http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/13/nyregion/new-york-police-body-cameras.html 2016-10-13 06:11:46 New York to Pick Start-Up Over the Industry Leader for Police Body Cameras Bypassing Taser International, the industry leader, the Police Department selected Vievu, L.L.C., despite questions about its performance in other cities. === When the Bypassing A public hearing on a proposed five-year contract with Vievu, worth $6.4 million, is scheduled for Thursday, the latest step in what has been a halting effort to outfit New York City officers with body cameras. Vievu was awarded the New York contract 15 months after being acquired by the Safariland Group, a company from Jacksonville, Fla., that provides the department’s holsters and is seeking a bigger share of the police-equipment market. Taser Public uproar over police killings of black men, some of them captured on cellphone video, has increased pressure on police departments to use body cameras, which can provide a useful, New York The department has faced questions about its proposed protocols for storing, safeguarding and using the video, which may arise at the hearing on Thursday. Taser says its body cameras are used by more than 3,500 law enforcement agencies, including in 34 major cities across the country, Chicago, Dallas and Los Angeles among them. A spokeswoman for Vievu could not say how many agencies in the United States use its equipment, but the company has recently gained footholds in some sizable cities, with contracts in Miami-Dade County, Fla.; Phoenix and Seattle. Benjamin B. Tucker, the Police Department’s first deputy commissioner, said officials in New York hope to finalize the contract with Vievu by year’s end and to deploy the first 1,000 cameras next year in 20 precincts. According to the contract, an LE4 can record up to 12 hours of standard-definition video on a single charge. That, officials said, would allow a camera to capture a police officer’s perspective over a typical shift, which lasts 8 hours and 35 minutes. The cameras automatically add 30 seconds of buffer video when switched on or off, a feature that Vievu says provides a sense of why an officer is interacting with a civilian. Officers will be able to gain access to videos through either a computer or a custom app on their department smartphones, but will not be able to edit or delete videos, which will be encrypted and logged to prevent tampering and unauthorized access. One of the biggest challenges for police agencies is where to store the vast quantity of footage generated by the cameras. The city, citing a lack of capacity on its own servers, has opted for an unlimited capacity in Vievu’s cloud-storage platform, which was designed in conjunction with Microsoft to meet stringent federal security requirements. The platform was put into use by the Oakland Police Department in February after a city information technology worker The New York Police Department, in its request for proposals, required potential vendors to provide a “detailed continuity of operations plan” guaranteeing that no data would be permanently lost, including when a camera has a low battery charge or becomes disconnected from a cable. Addressing concerns about the reliability of a Vievu system, Jessica Tisch, the Police Department’s deputy commissioner for information technology, said at a news conference this month that the department had consulted with other law enforcement agencies that do business with the company about their experience. “We would not move forward if we weren’t comfortable that the Vievu cameras were going to provide good coverage and that we were going to store the video in a responsible way,” she said. It was not clear if New York police officials had consulted with their counterparts in Cincinnati, who chose Taser over Vievu after testing both systems this year. In a report in March, a police official there described the Vievu cameras’ limited field of view and lower video and audio quality. Vievu videos, he said, had been difficult to upload and the company’s software repeatedly crashed and required restarting. Cincinnati officials later concluded that Taser’s “hardware and software systems were clearly the most advantageous option.” Officials in New York and elsewhere have said that body cameras can help build public trust in the police. But civil liberties advocates say that the Police Department’s draft policies for using the cameras may undermine the program’s benefits. The Leadership Conference for Civil and Human Rights, in conjunction with a consulting firm called Upturn, But the group was critical of other provisions, including one that would allow police officers to review video before making a statement to investigators, including after incidents involving deadly force.