There’s a lot of controversy surrounding the use of police body cameras. Some privacy advocates argue that the video captured by the always-on cameras has little effect on the behavior of police officers : the statistics surrounding use of force and citizen complaints barely budged before and after the tech was introduced. The police don’t much care for them either. The NYPD’s police union, for example, says that the footage captured by a body cam shouldn’t be able to be used in open court as it could be considered to be part of a police officer’s personnel record, which is protected from public disclosure. Then there’s the middle ground: by having cops wear body cams while on duty, provided they’re not covering them or turning them off during an incident, they’re being held accountable for every action they take.
No matter where you sit on this spectrum, it’s likely safe to say that using the tech to capture video of someone’s ass and balls is likely not a great idea.
From The New York Daily News:
An NYPD detective has been suspended for using another cop’s body camera to shoot an X-rated video of his privates, the Daily News has learned.
Detective Specialist Raymond Williams, a neighborhood coordination officer at the 79th Precinct, was suspended Thursday, law enforcement sources said.
Williams waited until unsuspecting cop Michael Devonish — another neighborhood coordination officer — went to the men’s room in their Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, stationhouse before he snatched Devonish’s body camera and put it to anatomical abuse.
Apparently, Williams thought it would be hilarious to film his junk, including a quick on-screen massage of his penis for Devonish to find. Devonish didn’t report the footage once he discovered it.
But you know what? An employee working for the NYPD’s Legal bureau did. She spotting it while conducting a routine review of body cam footage near the end of November. A complaint was sent up the ladder, eventually ending up in the lap of the NYPD’s Internal Affairs Bureau. According to a departmental source, the 32 seconds of ill-advised video that Detective Williams shot cost him his Police ID, badge and department-issued weapons: he’s on suspension until the conclusion of the Internal Affairs investigation.
Image by Ryan Johnson – https://www.flickr.com/photos/northcharleston/25763393046, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=52373022, CC BY-SA 2.0, Link