he says the government should do more to support farmers because if yields continue to decline people will be discouraged from venturing into cocoa altogether, al jazeera, the region of ghanna. if you want to keep up with all those stories head over to al jazeera. recording justice. body cameras can hold police to account. it's a 2-way street. they can expose more of your life than you bargained for. wednesday's senseless violence at a church in sharl took the lives of nine people, including the

african-american ane church. clementa pinckney was included. following the death of walter scott a man shot and killed. senator clementa pinckney helped to push through legislation for lis po wear body cameras. he was hardly alone the out cry and the call for cam rice. it's rooted in incidents of alleged excessive police force. a report from next finds 50 states failed to comply with deadly force by police. it found

that it is only used as a last resort. there's a supreme court ruling cbarring the use of deadly force preventing a suspect from escaping unless the suspect poses a threat to the officer 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 key 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 body-worn cameras reveal the dangers of space on the job. -- police face on the job. >> turn it off. >> the officer was shot three times in a bullet proof vest 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 controversial nonlethal weapons, and is the leading manufacturer of body-worn cameras used by police. sales of those cameras 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 built. 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, los angeles and here. >> the police department was one of the first in the nation to experiment with body cameras in 2008. they are worn by every officer who walks the street who takes the call or makes a traffic stop. 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, complaints 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, you get out of the car, 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 differently when people see the 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 shoulder, if they don't pay attention, they are looking at me, my eye, and they don't remember they are recorded, they will not remember, 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. >> reporter: that races questions with privacy. >> body cameras have a potential to invade 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 moments of - 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 monitor the behaviour of police 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 -- police body camera vidsios are inaccessible 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 amost any dui event recorded by an officer.

your neighbour wants to see a video, do they have a right to see what took place in your 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. i think it goes both ways. >> reporter: it's a camera on the shoulder, is it that powerful. >> i think it is. >> libby casey joins me from capitol 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 with each passing month, how much does it cost to equip a police officer with >> the cameras are not that expensive. $300 to $600. it's the tip of the iceberg. the cost is storage, that's ongoing costs. 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 and have spend half a million on this venture. this was an early experiment 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't edit it, change 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. they have protection in place, but this video is living on the 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. >> farm workers striking in mexico... >> all that tension is about what's happening right now. >> unlivable wages... >> you can work very hard and you will remain poor. >> what's the cost of harvesting america's food? >> do you see how it will be hard to get by on their salary? >> yeah >> fault lines, al jazeera america's hard hitting... >> today they will be arrested... >> ground breaking... they're firing canisters of gas at us... emmy award winning investigative series... fault lines invisible hands only on al jazeera america

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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. we've been talking about 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 benevolent 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 that we have 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. >> absolutely. and ours as well. thank you. for all the critiques and discussions about the cameras, 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 because i have to put the camera

on." >> no, i have to tell you one of the things in our biggest 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. into 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. >> absolutely 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 realto california, showing when officers wore cameras, 60% drops in the use of force, 88% drops in citizen compliants. 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 130, 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. like with 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. . >> i don't know if they are mutually in cluesive. 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. that's a translation. 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 don't think i got into trouble, 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. "$20." "that was last time." they are paid to go out and fight these things, it came from an operative of the mayor. i never got in trouble. they ate our pizza, drank our water. actually, at the end of the day i'm a bigger friend to the african-american community than our mayor is. >> do you think the body camera

issue, the idea of police wearing the cameras comes down to an african-american police issue? >> no, i think it's a component of it. here in dade county, 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. they have an ugly 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. 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 downpayment 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 pay a lot in settlement. if we find police officers accused of things we are not doing, the money saved on settlements by having body cameras 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. not because it's right or wrong. >> 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.

the thing to talk about. i got to tell you rks 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 right. we'll have one camera on one person with an it dimensional 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. i your last thing taught me. i have learnt one thing, if i protest, you'll give me pizza. 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 law enforcement. we talk about a potential conflict of interest as the company rakes in enormous profits

>> we have an exclusive story tonight, and we go live... sna body camera business for taser has sworn. more than 2.5,000 police

departments are equit with cameras. rick smith is the c.e.o. and joins us from copenhagen. thank you for being with 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 camera and unlimited amounts of storage. >> let me ask you, there has been discussions about conflict of interest. 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 here. we did not pay for the air fares of sitting police chiefs. talking about after they retired and we are probably talking about the chief from 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 his own air fair to speak about how our cameras worked and we paid him $1,000 a day for his time. that was to fly across and speak. i'm somewhat disappointed that the way this is presented in the

media, as a conflict of interest, when, in fact the community - chief retires, they can share what he learn. >> i'll be clear no sitting police chiefs 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 work with 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 conferences, where vendors are present, like taser. >> 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 i can give you is the reason apple dominates the music distribution business was that they tied the hardware and 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 concerns. many agencies have been hacked. the advantage is 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 for security 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

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