that is a thought, what do police forces do? anyone know? that would be very difficult, time consuming & expensive.
To my knowledge, we don't have any police officers or records management people in the forum. One of my first jobs, way back in '89, was to work from a temp agency to shred very old records at a small Canadian's cities police force. There is a limit as how much filing space any place has. But this was paper records and not electronic records. I think the records were very old, or duplicate records, and not criminal cases. It was a heavy duty machine, like a table saw and after a while I put the the document face down as not to read the stuff and violate the confidentiality.
It appears some police forces have some kind of system and some kind policy as they have been able to release video (some of the time) when there is questions about their conduct which is generally in favor of the police force. Here in Toronto, some drivers have requested police dash cam videos to fight their traffic office offences. It doesn't appear the police or someone always review the footage before releasing to the complainants as in one notable case, the officers were caught making disparaging remarks against a mentally disabled passenger.
Aside from the human effort of copying video to an HD, retaining video tape or SD cards, most police dash cam video are pretty bad quality and I would imagine the file size is pretty small. I would imagine this job could be done by a record archivist or clerical person and not a police officer, which in Ontario at least, would be less expensive that an uniformed officer but still fairly expensive.
I would think in the case of traffic violations, the police only need to keep video for as long a period as someone has to fight a traffic ticket. In Ontario,
There is a 15 day time period to respond either guilty or not to a traffic ticket, but there is a grace period of about 30 days (depending on the court location) before the courts will convict you of the offence. A non-response to a ticket is equivalent of pleading guilty to the offence and all the penalties of a guilty plea will apply
Source
So I believe they would only need to keep raw media for a little over two weeks and if they are aware someone will NOT fight a ticket, remove the media. Ie delete the file on hard drive or re-use the tape or SD card.
In the cases of criminal matter, such as homicide or fraud, I would imagine they need to hold the evidence longer and be much more careful. I watch forensic files and it amazes me how long they have kept evidence such as shoes and clothing from the '70's and they had it available when DNA testing became available in the 90's. Even then they discarded evidence that would have been useful. I can recall a there was a murder of a Texas Rangers sister' in the mid to late 60's sister and they relied on a crime magazine photos as the some of the evidence was already discarded.
In the case of Joe citizens dashcam, even if we could compress video to 1/1000 of the original size, and would keep everything they ever film, it would be a challenge to find what you are looking for. I used to copy all cases of where a file was retained when I pressed the event key (my first dash cam) or the emergency button (viofo) but I am finding I am becoming more selective now with using the key. Its becoming a challenge finding what I looking for and I have a little bit of records management and library science understanding.
Where I live they just lie there way out of it!
Which is why police should have body cams, dash cam and there should be retention period for evidence and interactions. In the case of
Michael Bennett who claimed he was racially profiled, the casino and body cam video of SOME of the police officers disputes that. However, one of the officers was not wearing a body cam even though its Las Vegas policy that they have too. As false arrests by police and false allegations by the public can have unpleasant repercussions, the ability for the police to "lie" needs to be removed.
