hippo, are safe. robin walker, al jazerra. and a quick reminder, you can keep up-to-date with all the news on our website, there it is on your screen, the address aljazerra.com. that's aljazerra.com. deadly force. be warned, it's a 2-way street. the same cameras can expose more of your life than you ever bargained for. wednesday's senseless violence at an historic black church in charleston south

carolina took the lives of nine innocent people, including the pastor of the emanuel church. clementa pinckney. he was a state sirnt, and following the death of scott, a man shot and killed running away from a police officer, clementa pinckney helped to push through legislation for police to wear body cameras. we go inside the public outcry, profits and privacy issues raised as the movement to equip police officers with body cameras take home. it was road in instances of police force. a new report find that all 50 states and washington d.c. failed to comply with international standards on the use of deadly force by police officers. specifically amnesty international found that state

laws don't require that lethal force was only used as a last resort, which is what international law requires. the group reports that nine states in washington d.c., has no laws on the use of lethal force. maryland, michigan among them. amnesty international says the 13 states, including california and new york have laws not complying with the u.s. constitution or constitutional law. there's a supreme court ruling barring the use of deadly force preventing a suspect from escaping unless the suspect poses a threat to the fer or others. amnesty international says the problem with vague or non-existent laws about lethal force is that police officers may not be held accountable for violations of human rights, and holding cops accountable is a reason many americans want the police to wear body cameras.

but recording every police encounter with the public raises tricky questions about privacy. in an era where everything provocative ends up on youtube, and tens of thousands of cops wearing body cameras, the time to answer the questions is now. libby casey has our report. >> this small device weighing 3.5 ounces could revolutionize policing in america. body worn cameras will hold police accountable for their actions. one recent study reported that when officers wore body cameras, there was a 60% drop in the use of force. and an 88% drop in citizen complaints. police advocates say cameras reveal the dangers of space on the job. >> turn it off. >> the officer was shot three times, and hit once in the leg.

he survived. the suspect was caught. since the death of michael brown, a black teenager killed by a police officer, the police departments around the nations rushed to equip their officers with body-worn cameras to document interactions with civilians, and the department of justice announced a 20 million programme to help police departments purchase the cameras. it's boom time for the companies that sell the cameras too. taser international is known for nonlethal weapons, and the leading manufacturer of body-worn cameras used by police. sales went from 3.8 million to more than 57 million in 2014. >> how many cameras came out of the factory? >> quite a few. you are looking at 41,000 cameras on the street. 2015.

>> you do hundreds a day. >> we can get thousands. >> police body cameras are in more than 5,000 of the nations 18,000 police departments, including new orleans, and here. >> the police department was one of the first in the nation to experiment with body cameras in 2008. they are warned by every officer who walks the street who takes the call. do you have reservations about bringing body cameras into the police force. >> no, we didn't. since going full-on into deploying the cameras on everyone in the field, our complaints are going down 44%. >> reporter: from citizens, complains about police officers. >> that's correct. >> reporter: when i went on control with a police officer, i asked about the body camera attached to his uniform. let's say you pull someone over, is one of the first things you

do turn on the camera. >> it is, it's in my right pocket. i double tap the pocket. it turns it on and records. >> reporter: do people act camera. >> do you tell people that you are filming them, that the camera is on. >> occasionally i do. a lot don't see the camera, it is small, they are on my shoulteder, if they don't pay attention, they are looking at me, my eye, and they don't remember they are recorded, i will not tell them. >> why not. >> i want them to continue to talk to me and tell me the information i need. >> you are not obligated to tell them you are filming. >> absolutely not. >> body cameras have a potential to invited a lot of people's privacy. they go into people's homes, a significant of calls are for domestic violence. they see people at the worst

moments of their lives, they see accident victims in cars. there's a lot of things that police officers see, that you don't want to end up on youtube. jay stanley says the a.c.l.u. is in favour of arming cops with body cameras. they not only record interactions with civilians, but officers. >> she took off. >> there's good reason to believe if they are done right, body cameras can help the widespread problem of police abuse. >> reporter: but one problem is because it's a new technology, policies and procedures differ widely from department to department about who can access the footage. here, most believe cameras are inactionable to the public. in seattle, washington, the police department posts most of their footage on youtube after blurring the video, and in a bid

for transparency citizens can request to review unredacted footage of a dui event recorded by an officer. your neighbour wants to see a video, do they have a right to house? >> i'm not sure they do. >> reporter: a sobering thought. as body cameras are an issue, we are beginning to under the consequences of what it means to record everything? >> unfortunately, police officers are people and they don't always make the right decision, we are not perfect. there'll probably be a time when the officer makes the bad decision, it's on camera, and a time where the citizen doesn't cooperate or act like they are supposed to with the police. it goes both ways. >> reporter: it's a camera on powerful. >> i think it is. >> libby casey joins me from capital hill. one of the concerns is cost. it's an issue.

i wouldn't have thought about that. i think of electronics costing less and less, how much does it cost to equip a police officer with cameras? >> the cameras are not that expensive. $300 to $600. it's the tip of the iceberg. the cost is storage, that's ongoing. the police department says it costs $1800 a month to have a camera operating on an officer. and they have more than 250 officers equipped with cameras, and have spend half a million on this venture. this was an early experiment arer with body cameras, and they thought they'd go through five terabytes in a year. they blew through that. in under six months they used 24 terabytes of storage, and it costs money once a police officer comes back to the station, what happens to the camera, where does it go?

>> the officer docks it, it's hands off. they can'ted it it, challenge it at all. it goes up to the cloud, which we are familiar with, taser runs a service called evidence.com. it's hosted by amazon world services, it's said to be very secure, that's one of the main sales points that taser can make to police departments around the country. there's a chain of custody, you can see who looked at the video, what happened to it and trace the trail. if everyone follows the rules we can't ignore the threat of hacking which is touching much of our content online. a spokesperson said anyone would be a fool not to think they'd be hacked. crowd. >> thank you for promoting what is coming up later. i'll have the c.e.o. of taser on the show to discuss evidence.com

and what happens to the cameras. libby casey, thank you for being with us, from capitol hill some police unions say body cameras are not the solution everyone thinks they are. i talk to one union that says cameras endanger officer's lives. >> shot dead and the government does nothing. >> they teach you how to eliminate people? >> ya. >> we've done it and that is why we are there. >> my life is in danger. >> anyone who talks about the islamic religion is killed. >> don't miss the exclusive al jazeera investigation. >> i can't allow you not to go into that because that is your job. >> only on al jazeera america.

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with the craft... >> turning an angst ridden and neurotic outlook... >> i have to un-ravel myself on stage as fearlessly as possible >> into an award winning career... from hell? >> it's thrilling when it's working.... >> every tuesday night. >> i lived that character. >> go one on one with america's movers and shakers. >> we will be able to see change. >> gripping. inspiring. entertaining. talk to al jazeera. only on al jazeera america. body cameras on police, a lot of people we spoke to, community activists, police officers, police forces thing it's a great idea. some don't. libby casey mentioned some of the topics where opponents say this is not what you think it is. storage costs are high. training can be inadequate. and it can have privacy issues. john is the president of the day county police ben ef lent association, representing over 6,500 officers in miami. he said police departments should not rush to arm police

officers with body worn cameras until further testing and the right policies and procedures have been put in place. john, thank you for being with us. do you really - i mean, you said that you think cameras can potentially put police officers lives at risk. explain that to me. >> absolutely. i mean the department of justice has said that we need to move slowly on this. one of the concerns, and one of the many unanswered questions is when an officer has an immediate reaction to things that happen on a split moment second, does he think about putting on the camera before he thinks about saving the lives of others. before we go on, i want to say our condolences to the south carolina folks. >> and ours as well. thank you. for all the critiques and discussions, i certainly don't want to diminish your concerns. i don't want to find out that

this got a police officer killed. we have not heard a police officer saying "the problem is in delay in pulling my gun on." >> no, our biggest art is more about the process -- argument is more about the process than the item of the camera. we don't have policies in place. we haven't had a discussion of the bad and the ugly, everyone wants to talk about the good. we recognise that they do have a good. at the end of the day we feel the elected officials use it as a scapegoat. instead of putting money. >> the community, they'd rather put money into apparatuses that they say is a fix-all when it isn't. at the end of the day lobbyists will get rich. elected officials will brush the problem off. in ferguson, for example, the uprising was not a lack of cameras, it was because the elected officials were using the police department to torture the

community, because they had a shortfall in the budget. >> true. let's call the officials out. i'm calling them out. i think most are cowards, and police administrators that buy into it are cowards. >> let me put to this way. you are with the pba. >> yes, sir. >> you are called in when there's a problem, or a police officer is charged or has something done because he's been involved in a shooting. in addition to a lot of other things you do. >> that's correct. >> wouldn't it make your life easier, there was a study in raelta california, showing when officers wore cameras, drops in the use of force. do you have evidence to support safety concerns? is that a good tradeoff. >> that's a good comment. here, it's not like the rest of the places in the united states of america. you have to figure out what places have problems. here, we have over a million

citizen contacts last year, and 130 complaints. of those, 8 where it was discovered that the officers were discourteous. let's assume that all 130 were legitimate complaints which we know they weren't. it's less than one-tenth of 1% of the context with the citizens. is the buck - are we getting bang for the buck, or can we use the money to better serve the community. look, we have situations where we did away with power programs, team policing, officer friendly. we are going to buy a little apparatus, the cure all. the stun guns were going to fix all the shootings. that was until people started to die after they were shot up with a stun gun. >> at the end of the day we need to invest more in people rather than apparatuses. >> you got into a little hot water when you - on a spanish

language programme, you said that miami dad's mayor is straight to gain favour in the african-american community. you were speaking in spanish. by wanting to arm police with body cameras. were you expecting the protest you got. i think people were protesting outside your office. what did you mean by that. >> listen, i stand by my statement. here in dade county, we had a mayor trying to use the cameras as a political tool to get reelected. when we spoke, i brought pizza and waters to the protesters, and one of the protesters, i asked "how many are you paid to be here?" he couldn't say. i said '10", he said i wouldn't do it that cheap. they are paid to go tout and fight these things, it came from an operative of the mayor. i never got in trouble. they ate our pizza, drank our water.

i'm a bigger friend to the african-american community than our mayor is. >> do you think the body camera issue, the idea of wearing the cameras comes down to an african-american police issue? >> no, i think it's a component of it. i don't think about it in a national sense. here it is exploited if you will, for political reasons. at the end of the day, they have a good component. a bad component. we are only talking about the good. i'm asking let's talk about the bad. let's talk about the ugly, let's talk about the privatisation. let's talk about filming somebody. good people. and it goes on youtube and you ruin people's lives much let's talk about it. after we vetted out, do we want to pay that price. last year the mayor said i

commit a million, this year a million. this year he committed 5 million, five, plus the one is 6 million, that's a drop in the bucket. it's not a down payment at the end of the day. do we want to continue to pay these exorbitant prices if the public wants it. let's do it. >> i hear you. a lot pay forces in settlement. if we find police officers accused of things we are not doing, the money saved on settlements would exceed that $5 million for most police departments in the country. >> most people need to understand a lot of settlements, 99% of settlements are done because it's cheaper to may the settlements, than to fight it because of the cost of lawyers. >> you have a camera showing the police officer can't do what the citizen accused them of doing. some say it's fashionable accusing a police officer of using unnecessary force.

the camera settles that issue. >> it's the flavor of the year, there's no question that attacking the police officer is the thing. do we want the cost and the cameras. at the end of the day when you watch n.f.l., they had 30 cameras watching a play. oftentimes they can't get it out. whelm have one camera on one view. >> i have to tell you, i like to admit when i'm defeated. i have learnt one thing, if i protest what you do. you and i will be friends for a long time. thank you for being with us. john is the president of the police benevolent association. next, what happens when the maker of the camera company is too cosy with the police department. we talk about a potential conflict of interest as the

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the new al jazeera america mobile app, available for your apple and android mobile device. download it now the growing use of police body cameras is a boom for taser international. the body cam business has soured. 2.5 are equipped with cameras, and many contract the company to store the video. rick smith is a c.e.o. of taser and joins us. libby casey explains the camera cost is a few hundred dollars, the storage is where the real money is. tell me what the cost is of police operating with body cameras. ? >> well, we offer a variety of different plans to store the

data, starting with $15 up to a maximum of $80. which either those plans included replacement of the storage. >> let me ask you, there has been discussions about conflicts. questions raised between the relationship, between taser and law enforcement. the associate press showed that taser covers air fare and hotel stays for police chiefs, and hires retired police chief as consultants. you acknowledge that could look like a conflict of interest. >> yes, i think we need to be clear. we did not pay for the air fares of police chiefs. talking about it with albuquerque, the largest user, he offered to speak at

conferences on his experience, which we felt was valuable for others to interact with someone who is running cameras longer than anyone else. we couldn't expect the chief to pay for ace own air fair to speak about how our cameras worked and we paid him $1,000 a day for his time. i'm somewhat disappointed that the way this is presented in the media, when, in fact the community - chiefer tires, they can share what he learn. >> i'll be clear no sitting chief gets money from taser for anything. >> that's correct. basically we are dealing with the police chief. many fly to conferences, paid for by their agencies to participate at the conferences, and other agencies on the topic. body cameras are new.

there's a lot of issues that have to be sorted out around policy, procedure and cost. if you are going to move the ball forward and we do something about the big issue of trust between police and communities, we need agencies to collaborate and share information at present. >> everyone thinks of tasers when they think of tasers, how did taser become the company that got the contracts for body cameras, and the more lucrative business of storing a video - is it a lucrative business? >> yes, it is. cameras - there's cameras all over the place. the hard part is what do you do with that. it's a complex enterprise software problem, and frankly taser happens began investing in cloud-hosted software. the best analogy is the reason

apple dominates the music description business was that softwa software together. we saw a similar challenge. if we weren't offering evidence.com as a service, every one of the 17 or 18,000 police agencies, every one would have to build servers and hire staff to run the video servers, we can do it as a service for a third the cost that agencies can do it themselves, it's far more efficient. >> libby casey, our reporter who gave us the story earlier tonight was talking about privacy concerns, not necessarily because of what taser or the police force were doing, but we have hacking or privacy concerns, what do we need to know about how taser assures the privacy of the video data stored by you? >> yes, certainly with any sort of

data storage, there's privacy concerns, and cyber security security concerns. many agencies have been hacked. the agencies look at it by working with someone like taser, and we run our back end services with amazon. a large tech company, and can bring more resources to bear than the observing 50 person police department can do. we take security seriously and put a lot of focus on it. >> thank you for being with us. rick smith, the c.e.o. of taser "ali velshi on target" tomorrow, calling for back up. troubled police departments ask for help as they try to reform the ranks and weed out bad cops, that means federal oversight punk tutored which intense training that you will see. paul beban got a look. have a look. >> sir, sir,

sir. >> reporter: wow, that went so fast more of that, and philadelphia police commissioner charles ramsay joins us "on target." that's our show for today, i'm ali velshi, thank you for joining stinging set back in his efforts to negotiate a massive new trade agreement with a dozen pass iic rim countries, it was -- pacific rim countries, members of his own party denied him the authority to strike a deal. now the house, led by the republican charge sent a new trade majority bill to the senate.