS citation, but his middle name was spelled wrong.  So when someone tries to find the citation by name, nothing comes up. It is not a hard middle name to spell either.  And his first and last name are very common.  So the middle name is important if not you get tons of people with the same name. Is it impossible to find, no .  But it takes way more time.

That can be a double edged sword. If you don't allow cops to turn off their cameras the storage requirements greatly increase, you get footage of them in the bathroom, and you might discourage people who want to report things anonymously.

Hopefully the ticket for your friend got thrown out since the officer couldn't even manage to fill it out accurately.

That can be a double edged sword. If you don't allow cops to turn off their cameras the storage requirements greatly increase, you get footage of them in the bathroom, and you might discourage people who want to report things anonymously.

Hopefully the ticket for your friend got thrown out since the officer couldn't even manage to fill it out accurately.

Cops don't record in the squad car where 2 officers are maybe having less than professional discussions, in the bathroom, etc.  What they need is a camera system that can activate the body cams at the time a call comes in -- technology that already can be used.

Doesn't take much looking to find these answers.

The AXON 2 is the most popular model police body cam.

Battery power is about 12 hrs minimum.

Depending on the quality settings, it can store up to 70 hours of AV recordings on 64gb of memory.

Current model can record MPEG4 at 1080P (HD) quality.

The cameras can be wireless activated with the opening of the cruiser's door or activation of the light bar.


Then there's the AXON 3

With the Axon Signal wireless activation technology -- to allow automatic and remote activation.

"In the event of a late or non-activation, retrieve up to 18 hours of audio-free footage from critical incidents so that truth is preserved"

Same battery life and 64gb storage as the Model 2.


So, in short, the body cams have enough battery life to complete a normal duty shift, and enough storage to cover nearly 9 8-hour shifts.  No reason they can't upload the recordings to a server from a direct upload connection or via the web after each shift to backup the data and free up space on the devices.

Cops don't record in the squad car where 2 officers are maybe having less than professional discussions, in the bathroom, etc.  What they need is a camera system that can activate the body cams at the time a call comes in -- technology that already can be used.

Doesn't take much looking to find these answers.

The AXON 2 is the most popular model police body cam.

Battery power is about 12 hrs minimum.

Depending on the quality settings, it can store up to 70 hours of AV recordings on 64gb of memory.

Current model can record MPEG4 at 1080P (HD) quality.

The cameras can be wireless activated with the opening of the cruiser's door or activation of the light bar.


Then there's the AXON 3

With the Axon Signal wireless activation technology -- to allow automatic and remote activation.

"In the event of a late or non-activation, retrieve up to 18 hours of audio-free footage from critical incidents so that truth is preserved"

Same battery life and 64gb storage as the Model 2.


So, in short, the body cams have enough battery life to complete a normal duty shift, and enough storage to cover nearly 9 8-hour shifts.  No reason they can't upload the recordings to a server from a direct upload connection or via the web after each shift to backup the data and free up space on the devices.

The cameras certainly can record a full shift but the storage costs are significant. You're in IT right? Imagine 1000 officers recording full shifts, uploading them to some server all the way on the mainland, and keeping that for a year or more. Recording just 3 hours a day of the necessary interactions would be much easier to store from a cost standpoint.

It sounds like Axon has come up with a pretty good system that tries to cover a lot of the problems that can be faced in terms of accurate and transparent record keeping. Humans will always try to find a way to cheat of course. I guess the best think to do is try to balance the costs and benefits. Either way I think body cameras have resulted in a significant improvement in terms of accountability. We see officers getting fired or convicted of crimes no where we otherwise probably wouldn't due to he said-she said type situations.

The cameras certainly can record a full shift but the storage costs are significant. You're in IT right? Imagine 1000 officers recording full shifts, uploading them to some server all the way on the mainland, and keeping that for a year or more. Recording just 3 hours a day of the necessary interactions would be much easier to store from a cost standpoint.

It sounds like Axon has come up with a pretty good system that tries to cover a lot of the problems that can be faced in terms of accurate and transparent record keeping. Humans will always try to find a way to cheat of course. I guess the best think to do is try to balance the costs and benefits. Either way I think body cameras have resulted in a significant improvement in terms of accountability. We see officers getting fired or convicted of crimes no where we otherwise probably wouldn't due to he said-she said type situations.

Ever hear of retention and backup policies?

Recordings not needed for an active case can be backed up and deleted from the active file server in like 30 days. 

Archived footage of completed cases can also be deleted.

And so on....

It's a common practice.  With compression software today, it's easy to store massive amounts of old recordings in an affordable data storage facility.

Dont forget maybe laws in place for "missing" files or segments that hold the officer responsible during and leading up to interactions within reason.



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Ever hear of retention and backup policies?

Recordings not needed for an active case can be backed up and deleted from the active file server in like 30 days. 

Archived footage of completed cases can also be deleted.

And so on....

It's a common practice.  With compression software today, it's easy to store massive amounts of old recordings in an affordable data storage facility.

I don't think lossless data compression is that good. Plus that doesn't address the bandwidth issue of sending it all to the mainland.

According to the police policy they have to save videos for at least 13 months, and some videos have to be stored for 3 years or more. How many terabytes a day do you think they are filling up?

I don't think lossless data compression is that good. Plus that doesn't address the bandwidth issue of sending it all to the mainland.

According to the police policy they have to save videos for at least 13 months, and some videos have to be stored for 3 years or more. How many terabytes a day do you think they are filling up?

Not sure on what you're basing your technical opinion, but compressing video recorded at MPEG-4 1080P with H.265 won't cause any real quality decline.  H.265 can easily serve up 4K video, so 1080P is no problem.

If you take a 28GB BluRay MKV file and convert it to H.265 at 1080P, the file size will be close to 14GB -- around half the original size.  Compression also reduces bandwidth by around half.

Many professional videographers store their work in 4K using H.264 or H.265.  The quality is more than enough to use as source material, then exported as 1080P in whatever CODEC suits their needs.  1080P is more than sufficient for to positively ID someone from video.

The retention policy for new videos will be in a "production" server, which can use the original uncompressed files.  Storage can be in the

If you have a fast Internet connection, there's really no major concern with file transfer speeds.  That is, if you are using the "cloud" for long term storage.

For short term, setting up a server onsite is not that cost prohibitive.  There are plenty of storage solutions for free and on the enterprise IT market.

This is not a 1 server or one service solution.  You need 3 data stores:  Every Day Use (new video uploads), Production (stuff beyond the first server's retention but still active), and archive (Backup of every file on the first two servers).  Archives can be on tape, cloud storage, or RAID.  Offsite is best, in case the other copies are lost or damaged.



 

Not sure on what you're basing your technical opinion, but compressing video recorded at MPEG-4 1080P with H.265 won't cause any real quality decline.  H.265 can easily serve up 4K video, so 1080P is no problem.

If you take a 28GB BluRay MKV file and convert it to H.265 at 1080P, the file size will be close to 14GB -- around half the original size.  Compression also reduces bandwidth by around half.

Many professional videographers store their work in 4K using H.264 or H.265.  The quality is more than enough to use as source material, then exported as 1080P in whatever CODEC suits their needs.  1080P is more than sufficient for to positively ID someone from video.

The retention policy for new videos will be in a "production" server, which can use the original uncompressed files.  Storage can be in the

If you have a fast Internet connection, there's really no major concern with file transfer speeds.  That is, if you are using the "cloud" for long term storage.

For short term, setting up a server onsite is not that cost prohibitive.  There are plenty of storage solutions for free and on the enterprise IT market.

This is not a 1 server or one service solution.  You need 3 data stores:  Every Day Use (new video uploads), Production (stuff beyond the first server's retention but still active), and archive (Backup of every file on the first two servers).  Archives can be on tape, cloud storage, or RAID.  Offsite is best, in case the other copies are lost or damaged.

I am aware that there are a number of storage options and compression options but in the end aren't we still talking about terabytes a day?  If 1000 officers recorded 8 hours of footage per day what would that be per day?  It seems like 1080p footage comes to about 1 gb an hour so lets say 8 gb per officer, times 1000 officers would be 8 terabytes right? If they use a compression that causes zero loss of data and it halves the size as you suggest that would be 4Tb a day? I have no idea how long it would take to 4 terabytes extra a day through the city's internet connection. 4 TB a day equals 1460 TB a year but there is a backup so basically we double the amount, so about 3000 TB a year just for body camera footage. Do you know the annual cost of 3 petabytes of data? Tried looking finding costs from tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands but some of them seemed a few years old. Looks like a Dell server alone with that much storage is $60,000!
https://www.dell.com/en-us/work/shop/cty/powervault-me4084-storage-array/spd/powervault-me4084/pv_me4084_13102?gacd=9650523-1034-5761040-266691960-0&dgc=st&gclid=EAIaIQobChMIvZPBgteo8wIV82pvBB3G7gupEAQYASABEgKeMvD_BwE&gclsrc=aw.ds&nclid=sRaVk-r1auxtQPoaejRrQCdu6BDwS2rr7-MDmlj5L2Ewe6dTOtB5D4sfB9AW2fSZ8Qn7pz4dJ2e0YPYBiuStNw

I am aware that there are a number of storage options and compression options but in the end aren't we still talking about terabytes a day?  If 1000 officers recorded 8 hours of footage per day what would that be per day?  It seems like 1080p footage comes to about 1 gb an hour so lets say 8 gb per officer, times 1000 officers would be 8 terabytes right? If they use a compression that causes zero loss of data and it halves the size as you suggest that would be 4Tb a day? I have no idea how long it would take to 4 terabytes extra a day through the city's internet connection. 4 TB a day equals 1460 TB a year but there is a backup so basically we double the amount, so about 3000 TB a year just for body camera footage. Do you know the annual cost of 3 petabytes of data? Tried looking finding costs from tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands but some of them seemed a few years old. Looks like a Dell server alone with that much storage is $60,000!
https://www.dell.com/en-us/work/shop/cty/powervault-me4084-storage-array/spd/powervault-me4084/pv_me4084_13102?gacd=9650523-1034-5761040-266691960-0&dgc=st&gclid=EAIaIQobChMIvZPBgteo8wIV82pvBB3G7gupEAQYASABEgKeMvD_BwE&gclsrc=aw.ds&nclid=sRaVk-r1auxtQPoaejRrQCdu6BDwS2rr7-MDmlj5L2Ewe6dTOtB5D4sfB9AW2fSZ8Qn7pz4dJ2e0YPYBiuStNw

Unless you've spec'ed out and procured servers before, it's not something you should attempt on your own.  Technologies change monthly.  New services and providers find new and better ways to increase offerings and decrease costs. 

Even high tech providers for the government are subscribing to data centers strategically located around the country (and world).  It's easier and cheaper to lease storage, web services and database hosts on a large scale than it is to run out to Dell and buy everything.  Facilities that can support large data warehouses are not cheap or easy to find. 

Whether you choose Amazon or some other top name for your data hosting needs, it's going to be easier and cheaper in the long run than doing everything in-house.

Are officers on calls 8 hours per day?  Most are involved in role call, court appearances, filling out reports, patrolling, eating lunch, etc.  Something tells me most aren't going to record more than 4 hours of video unless they are performing traffic enforcement.

Are all 1,000 officers handling calls each day?  Aren't some working at the headquarters, working security for buildings and VIP visitors, and so on.

You'd need actual averages for the actual number of patrol officers who actually handle interactions with suspects.  For instance, if I call the Cops because someone broke into my car, there's no reason to record or upload any video of me filing out a report with the officer/s.

Metrics are needed.  I have a feeling the AXON folks, as well as the departments using them, have metrics that can answer these questions.

It's not a simple start-to-end-of-shift calculation.

Here are some storage array numbers I found in a quick search:

If you want all SSD storage to reduce A/C cooling needs eliminate vibrations from spindles, and increase storage speeds,
I found a CyberStore 248N 48x NVMe All Flash Storage Array.  It takes up to 48 NVMe devices, and a total of 768TB of storage.

Only takes up 2U in a server cabinet.

$8,095

You can also find backup and archive appliances in the same price range that are dedicated to nothing but making sure you have copies of all your production data if needed.

Most NAS (Network Attached Storage) appliances don't need an actual server to function.  It has the processor and memory to run network protocols so anyone who needs access can add, change and delete data on it.  That makes the cost of the "storage server" much cheaper than your $60K estimate.

Unless you've spec'ed out and procured servers before, it's not something you should attempt on your own.  Technologies change monthly.  New services and providers find new and better ways to increase offerings and decrease costs. 

Even high tech providers for the government are subscribing to data centers strategically located around the country (and world).  It's easier and cheaper to lease storage, web services and database hosts on a large scale than it is to run out to Dell and buy everything.  Facilities that can support large data warehouses are not cheap or easy to find. 

Whether you choose Amazon or some other top name for your data hosting needs, it's going to be easier and cheaper in the long run than doing everything in-house.

Are officers on calls 8 hours per day?  Most are involved in role call, court appearances, filling out reports, patrolling, eating lunch, etc.  Something tells me most aren't going to record more than 4 hours of video unless they are performing traffic enforcement.

Are all 1,000 officers handling calls each day?  Aren't some working at the headquarters, working security for buildings and VIP visitors, and so on.

You'd need actual averages for the actual number of patrol officers who actually handle interactions with suspects.  For instance, if I call the Cops because someone broke into my car, there's no reason to record or upload any video of me filing out a report with the officer/s.

Metrics are needed.  I have a feeling the AXON folks, as well as the departments using them, have metrics that can answer these questions.

It's not a simple start-to-end-of-shift calculation.

I thought you were suggesting that officer record everything so I estimated 8 hours a day.

I thought you were suggesting that officer record everything so I estimated 8 hours a day.

I never said "everything during the entire shift."