Cops To Start CrimeTube To Report Offenses

An anonymous reader writes "UK citizens may soon be able to report crimes by uploading videos taken from their mobile phones. Ian Readhead, director of information for the Association of Chief Police Officers, told silicon.com that forces want to build a video reporting portal to allow the public to upload potential evidence. Checking YouTube is now a routine part of many police investigations, he said, and police want to build on the extra functionality that this gives them."

What's the point?

[Anonymous Coward]

Your every action is already videotaped in England.

Re:Insurance Fraud Galore

[Drakkenmensch]

How long before people start using this new tech to make bogus insurance claims??

If most people can watch a staged youtube clip and call it out as a sham, I think the cops will be even better equipped at spotting a faked clip. And making a false statement to the police is itself a crime, so their 15 minutes of youtube fame will run out pretty fast...

Re:Report on your neighbor!

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Not a huge surprise. They already have the "If you suspect it Report it" [police.uk] campaign.

Not to mention good old "Secure beneath the watchful eyes". [flickr.com](yes, they are actually serious. As in, that poster is not ironic.)

Re:Holy crap!

[Darkness404]

Technology changes things. Back before electronic attendance, and electronic grades, a teacher would be very suspicious if something didn't check out in their records. Today, most teachers believe that the technology is always right, even when it contradicts paper gradebooks. Common sense gets thrown out of the window whenever you have a bunch of technology illiterate people together with technology.

Re:Holy crap!

[AxeTheMax]

That's easy, all of them will be deleted. Because they would be information about the police that may be of use to terrorists, and it's illegal to collect such information.

Re:Police Abuse Videos

[Reason58]

They already had something very much like this, Rate My Cop [wikipedia.org].

Police complained and GoDaddy pulled the site.

Re:Holy crap!

[causality]

It makes it too easy. Let's say that your neighbor likes to smoke pot from time to time, and that bothers you.

I'm not saying that the behavior should be any more illegal than smoking tobacco (Arguably it should be far less so) but if you smoke weed where it's illegal and you do it in plain sight of someone you don't know you can trust then you're a bozo.

Making small amounts of red tape (i.e. you actually have to call a phone number and talk to somone) limits the number of frivilous complaints.

You'll probably have to fill out a form when you upload the video, too.

It's problematic because the police, in fact the entire government, are supposed to be servants of the people and this did not arise due to overwhelming demand from the people. I don't know if I have ever seen anything fitting that description that was actually a good or desirable thing. That alone should be a giant red flag.

I think this is connected to what may go by various names, but the term I have heard for it is "proactive policing". At least in the USA, it arose during the 80s. It's what has filled jails with minor non-violent drug offenders and others who are involved in victimless crimes. The basis of it is that if their idea of how many arrests should be made is unmet, they go looking for something, anything, even the most minor violations, to compensate. It should be common public knowledge, and it's shameful that it isn't, but the job performance of police officers is evaluated entirely in terms of how many arrests they make, with more weight given to severe crimes like felonies. They receive no encouragement whatsoever to find other ways to handle the more minor victimless offenses. They don't score points with their boss by being more community-friendly, like at more often issuing warnings instead of tickets or confiscating marijuana and saying "look, I better not catch you doing this again" instead of outright arrests. The result is that people don't respect authority anymore because it's no longer respectable, it has lost its human side and has become a set of mechanical rules.

It's a shame and it's part of how things are getting worse. Talk to your parents or grandparents and you'll hear about a time when the police were your neighbors, people you knew. Teenagers who were caught drinking etc. used to be taken home with a lecture or a stern warning and the matter was left to their parents to handle, and you know what, if prevention of a reoccurance is the goal, this was more effective. Now, someone who gets caught doing that has a criminal record for the rest of their life and stands to lose their driver's license etc. There is no longer any understanding that "they're young and dumb and have their entire lives ahead of them; it should not be harmed or ruined because of an indiscretion that they are likely to outgrow."

I'm not saying that all crime isn't serious or that all crime should be dealt with softly. I'm talking specifically about cases where the "criminal" wasn't harming anyone except maybe himself. There's a world of difference between that, and actually intentionally hurting another human being. The former is merely poor judgment that is better corrected by education and loving family and good role models, whereas the other is truly wrong and must be fought. That difference used to be recognized, then along came proactive policing and other political movements that always have the effect of increasing both state power and state involvement in daily life. I really believe this is heading down the wrong path and has been for some time now. There is no better evidence for this than the fact that it seems impossible to change.

Re:Holy crap!

[Anonymous Coward]

You still think laws are there to serve society? That's so cute.

The idea is to force everyone out of the community that can't afford a house.

Re:Crimes by cops?

[Henry Pate]

The resolution to that case was fairly interesting. FOr those not familiar with it you can see the video here [youtube.com]. Basically this officer, Patrick Pogan [wikipedia.org], picked a guy out of a huge group of cyclists riding in a rally and decided to body check him, hard. In the video the cyclist clearly steers away from the cop and the officer charges him. The officer then arrested the cyclist, writing in the police report that he was weaving in and out of traffic, forcing vehicles to swerve or stop, and generally disrupting the normal flow of traffic. He said that he suffered lacerations on his arms because the cyclists steered his bike into him and knocked him down, and that when he tried to arrest him he began flailing, kicking and screaming, "You are pawns in the game!". The cyclist spent the next day in police custody charged with attempted assault, resisting arrest and disorderly conduct.

The charges against the cyclist were dropped. Pogan, after being a police officer for three weeks got put on desk duty during the investigation. Then on Dec 16, 2008 he appeared in court and pleaded not guilty to felony charges of of falsifying business records and filing a false instrument and misdemeanor charges of third-degree assault, second-degree harassment and making a punishable false written statement. After the indictment, he was suspended. Two months later he resigned as the department prepared to fire him.

In a way this cyclist was lucky, the cop was so stupid he did it in front of at least 100 onlookers. His partner saw it all and still went along with it which doesn't say much for him either. Had there not been so many people around the outcome could've been very different.