Thanks.
Damaging to Burger King? What, “Murderous Cops Prefer Flame Broiled Whoppers”?
From watching the First 48, what typically happens is that the detectives have an employee/manager play back the video to see what’s there. If there is anything of interest a specialist will come and retrieve the video. That means getting access to the systems hard drive and copying the files. At that point they can delete the file from the system as well. The system will also delete old files to make room for new ones once the HD is full. So if the cops didn’t copy the right time frame, it would be lost.
Smapti’s idea that a BK employee would have deleted the files is ridiculous. The cops either screwed up gathering/storing the video or intentionally deleted it.
Which wouldn’t have deleted the remote copy of the video. Nor, as I said, would the police ever have needed to “gather” the video themselves - it’s as simple as putting in a blank DVD and selecting the time frame to be recorded.
Who knows? Maybe there was a drug deal that happened in the parking lot. Maybe a manager is seen yelling at a customer/employee. Maybe Burger King has a policy against “parking” drive-thru orders and the video shows them doing just that. It doesn’t have to be directly related to the shooting (which BK’s cameras wouldn’t have seen anyway) in order to be a threat to BK or this particular employee.
Or, instead of the video showing something Burger King didn’t want public, maybe it showed something the police didn’t want public.
It’s not like police haven’t erased video before:
Footage Of Maryland Student’s Beating Goes Missing, Re-Appears Minus Some “Editing”
That may be how they used to work but I don’t think any produced today would write to a DVD. They are all USB connections now that you download video to.
You said yourself that these don’t have a delete button. How would the manager be able to delete anything, let alone a specific time frame?
Such as what? Keep in mind - the shooting itself would not have been captured by BK’s cameras.
This is the manager’s story;
That story makes no sense. The only person with playback access would be the restaurant manager or someone higher-up, who wouldn’t have been in the restaurant at that hour and wouldn’t have given the password out over the phone, nor would they have not come to the restaurant personally if informed that there were “four to five police officers” hanging around back-of-house for several hours.
The article then points out that the independent review board noticed the missing time the next day, which would mean that they wouldn’t be anywhere near the point (several weeks to a month) where the footage would have been deleted for storage space, either in the restaurant or at the upload server.
The only way this story makes sense is if someone deleted the local and the remote copies before the police got a chance to look at them.
Systems that produce DVDs were still being installed new when I left the fast food industry. The grocery store I work in now is less than five years old and we provide security footage to the police by burning them DVDs.
You said yourself that these don’t have a delete button. How would the manager be able to delete anything, let alone a specific time frame?
[/QUOTE]
The restaurant manager wouldn’t. The district manager, who is the one insisting that the cops must have done it somehow, might.
Are you now saying that is was possible for an employee to delete 86 of video, just not the cops?
BTW, what video surveillance system did you use, and how long ago was that?
I’m saying that nobody would have been able to delete the video from within the restaurant itself - only someone with access to the remote server, like, say, a district manager.
Also, upon further research, the Burger King in question closes at midnight, so the idea that the cops were hanging around in its office for “three hours” after a shooting that took place at 10 PM while management was not present becomes that much more unlikely.
It may well close at midnight. The shooting, however, took place at 9:50. 2 hours before the Burger King closed. Are saying that no manager was there at that time? Or that the manager saw the clock tick ‘Midnight’ and locked the doors are drove away? That it is not common for a manager to be present in the building till all cleanup from the day is done, well after the doors are closed for business? That it is not possible for the manager to have had discussions with the police at the scene before closing and allowed them access (whether he had that authority or not)? Or even that said manager allowed them access to help out cops because of his civic-mindedness? Or even that the manager allowed them access because he\she was intimidated by men with guns who had just shot a guy?
Cops getting blown by hookers in the parking lot? I don’t know.
[my emphasis]
I’m saying that the restaurant manager was almost certainly not there at the time, because those are not peak revenue-generating hours. and he’s the only person who would have had the ability to play back the DVR. And if he’d gotten a call from the shift manager saying that there were cops there who wanted to look at the DVR right then and there, he wouldn’t have just given out the password and then gone back to bed. There would at best have been a shift manager on the premises, and shift managers are little more than glorified crew with a few extra job duties.
Not “well after the close of business”, no. Any time you’ve got employees on the clock and the store isn’t generating revenue is a waste of labor hours. At no point does the DM’s account mention employees or management remaining on premises well after the close of business while the police did their thing.
At no point in the DM’s account does he mention the restaurant manager being present or having any discussions with the police. It’s not a question of authority for a shift manager to have given them access; it’s a question of ability - in the restaurants I worked at, you couldn’t even get at the control panel for the surveillance system without opening a locked panel for which there was only one key.
Either of which would have gotten said manager fired for violating policy.
Smapti, do you work at that Burger King? No? Then guess what? You are totally talking out of your ass. I don’t care how many McChickens you slapped together in your career, you have no knowledge whatever of how that restautant operates, when their managers are there, who can and can’t access video, etc.
Repeat … you are totally talking out of your ass. Like that’s anything new.
I have professional knowledge of what technology is in use in that industry, how it works, and what commonplace best practices are for how it is used and dispensed to outsiders.
You have, “Well, obviously the police must have deleted it because the police are evil and any allegation of wrongdoing against the police must be automatically true regardless of context or the potential motives of the accuser”.
Smapti, are the protocols you observed universal? Is there only one maker of surveillance gear for the entire fast food industry?
Yep, Smapti has professional knowledge:
Obviously not, but the statements I have made describe all the surveillance systems I saw in use at the multiple fast food chains I have worked in in my life, as well as the surveillance system in use by my current employer. The only exception is very old systems which still record to VHS tape, which the article gives no indication is the case here.
It would not be in a chain’s best interest to use a system that allows someone in the restaurant to delete footage for numerous reasons (theft by employees/management being a big one). This particular BK is owned by a franchisee, and franchisees in my experience tend to invest even more in surveillance because their profit margins are thinner and they have a greater incentive to deter theft.
Ok color me confused. Please detail who you think deleted this video, when they did it, why they did, and how they did it.
Smapti has conclusively proven that the video wasn’t actually deleted at all. 'Cause nobody would do things differently than he would. So it must still be there! You just can’t see it, is all.
(Are you buying this yet?)