These days, cameras are nearly everywhere in the business of law enforcement. There are cameras in patrol cars, cameras mounted on tasers, even cameras mounted on guns.
Now, a trio of former Seattle police officers is adding to the growing trend with their brand of small, wireless, wearable cameras they call the VIEVU PVR-LE. The small, rectangular cameras are about the size of a deck of cards and worn a few inches below the collar.
The men say they were inspired to create the camera when VIEVU president Steve Ward wrote a magazine article on his training as a bicycle officer, and the editor wanted photos to go along with the story.
Ward says the photographer wanted some action shots of police on their bicycles. So, he put a still camera around Ward's neck and set it to snap a photograph every few seconds.
"We basically had a slideshow movie," he remembers.
Ward says the photo shoot gave him an idea: "How cool that was to capture video from the point of view of the officer. Put a camera on a cop and view things from their perspective."
His next step was to get two other officers -- Chris Myers, a former patrol officer and Tom Burns, a former SWAT officer -- on board with his project.
"We went through the process of coming up with our dream camera, and considered what was possible with current technology," Myers remembers. He said their background in law enforcement meant they knew what they wanted for a camera. "We didn't want any wires, we wanted it to be a single unit so you can't get tangled up with things...simplicity was one of the things we were stressing."
Myers says the cameras are a great way of capturing incidents that would have otherwise boiled down to the officer's word against the citizen's.
"At first, I was a little skeptical of big brother watching me," he says about the early days when cameras were first installed in patrol cars.
"But it didn't take long...before I realized how useful it was. I could explain things to a point, but video captures so many details you can't capture and tells the story effectively. It's great for a jury."
He says cameras can also help clear the name of an officer accused of wrongdoing.
"If someone like me got a complaint and it was on video it was real easy. About half the time that a complainer learns something is on video, they go away."
But, are cameras always the simple solution? Steve Ashley, Officer.com's technology contributor and a retired law enforcement officer, says sometimes yes -- but sometimes no.
Ashley says cameras can indeed often resolve the issue of complaints against officers. He said he worked at a department where phone calls and all radio traffic was recorded.
"Every once and a while someone would accuse a dispatcher of being rude on the phone and then you'd go back and listen to the tape and -- guess what -- they weren't."
Ashley says with the growing proliferation of cameras -- not just at police departments, but in the hands of citizens -- officers are more used to the idea that everything is on tape.
"Years ago we told officers to assume everything you're doing is being recorded," he says. "The very nature of society nowadays is everybody is being observed."
But, Ashley warns, one should not always expect what's recorded to be entirely accurate or unbiased.
"Many times these videos just don't really show everything that went on, it's just one perspective," he says. He says that the camera captures one vantage point; it's not always possible for it to capture everything that's going on at a crime scene. And even if it were, every person who views that video does so with their own personal bias and point of view.
"If you take someone else who has an agenda and you give them a video of something that occurred, they are going to look at it through their perspective. If you hand a video to 10 different people you'll get 10 different perspectives."
For better or for worse, cameras are not going anywhere -- and for their part, the men of VIEU are prepared. They launched their business last year, and business has been growing ever since.
"We've shipped product to law enforcement in 20 states and three international countries," says Steve Ward. "We'll probably add another five states this week.
