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The International Chiefs of Police are spearheading an effort to get serious about digital in-car camera specifications. Available for download at the IACP Web site, its report, "Digital Video Systems for Public Safety: _Developing Minimum Performance Specifications Framework," provides an exhaustive list of recommendations regarding in-car camera video and audio quality, recording and archiving, chain of evidence, and more.
Following close to 18 months of research and development, the draft was released in August for public review and comment. An updated draft will be presented to the project's advisory panel next month. If accepted, these specifications would then be tested and certified -- and if the research continues to progress on schedule, these specifications could become standards by 2008.
Federally accepted standards will make the in-car camera landscape more interesting to say the least, because they will directly impact whether or not a system can be purchased using federal funds. Not surprisingly, the advisory panel for the IACP's research (which is funded by a grant from the National Institute of Justice) includes a number of in-car camera manufacturers side by side with police departments, the National Institute of Standards and Technology, and the FBI.
Grady Baker, who serves as a consultant to the IACP, said the goal of the entire project is to "provide the best evidence." Basically, he wants new in-car camera systems to provide the advantages of digital with the minimum quality of analog.
Digital video technology can revolutionize workflows and reduce the physical storage space requirements of videotape archives. However, in an effort to be fiscally thrifty, some agencies increase compression and reduce image quality to stretch their storage dollars, which is never a good idea when you're talking about evidence.
Some compression technologies can wreak havoc on the validity of video evidence as well. Take interframe compression, for example, the technology used for MPEG-2. Based on the idea that sequences of video images have repetitive information, it collects a group of pictures (GOP) and uses algorithms to predict the differences between successive frames.
Works great for broadcast, not so much for video evidence. After all, you need to see what happened, not what a mathematical estimation of what should have happened.
Over the past six years, I've met many of the people who are a part of the in-car camera industry, and it is my firm belief that most are driven by more than just profits. Intent aside, however, there are digital in-car camera systems out there that don't measure up to the analog systems of old.
At the annual LEVA conference in October, I watched side-by-side comparisons of analog and digital in-car camera footage of the same incident (from two different patrol cars). The analog footage was clearly the better choice -- and that's clearly unacceptable.
In-car camera systems protect the public and the officers who serve them, but lousy video doesn't help anyone. If agencies are going to rely on digital in-car cameras, they need to maintain or improve the forensic value of those systems. This will be a long journey for the IACP, but establishing digital in-car camera standards is well worth the drive.
Mark J. Pescatore is the editor. Contact him at mpescatore@cmp.com.
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