HPD is testing where on body to put cameras
ASSOCIATED PRESS
A red light on the body camera worn on Duluth, Minn., police officer Dan Merseth’s uniform indicates it is active during a traffic stop in Duluth. The Honolulu Police Department is hoping to start a pilot program for body cameras.
Honolulu police are hoping to begin a body camera pilot program by the end of this year.
Police Maj. Andrew Lum, who heads the department’s Information Technology Division, said the department is testing vantage points by placing body cameras at eye, shoulder and chest levels on officers of various heights. The officers are then placed into a variety of scenarios, sometimes with other camera-equipped officers.
The recordings are analyzed for obstructions, visibility and other advantages or drawbacks, Lum said in an interview after giving a presentation recently about the body cameras to the Honolulu Police Commission.
The Honolulu Police Department is following police departments in Kauai, Maui and Hawaii island — all much smaller departments — that have already implemented or tested the technology.
About 100 of the 140 officers with the Kauai Police Department have been using collar-worn body cameras since December, a spokeswoman said.
The Maui Police Department, which has about 350 officers, is conducting a one-month study on body-worn cameras. On Hawaii island, police already completed a pilot program but have yet to purchase cameras for the department’s 440 officers.
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Honolulu’s police force is much larger, with about 2,000 officers, and one of the biggest challenges, HPD officials say, is figuring out the best way to manage and store the data.
Last year, only about 18 percent of law enforcement agencies had fully operational body worn camera programs, according to a survey by the Major Cities Chiefs Association and Major County Sheriffs’ Association.
Lum said the department expects to finish testing vantage points this month and has almost completed an administrative policy that tells officers how to use the cameras.
In about two months HPD may be able to make a request for proposals and select a vendor for the hardware, Lum said. At that time HPD will have an idea of the pilot project’s cost.
He said the pilot could begin in November and last three to six months.
During the pilot the department will need only about a month to decide what camera hardware to go with. Testing the policy, however, will take months.
“We have to ascertain whether or not what we have written works out in the field,” Lum told the commission.
After the pilot project is complete, the department will decide how to store the data — either in-house or in “the cloud” using a third party. While in-house storage would require additional manpower and costs, the data would be accessible from inside the department rather than on a server on the mainland.
Police Chief Louis Kealoha told the commission that on average, one person is needed to catalog and manage the data from video for every 10 officers.
“It becomes very costly,” he said. “This project is definitely going to run into the millions.”
Lum estimated 500 cameras used over three shifts a day would create about 4,000 terabytes of data a year (one terabyte is 1,000 gigabytes). He said managing and storing that data could cost from $1.5 million to $3 million annually.
Lum said it’s been a challenge to implement body cameras for the department because the technology hasn’t been around long enough for best practices to be established. He said that some departments that adopted the technology later abandoned it because it was too expensive.
HPD began looking into body cameras in December and was delayed by legislation that would have hampered the department’s use of the technology, Lum said. He added that the department is still working to change a city law that limits the ability of officers to record in public.
After the pilot project is compete, the department will compare the costs and impacts and determine whether HPD will adopt the technology. A police spokeswoman said HPD looked into dashboard cameras more than 10 years ago and decided at the time not to purchase the technology. It wasn’t clear why HPD rejected dashboard cameras.
Lum said another obstacle for the pilot project was cleared in June when the Hawaii Labor Relations Board ruled in favor of the Kauai Police Department using body cameras. In that case the State of Hawaii Organization of Police Officers, which supports body cameras, filed a complaint with the board, claiming the union needed to approve KPD’s use of the cameras. The board ruled that KPD didn’t need the union’s approval.
23 responses to “HPD is testing where on body to put cameras”
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“After the pilot project is complete, the department will decide how to store the data — either in-house or in “the cloud” using a third party.”
Oh, what could possibly go wrong here?
Just wait. HPD police videos will start showing up you You Tube within hours of their being stored for reference.
With Chinese subtitles.
Once again the backwards Nei is trying to reinvent the wheel. With this statement, “Police Maj. Andrew Lum, who heads the department’s Information Technology Division, said the department is testing vantage points by placing body cameras at eye, shoulder and chest levels on officers of various heights.”
Uhhhh, rather than waste time for this useless process, check with the manufacturer and all the other police departments already using the cameras. Survey work has already been done, best camera locations determined. No need to waste taxpayer’s money.
Why is it the Nei can be so weak of mind in these areas, trying to reinvent the wheel? Just another day in the little 8th world of Hawaii Nei.
Exactly.
Another thing about HPD is their belief that after you get your 3rd Kukui Nut you magically become an expert in the field of expertise that the division you’re assigned to covers. What are Maj. Lum’s Information Technology advanced degrees? They’ve admitted that this could cost millions of dollars down the road. Surely they got someone with advanced degrees and lots of laboratory and hands on experience with video cameras and associated hardware, information storage and security, etc. Or is he just a policeman who served a decade or more and got 3 Kukui nuts?
Gotta adjust for the local “stomach protrusion factor” from eating too much lau lau versus too much doughnuts. It creates a different angle of the camera.
ROTFL!!!!!! Way to go.
First things first….they gotta learn how to turn it on.
It should be something like google glass, where the camera is at eye level and moves with the head, so you can see what the cop is looking at. Looking at some of those chest mounted videos, you can see that the officer’s body is twisted and his chest is pointed away from the direction his eyes, arms and weapon are pointed.
“Police Chief Louis Kealoha told the commission that on average, one person is needed to catalog and manage the data from video for every 10 officers.”
So, we’re looking at, at least 200 more HPD employees when this goes into effect?
Kekelaward makes a good point about tech expertise. This manpower ratio makes no sense. Blue tooth tech could be used to automatically store camera data in squad cars, and the same tech could be used later to automatically retrieve and archive that data in HQ computers. A smart front end in the computer system could be used to retrieve data as needed. None of this requires massive manpower.
Localguy, too, makes a good point. Why reinvent the wheel? Review what other departments have learned about camera placement.
Kekelaward makes another good point re placement to align with the officer’s eye movement. Height and body shape issues become irrelevant.
“Police Maj. Andrew Lum, who heads the department’s Information Technology Division, said the department is testing vantage points by placing body cameras at eye, shoulder and chest levels on officers of various heights. The officers are then placed into a variety of scenarios, sometimes with other camera-equipped officers.”>>> I’m guessing there’s already a police dept…or two…who have already done this. Quit stalling and reinventing the wheel.
I would think wearing it on the forehead like a head band.
Then no matter which way his head turns, it would record what the officer sees.
Altho.. the visor on their caps may be a factor.
Yes, remember that cop video of them shooting a smart aleck kid in LA. Camera was positioned at center of chest. Arm and hand movements blocked the view. Forehead sounds good. Gonna laugh when I see the cops wear them above their sunglasses.
Hire college students. They can handle ten times more info than HS degrees. Might test computer nerds who could discover ways to handle a hundred times more. BTW I read you hired in house cops to create your useless communications system. Should have contacted UH or a mainland technology college for some expertise. Something wrong with the way HPD brass makes costly mis-decisions.
As others pointed Lum does not seem very informed or knowledgeable about what to do or how much it should REALLY cost. Don’t take a computer expert to know that an off the shelf 10 TB hard drive costs about $650 so if he needed to store 4,000 TB of data he would need 400 hard drives and enclosing them in USB 3.0 removable drive cases that can be bought mail order would total a little over $260,000 for the initial up front cost and then after they are filled up, you would just overwrite the routing older videos of no importance when they run out of space. Of course keep the important videos where there is a shooting or whatever. Another question would be his estimate of the need for 4,000 TB of data because with newer and newer video compression technology, awesomely sharp video is being stored in smaller and smaller file sizes. Also like GoPro and other body cameras, they are now becoming WiFi enabled means offloading the video to a storage device can be done wirelessly. As someone else mentioned just hire a UH computer science professor with his top computer geeks as a project and they would come up with a solid system for data storage that is simple, reliable with an initial start up cost for way less than $400,0000 to pay for the hard drives and computer which can be bought off the shelf given Intel now makes Generation 4 Core I7 computers that are so powerful no custom computer server is needed, just provide some redundancy and backup in case of failure. After the UH prof and his students set it all up the annual maintenance cost should be minimal, such as buying hard drives to replace failed ones or body cameras and that should NOT even come close to costing $1.5 to $3 million annually.
Correction: Intel is up to generation 6
Did you see that Western Digital 16 tb system? Amazon.com got the WD 16TB My Book Pro Professional RAID Storage. $1200 baby. 3.0 USB wiring. Mo beddah have an expert make a dedicated supercomputer or rent one from a computer company downtown who already have super air-conditioned rooms and reliable antivirus software. IBM? Oracle? Use the private sector. HPD is too amateurish and under qualified for high technology.
Same bidding solicitors as the school air conditioning solicitors? 😉
The first time the Hawaii Court throws out police camera footage used to convict a suspect is when HPD should stop using them. If the cameras are only to monitor police and not used in evidence against offenders then it’s a bad idea and way to costly. These things should be enacted in law before you start such a costly experiment.
On their genitals or rear ends. Where to put cameras? Where do you think?
The police officers on the Big Island already have them. I would have thought HPD would just check with them.
I know a good place they can insert it.