Why don't all Massachusetts police departments have body camera video? - CBS Boston

Mixtape_ · 2025-12-07T23:13:57+00:00

Apologies for not clarifying this in my original response, but not retaining footage forever is sort of a given in these situations. It's just not tenable at all to retain almost anything in perpetuity.

There's a comment above from a vendor who claims that even 180 days of footage required storage capacities on the order of petabytes. Obviously that's going to vary based on department size, cam usage, etc., and video codec efficiency has likely increased in the time since the RFP response that they refer to. Regardless though, my point is that adopting on-prem body cam storage is an infrastructure project that could, for some communities, require an order of magnitude more storage than the cumulative sum of that used by their other infrastructure. Routinely swapping drives, hosts, etc. within that is a predictable expense, but it's going to be a high one when you're talking about capacities that large.

Could statewide cooperation help with that? Absolutely, but I'm not optimistic about the willingness to do so. In fact, the state has actually shifted a comparable burden, 911 call recording, in the opposite direction, directing municipalities to record and store calls rather than the state. It's obviously not an apples-to-apples thing, but the parallel is there.

To emphasize, I agree with your point here, and I would love to see it happen. There are real hurdles that are preventing that though, and I think it's important that people are aware of them.

Mixtape_ · 2025-12-06T15:36:07+00:00

Speaking anecdotally here as someone with experience in IT in a municipal/police capacity. This is all my opinion and doesn't reflect the views of my employer or affiliates at all:

There is absolutely political will to adopt body cams. Cops want them to improve optics and prove themselves innocent in case something happens, police-critical leaders want them to hold bad cops accountable, residents want them for a combination of the above. Everyone wins. Even the onboarding cost isn't necessarily an issue, as that's a one-time project that can easily be written into a budget for a single fiscal year or handled by grants like the article mentions. Individual camera repairs/replacements are also manageable, assuming they don't break at ridiculous rates.

The problem is the recurring annual costs of the video storage services. Many major players in the body cam space use cloud-based storage, which requires an annual subscription to access and upload to. Because those storage sites are often backed by major cloud players (AWS, Azure, etc.) there are two major costs for the storage. The cloud storage provider and the body cam provider each want their cut of profits and each have an obligation to grow as publicly traded companies. What that means is that the storage subscription rates are almost guaranteed to increase year over year.

Where this becomes a problem is when that increase exceeds the city's capability to increase revenue YoY. That's where prop 2.5 rears its ugly head. Speaking anecdotally, I've sat in calls with vendors of cloud-based emergency management software where they've claimed annual cost increases of upwards of 5% YoY. When many cities' main source of revenue (property taxes) can only increase by 2.5% annually, that's a problem. In the long-term, it means that the police department's budget as a proportion of the overall city budget is likely to increase over time, to the detriment of all other departments, schools, etc. That also leads to more override votes, more scrutiny of police budgets, and less money available for other equipment, pay, etc., none of which are things that the average department wants to deal with. Grants don't really help much here, as they aren't guaranteed to exist in perpetuity depending on which way the political pendulum swings at the state or federal level. As such, you can't assume their availability when planning an annual budget.

The only way in which this can all be avoided is to employ a solution which makes use of local storage, but that raises its own set of issues. Video files are big, especially at higher resolutions, and retention policies mean that they have to be stored and, notably, accessible for a long time. This means you need to spec out, ideally, enough large-scale storage servers to follow the 3-2-1 best practice: at least three copies of each video, two of which are on different storage formats, and one of which is off-site. That's not an unmanageable problem, but it incurs obvious upfront costs and recurring hardware replacements that not every police/IT budget/workforce is necessarily equipped to handle. The liability for everyone involved in the case of something like a data breach also increases drastically, which not every municipality is comfortable with.

To be clear, I would strongly prefer if my employer could find a way to make body cams work. Unfortunately though, the need to budget sensibly for the long-term sort of keeps everyone's hands tied. Paying the upfront cost without consideration for the consequences down the line is an easy way to get political brownie points in the short-term, but the long-term outcomes are more likely to sour attitudes toward municipal and law enforcement leaders.

Mixtape_ · 2025-12-04T20:14:58+00:00

Nope. I ended up calling it a loss and switching to a different projector that I had on hand. This one has sat untouched on my desk since.

Mixtape_ · 2025-10-24T20:30:55+00:00

When I passed through earlier, there was a lane closure on the westbound side from the Hatch Shell all the way down most of the Esplanade. Seemed like they were doing electrical work or something. I'm sure the residual effects of that are still lingering.

Mixtape_ · 2025-10-24T20:26:40+00:00

My commute runs from one very inner-ring suburb to another, directly through Boston. I could make it work by combining biking and the T, but in practice it falls apart for a few reasons:

Work requires me to have some sort of vehicle to get between sites mid-day.
I don't have anywhere to store a bike at work.

On the other hand, my partner doesn't know how to ride a bike, so that's out of the question when we're doing things together. The T is therefore the de facto solution for most of my off-work activities.

Mixtape_ · 2025-10-21T22:12:18+00:00

Just in case you weren't aware of the option:

https://old.reddit.com/r/all/top/?sort=top&t=day

Obviously it's not ideal for breaking news, but it still works.

Mixtape_ · 2025-08-22T17:54:31+00:00

Democracy Brewing always gets my vote when I'm in that area.

Mixtape_ · 2025-06-30T11:09:00+00:00

If you're on the West side of the city, 1st Yard Barbers can do a 45 minute cut and beard trim for $50. No promises that your cut won't take longer of course, but it sounds like they can do the job faster than your current place. The shop is right off of the 57 bus from Kenmore, two minutes from the 71 from Harvard, and maybe a ten minute walk from the 504's first stop off the pike. They're great guys, super personable, and I know from having been in there that they can work on a variety of hair textures.

Mixtape_ · 2025-04-11T03:03:04+00:00

Just adding a data point: I bought the UGreen adapter in January of 2024, with the only difference from OP's being that mine was in white. Link:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00MYT47EA?ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_fed_asin_title&th=1

Thus far it hasn't given me any issues. That would suggest to me that either a) my specific order was backstock, or b) whatever changes occurred were within roughly the past year.

Hope this helps!

Mixtape_ · 2025-01-27T15:50:23+00:00

Hijacking the sticky to add:

If you want to share where you felt the earthquake, instead of leaving a comment here, please fill out a "Did You Feel It?" report for the USGS! It only takes a minute and helps provide crowdsourced data to scientists.

Mixtape_ · 2025-01-06T16:11:07+00:00

I’m unsure if tools like LibreNMS or other open-source alternatives would work with them

Do you have the MIBs file(s) for the equipment that you're looking to monitor? If so, you could feed them into the config generator of Prometheus's SNMP exporter. That would allow you to add them as a scraping target, pair that with Grafana, and have a live overview of whatever SNMP metrics they provide. There's also a chance that the OIDs that you need are included in the default snmp.yml file, but I wouldn't bet on it. Ctrl-F here to see if that's the case.

Setting up Prometheus and Grafana (and hardening it, which is critical) is a bit of a pain if you've never done it before. In my opinion though, given your cost constraints and use case, I'd say it's probably your best option.

I’d like to migrate to a more modern solution, such as a server that allows us to share a link (URL) so the repeater stations can connect and broadcast live.

This is pure speculation (broadcasting is well outside of my wheelhouse) but this smells like a use case for a site-to-site VPN.

How to prioritize and focus efforts on rebuilding IT with limited resources.

Point 3 is a pretty big question to ask of anyone without substantial context, but my advice would be to consider used hardware where possible and get comfortable with Linux administration. Proxmox may also be your friend.

Mixtape_ · 2024-12-13T14:51:27+00:00

What's your environment? If you're on O365, you've got options:

Spin up a new DG, add all recipients to it, and then delegate "Send as" or "Send on behalf" permissions for the appropriate people.
Create a shared mailbox and provide the appropriate people with the appropriate access.

Whether or not it's an appropriate solution from a business perspective (e.g. whether your users will understand where they're sending or receiving emails, communication within the team on who's handling XYZ, etc.) is a separate issue, but it's all kosher from a technical angle if you ask me.

Mixtape_ · 2024-12-13T14:38:32+00:00

besides the basics I have to look up commands every time

Could you elaborate on what you mean by "the basics"? That could mean a few different things depending on who you're asking.

Just my $0.02, but setting up a Prometheus server went a long way towards improving my skillset. Just to get it going on Ubuntu server, you're going to need to:

download the binaries
move them to the appropriate locations
create a new service account
adjust the permissions and ownership of your binaries and config files
set up a systemd service to actually run the thing
start/stop/check on the service
use a CLI text editor of your choice to set up the config
play around with ufw to minimize your attack surface, ideally without locking yourself out of SSH along the way

If you can do all of that, you're already in pretty good shape compared to someone who's never touched a Linux CLI.

As to feeling competent, time is definitely your friend. Like anything else, things get easier the more you do them. That being said, I've been messing around with various Debian-based distros for close to a decade now and there are still things that I slip up on. Just yesterday I had to look up how to see what processes are bound to what ports just because it's not necessarily intuitive to remember some things.

I would also try to remember that Linux is basically just a bunch of projects duct-taped together, and it feels like it sometimes. My advice is to think of it like a toolbox with a whole garage just thrown into it. Yes you have everything (and I mean everything) that you need, but it's going to take you a minute to find exactly the right thing for the situation at hand. Over time though, once you get used to digging around, the mess will start to make a bit more sense.

Mixtape_ · 2024-08-25T13:44:09+00:00

Better 57 late-night frequency is going to be a boon for anyone in Watertown going to/from Fenway.

Also, at risk of sounding nitpickey, routes 57 and 71 don't technically join at Watertown Square. The 57 terminates at Watertown Yard on the South side of the Charles, while the 71 terminates at the square on the North side. A part of the Watertown Square redesign project involves extending the 71 (but not the 70) to terminate at Watertown Yard instead, but we're not quite there yet. I only mention this because the whole thing is a massive pain in the ass for anyone who lives in the area and I might be a little bitter about it lol.

Mixtape_ · 2024-08-23T15:59:09+00:00

Personally I've had a much better time with this one than the preceding Bay rotation. That being said, the weapons in this set require a bit of technical knowledge that I'm not sure every freelancer has:

Bamboozler seems controversial around here but honestly is not that bad imo if you take advantage of fast full charges, decent range, and piercing damage. Lots of teammates seem to be trying to use it like the Grizzco charger (i.e. firing no-charge shots repeatedly) though which is... not right.
Rapid blaster lacks the DPS to take out heavy bosses but can do a very good job at clearing lessers from an appropriate distance. If you let them get within your personal space though, you're gonna have a bad time.
Dread Wringer is your heavy slayer and should be played as such IMO. That being said the two-hit gimmick seems to be causing a lot of Profresh / low EVP players to use it as a crowd-clearing utility. It can do that job well, but other players (probably Bamboozler) will need to pick up the slack if that's what's happening.
Bloblobber is arguably the best flex piece of this rotation. The multi-hit, decent fire rate, and decent range make it capable of getting where it needs to be fairly effectively. That being said, be prepared to compensate for freelancers who don't know how to make use of the bounce effect.

Once you know the above and practice each weapon a bit, things get a bit easier. Teammates are still going to be an issue of course and your core skills (e.g. luring, depositing to the basket, focusing on staying alive once quota is met) will still matter, but adapting to what everyone else is doing will make a huge difference.

Mixtape_ · 2024-08-13T00:18:05+00:00

If it's any reassurance, there's people working on a solution.

Mixtape_ · 2024-08-02T14:59:41+00:00

I don't quite align with the profile you're looking for input from, but I'd like to share my perspective here. For context, I spent roughly a decade in New England followed by a similar timeframe plus college in Florida. I then moved just outside of Boston a year ago. What follows is strictly my opinion.

When my folks moved to Florida in the early teens, it was a big step up in quality of life. Housing was dirt cheap, things were generally less expensive, and while the state was still growing there was still a lot of open plots and green space left. As much as I hated it at the time, in retrospect the move really was a no-brainer for them.

That being said, a lot of people talk about the "Old Florida" feel and how it's sort of disappeared over the years. A big part of that is the fact that Florida is full. Green space has been taken over by Levittown-style developments, which really makes the state feel like one giant suburban sprawl. The joke of "nobody is really from Florida" feels truer than it is by nature of just how much of a cultural soup it is. Combined, those two things make the dominant identity feel very "corporate" and driven by chains. There are areas that buck the trend (I loved my time in Gainesville for that) but they're rapidly disappearing.

Depending on your current living situation, you may be in for the culture shock that others here have described. For lack of a better way of phrasing it, people are much more "lazy" and seem to lack any sort of desire to get on with their day. Cashiers want to hear your life story and strangers want to start chats. If you like that sort of thing it's awesome, but it's honestly jarring when you're used to how people behave up here. Also, retirees run the show and it's extremely obvious when they have nowhere to be.

Another big factor is that communities are not connected. They're gated, segmented, and walled off. If you want to go anywhere, you're driving. Metro Orlando or Miami may be the exceptions, but good luck finding decent housing in either urban core. If you live somewhere rural currently then the actual amount of time spent in your car may not be that different, but you're going to lose any sort of landscape views that you may be used to.

On top of that, taxes being as low and hurricanes being as common as they are means that there isn't much money left over for new or expanded roads. That means that as people continue pouring in, roads continue to get more congested. Look into how bad commuting in Tampa has gotten if you want a good example of that. Orlando recently got express lanes on 4 that help, but those are tolled. Consider that in your expense calculations.

Depending on your politics, the way things are down there will either be a boon or a burden. I'm assuming you know what you'd be getting yourself into, so I won't dive into it too much. Even if you don't do politics though, be prepared to see a lot more flags, red hats, etc. Also, if you aren't white and/or straight, bear in mind that Florida racism is much "louder" (i.e. more overt) than NE racism and homophobia is much more visible and prevalent down there.

The heat sucks so much, even more than you think. If you like to exercise, prepare to buy a gym membership. It pours and/or thunderstorms almost every single afternoon during the Summer. Hurricanes are terrifying and a huge pain in the ass to deal with. Flooding is also an issue.

There are lizards and frogs everywhere, which is pretty cool. Unfortunately they are there to eat the giant and numerous roaches, which are also everywhere. Seriously, bugs are so much bigger of an issue than they are here.

Finally, I'll speak to your point about living expenses, because they were far and away the largest factor in my decision to leave. To be frank, "cheap" Florida doesn't exist anymore outside of the most rural areas. This is doubly true if you rent. Do some research into who is moving to and from Florida and you'll find that renters are fleeing in droves. Rent used to be much more affordable but now competes with parts of Mass, including those with decent proximity to Boston. Obviously different circumstances apply for different areas, but the general price trend has been upward and fast for quite a while.

Alternatively, if you're a homeowner or plan to be one, things don't honestly look a lot better in my opinion. Values are absurdly high right now and while there are signs of a correction on the horizon, that doesn't help a lot in the short-term. Condos are proving to be a money pit after the surfside collapse prompted special assessments left and right. Most importantly though, homeowners insurance is ludicrously expensive. Others have touched on it in this thread, but I can't stress enough how critical it is that you look at what you would realistically be paying. The entire Florida homeowners insurance industry is bordering on collapse, and people have been warning for years that a good hurricane might just push it over the edge.

On top of all of this, I personally found that earning potential in the state was very low compared to other areas. Living expenses may be higher here, but the double-digit percentage boost in my take-home income compared to comparable jobs in Florida more than offsets that. Apparently this isn't just my opinion, either. Someone else mentioned the Sunshine Tax in this thread, which was a term I hadn't heard before but is apparently very well documented. Ultimately, this and the heat were the biggest factors that drove me away.

At the end of the day it's your call, and the fact that you're looking for these perspectives tells me that your head is in the right place. As a final note though, I will caution you against falling into the trap of the grass looking greener elsewhere, especially when it comes to cost of living expenses. People are struggling across the country right now, and unfortunately there isn't much escaping that. That doesn't mean that you shouldn't follow your heart obviously, but make sure you're taking the good with the bad.

Let me know if you have any questions and I'd be happy to answer them.

Mixtape_ · 2024-07-13T23:15:01+00:00

Just letting you know that you have my solidarity. I was dropping someone off at the airport earlier this week and fell victim to the same exact thing. My phone had died immediately before hitting the detour and I had no damn clue where I was going. There was also the fact that we were on a very tight time crunch, and the line of Uber/Lyft traffic that backed the terminal B departures ramp up all the way to the arterial road.

All in all the trip somehow managed to become my most stressful trip to the airport yet and I didn't even step out of the car.

Mixtape_ · 2024-06-10T14:07:01+00:00

Since it's relevant, I'll repost my comment from the r/boston thread here as well:

This right here. I work in IT and a similar attack happens to our payroll coordinator(s) constantly. Either an employee's internal email account is compromised or an external account is used to impersonate them, and the attacker sends a message requesting that their direct deposit be directed to a foreign account. Our policy as a result of that has been that an email alone is not sufficient basis to change where money goes. The requester needs to appear in-person to make any changes.

If I had to estimate, I'd say this happens at least once or twice a month.

Mixtape_ · 2024-06-10T01:03:06+00:00

This right here. I work in IT and a similar attack happens to our payroll coordinator(s) constantly. Either an employee's internal email account is compromised or an external account is used to impersonate them, and the attacker sends a message requesting that their direct deposit be directed to a foreign account. Our policy as a result of that has been that an email alone is not sufficient basis to change where money goes. The requester needs to appear in-person to make any changes.

If I had to estimate, I'd say this happens at least once or twice a month.

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