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Jacob Blake had a weapon on the driver’s side of his vehicle when a police officer, who has now been identified as Rusten Sheskey, shot him seven times in Kenosha, Wisconsin, Sunday evening. Blake was leaning into that side of the vehicle when the officer discharged his weapon.According to the Wisconsin Department of Justice, police recovered a knife from the floorboard, but the agency did not say whether Blake, a 29-year-old black man, was holding the weapon when Sheskey shot him in the back, which left Blake paralyzed, according to his family’s lawyers. Video stills of the incident appear...

The Phoenix City Council on Wednesday voted in favor of a $5.7 million expansion of the local police department’s body-worn camera program. The 7-to-1 vote approves a contract to purchase 2,000 body-worn cameras for Phoenix police officers. As part of a pilot program, the Phoenix Police Department currently deploys 300 body cameras on officers around the city. The vote also approves 21 new positions in the police department and city prosecutor’s office to help administer the program. The new positions will cost an estimated $1.6 million. Council member Jim Waring, who has previously raised questions about the costs of buying...

FULLE TITLE: Breaking reports reveal why deputies were told not to enter Parkland high school, and it will infuriate you Deputies with the Broward Country Sheriff’s Office in Florida were ordered not to go into Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School while students were being slaughtered inside by crazed gunman Nikolas Cruz. Sources say the shocking reason for the decision to not help victims is that the deputies did not have body cameras on them.

Baltimore prosecutors say nearly 300 cases have been dropped due to four allegations of police misconduct, including three body camera videos appearing to show officers planting evidence or re-enacting searches, and a federal indictment of eight officers on racketeering and fraud charges. Deputy State’s Attorney Janice Bledsoe said Wednesday that a total of 278 cases have so far been dismissed, including 109 in response to the indictment, and another 169 related to officers involved in the three videos. The indictment accuses eight officers of racketeering in a scheme that included illegally detaining and robbing Baltimore residents and fraudulently filing for...

An approach to machine learning inspired by the human brain is about to revolutionize street search. Even if the cop who pulls you over doesn’t recognize you, the body camera on his chest just might in the future. Device-maker Motorola announced Monday that would partner with artificial intelligence software startup Neurala to build “real-time learning for a person of interest search” on Motorola products such as the Si500 body camera for police, the AI firm announced in a press release today.

Ferguson, Missouri’s top elected official in the tumultuous 32 months since the fatal police shooting of Michael Brown won another three-year term Tuesday. James Knowles III, the mayor who was the public face of Ferguson after Brown’s death in August 2014, held off a challenge from city Councilwoman Ella Jones, who was seeking to become the St. Louis suburb’s first-ever black mayor. Knowles won with 56 percent of the vote to Jones’ 44 percent. It will be Knowles’ final term in office, due to term limits. Ferguson voters also approved a ballot measure adding strict police body camera requirements to...

DC Police will not be able to run on their body cameras at inauguration day protests. Washington DC – All DC Police Officers have recently been outfitted with body cameras, but they will be in serious trouble if they have them on during the Inauguration Day protests. NBC News 4’s Mark Segraves reported that it’s “against the law” for body cameras to be on while police are at protests unless the officer is required to take action. This means that officers can turn the cameras on when they want to arrest somebody, but they will be unable to capture what...

The ruling by the Ohio Supreme Court says that the police have the right to withhold body camera video for a reasonable amount of time for examination. Law enforcement also have a reasonable right to redact parts of the video for release. OpinionI understand an examination and cooling off period for up to 7 days. But the only redaction I can accept is the blurring of witnesses faces or censoring the audio of a witness so that they're put into immediate danger. Anything else is white washing the matter. We don't need censorship. We should see the horror of the crime to form...

In a day when the “Black Lives Matter” movement and events surrounding the group’s creation and rise to prominence have directed a heightened level of scrutiny toward the people who protect us, law enforcement body cameras are an indispensable tool. The benefits of these cameras vastly outweigh the cost of providing them. Technology has advanced in the last fifteen years to such a degree that the cameras can be worn without impeding an officer’s ability to perform whatever action is required of them. Body cams provide a dual measure of accountability and protection for officers and civilians alike, furnishing an...

In some parts of the country this seems to be a settled question but it’s still cropping up in a disturbing number of places. We’re seeing incidents where court cases are popping up over instances where private citizens out on public property wind up in court with the cops after filming the activities of police on the streets. This can go one of two ways: the citizen is in trouble for doing the filming and faces charges or the cops are on the stand because of how they reacted to the filming. Neither should be showing up on the docket,...

The District of Columbia’s police chief told a city council panel Thursday she would support Mayor Muriel Bowser’s proposal to shield all body camera footage from Freedom of Information Act requests. Police chief Cathy Lanier cited privacy concerns and logistical problems with redacting sensitive information from body camera footage as her main reasons for backing the proposal.

As National Guard troops responded to rioting in Baltimore, President Barack Obama said Tuesday that there have been too many troubling police interactions with black citizens across American in what he called "a slow-rolling crisis." But he said there was no excuse for rioters to engage in senseless violence. Obama said people in Baltimore who stole from businesses and burned buildings and cars should be treated as criminals. "They aren't protesting, they aren't making a statement, they're stealing," Obama said. Obama spoke at a White House press conference with the Japanese prime minister the day after violence broke out 40...

In the immediate aftermath of Michael Brown’s shooting, before we learned that he had not been shot in the back, that he had not had his hands up, that he had, in fact, attempted to grab Officer Wilson’s gun, I wrote in favor of requiring more police to wear body cameras. Assuming nothing about Wilson’s guilt or innocence, I wrote: “Cameras cannot repeal aggression, bias, rage, or stupidity — but they can certainly diminish them. And with cameras, justice for the guilty — cop or civilian — is more attainable.” In the wake of the grand jury’s decision not to...

President Barack Obama wants to see more police wearing cameras to help build trust between the public and police by recording events like the shooting death of unarmed teenager Michael Brown, but is not seeking to pull back federal programs that provide the type of military-style equipment used to dispel the resulting racially-charged protests in Ferguson, Missouri. The White House announced the conclusions of a three-month review Monday as the president was holding a series of meetings with his Cabinet, civil rights leaders, law enforcement officials and others to go over the findings. At least for now, Obama is staying...

Body-worn cameras are poised to become standard for police around the U.S. after the tragedy in Ferguson In the fevered moments after the grand jury’s decision not to charge Ferguson, Mo., police officer Darren Wilson in the fatal shooting of Michael Brown, the family of the slain 18-year-old released a statement pleading for peace — and urging people to join their campaign to get police around the nation to wear cameras. “We need to work together to fix the system that allowed this to happen,” the statement read. “Join with us in our campaign to ensure that every police officer...

The legal fight may over in Ferguson, Mo., but the war of words has just begun. The family of slain teen Michael Brown Jr. and the Rev. Al Sharpton will hold a joint press conference Tuesday in Ferguson, Mo., one day after a St. Louis grand jury chose not to indict Police Officer Darren Wilson in the Aug. 9 shooting.