USA Today: A camera mounted on a light pole took video of police beating Tyre Nichols. What to know about ‘SkyCop.’

USA Today: A camera mounted on a light pole took video of police beating Tyre Nichols. What to know about ‘SkyCop.’ by Claire Thornton:

Three of the four police videos released Friday were captured via officers’ body cameras. But one of the videos showed a more sweeping view of officers punching and kicking Nichols.

It was taken from farther away by a “SkyCop” camera mounted on a light pole, and shows multiple officers violently push Nichols to the ground and kick him in the face. Memphis has a network of the cameras, which were intended to help police catch criminals and to deter crime.

. . .

Memphis isn’t alone in using the technology. Besides the Memphis police department, law enforcement in West Memphis, Arkansas; Blytheville, Arkansas, and Little Rock, Arkansas, have used SkyCop surveillance technology.

Similar technology has been deployed in other cities including, Atlanta, Baltimore and Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Previously, privacy watchdogs – including the American Civil Liberties Union’s Center for Democracy – have expressed alarm about such systems.

[Over 45 years ago, well before I wrote the first edition of search and seizure, I remember being appalled that the Cities of New York and New Orleans was putting some cameras on poles to monitor crime on the streets. I even wrote a letter to the editor about the invasion of privacy of watching someone in a public place. We had a subjective expectation of privacy in a public place. So I thought in the mid-1970s.

Cameras and recorders were nothing by today’s standards. And so was the “reasonable expectation of privacy.” How far we’ve come, and how far technology has come.]

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