On gay erotica sites hidden camera videos are a common theme (some clearly staged, some not). So are police videos. Usually the description says something along the lines of “to combat allegations of prisoner abuse/sexual harrasement polices forces/prisons experimented with filming searches”. Is that actually true? Did/do police forces in the US or UK (where these videos always seem to be from) ever film strip/cavity searchs as a matter of routine? The videos themselves look pretty convincing (and often the officers’ faces are blurred, but not the guy getting searched). I’ve seen some with the time/date stamp still at the bottom of the screen (early to mid '90s). If this was common were searches of women filmed in the same manner (I’ve seen a few with a policewoman present)?
I can’t comment on your mentioned web site, but I can tell you that we video tape everything. There are cameras in our booking are, our interview rooms, a camera monitoring every holding cell, cameras inside the station area, a camera outside the station, and a camera in every squad car. The cameras are always on. The only things that don’t have cameras are the 6 bicycle untis and the 2 motorcycles we have. Other than those, everything is recorded.
You mean that if I were booked into your jail and strip-searched it would be on videotape for male officers to “review”? Sounds remarkably like a lawsuit waiting to be filed to me.
Which is odd since the claim usually amounts to the videos being made to prevent lawsuits. :dubious:
After thinking about it I recalled that the few strip searches I’ve been involved with (I don’t work in the booking room. Most of the time arresting officers don’t book their own suspects, the booking staff does that) the cameras were disconnected. Your post prompted me to look this up in our policy manual under the strip search section. There is, in fact, a clause in the strip search section that says “this type of search shall not be reproduced via a visual or sound recording”. So your answer is strip searches are not video taped.
As far as everything else, nobody below a captain has access to replay the videos.
Having been involved in a number of cases in which police videos were critical evidence of what really happened, having fought with a city council that did not want to spend the money to put videos in squad cars and the police station, I can tell you that there are few working police officers or working lawyers who are not happy to see EVERYTHING videotaped. Videos are the best way to restrain police misconduct and the best way to test credibility. They are just too valuable to pass up because some one would be embarrassed because a strip search or cavity search offended his sense of modesty and decorum.
Okay so if the videos are real then why would someone (either the police or the website) obscure the only the faces of he officers,but not the suspect? I assume that access to such videos is supposed to be restricted (like intimate photos of rape victims/suspects) and that the websites obtained them through less than legal means.
pkbites says that strip searches in his jurisdiction are not videotaped…
I can understand completely the need for videos in squad cars and the police station. However, not everyone who is ever booked into jail is guilty. And you better be damned sure that a videotaped cavity search would offend me. I’m pretty sure I could find a lawyer who would find it offensive, too.
I have never been strip-searched. I have never been cavity-searched other than by my GYN. I plan to keep that the status quo. This comment is only for the sake of discussion. Do not step on the cats. YMMV. Use in a well-ventilated area. Wash hands throughly after use.