03Lightningrocks wrote:\
This thread and a couple others on this forum have certainly made me more cautious about concealing than I have been in the past. The Round Rock thread being one of them. I find myself doing a double and triple check that I am not exposing my little secret. I have no desire to be the center of debates like this one. My plan is to die surrounded by grand children and great grand children in my hospice bed. I figure I got about 50 more years to go... getting gunned down by some rookie cop at 49 is not something I care to experience.
Can you link to the Round Rock and the other threads please?
That was one... handdog was the OP..... just search through his posts for other threads about the situation. Warning... it got testy at times...LOL. You may have to really exercise some self control while reading it.
PeteCamp wrote:I think this is correct, but it could be in error. It is reported that the video surveillance system was one of the new top of the line systems by the same company that installs them in casinos. It uses a hard drive to record and they pulled the hard drive out and then could not read it because it was no longer attached to the main CPU and software. They sent it to an outfit in CA to see if they could find the video amongst all the directories on the hard drive.
This is the situation I described as a likely issue in an earlier post.
If they had simply left the drive in the system, they would have been able to retrieve the video - assuming, of course, that was their objective.
I would be shocked if the videos aren't in a standard format; mpeg, h261 or h263 or vc-1. I do hard drive forensics fairly routinely at UTD, and the forensics software makes it extremely simple to create a copy of any file and run it on a standard viewer. Obtaining the videos, even from a damaged hard drive, is certainly possible and in many cases easy to do. In addition, I'd be surprised if the supplier wouldn't provide the investigators with a copy of the software that accesses the videos. Modern software is smart enough to pass over bad hard drive sectors, so it's unlikely that any video would be corrupted. It's hard to imagine a circumstance, unless their system was very old, that would make the videos non-recoverable.
In short, if the videos turn out not to be available, I would be extremely suspicious.
The Constitution preserves the advantage of being armed which Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation where the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms. James Madison
NRA Life Member Texas Firearms Coalition member
Do You Agree With The Decision To Postpone The Coroner's Inquest?
Out of 41 Votes:
Yes 4 10%
No 35 85%
I Don't Know 2 5%
"When I was a kid, people who did wrong were punished, restricted, and forbidden. Now, when someone does wrong, all of the rest of us are punished, restricted, and forbidden. The one who did the wrong is counselled and "understood" and fed ice cream." - speedsix
Excaliber wrote:If they had simply left the drive in the system, they would have been able to retrieve the video - assuming, of course, that was their objective.
That's the $64,000 question.
This will only hurt a little. What comes next, more so.
This is interesting. There's an election in November, and the woman running for Sheriff against the current Sheriff has promised to change the inquest process. That puts the current Sheriff in a very difficult position. If the inquest finds the police committed a criminal act, then she gets to question his leadership. If the inquest finds the shooting excusable, then she gets to question his leadership. If she handles this well, this one issue could easily get her elected. He has to do something to make it at least appear that he's trying to improve police performance, so I expect the officers involved to at least be sent back for additional training and perhaps an announcement that he's appointed a commission to study the recent shootings and recommend training improvements.
The Constitution preserves the advantage of being armed which Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation where the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms. James Madison
NRA Life Member Texas Firearms Coalition member
I have a very strict gun control policy: if there's a gun around, I want to be in control of it." - Clint Eastwood You don't shoot to kill; you shoot to stay alive!
PeteCamp wrote:I think this is correct, but it could be in error. It is reported that the video surveillance system was one of the new top of the line systems by the same company that installs them in casinos. It uses a hard drive to record and they pulled the hard drive out and then could not read it because it was no longer attached to the main CPU and software. They sent it to an outfit in CA to see if they could find the video amongst all the directories on the hard drive.
This is the situation I described as a likely issue in an earlier post.
If they had simply left the drive in the system, they would have been able to retrieve the video - assuming, of course, that was their objective.
I would be shocked if the videos aren't in a standard format; mpeg, h261 or h263 or vc-1. I do hard drive forensics fairly routinely at UTD, and the forensics software makes it extremely simple to create a copy of any file and run it on a standard viewer. Obtaining the videos, even from a damaged hard drive, is certainly possible and in many cases easy to do. In addition, I'd be surprised if the supplier wouldn't provide the investigators with a copy of the software that accesses the videos. Modern software is smart enough to pass over bad hard drive sectors, so it's unlikely that any video would be corrupted. It's hard to imagine a circumstance, unless their system was very old, that would make the videos non-recoverable.
In short, if the videos turn out not to be available, I would be extremely suspicious.
Since the video surveillance system at Costco was reportedly state of the art, I'm sure you're correct that the videos are in a standard format and are more than likely intact and therefore recoverable with or without the surveillance software Costco uses.
The challenge will lie in finding the few minutes of recordings you're looking for from a small handful of cameras on a 2 terabyte drive that has stored simultaneous 24 hour recordings from dozens of cameras for a rolling 30 day time period. The volume of data on that drive will be huge. Without the database that indexes date, time, and camera with a recording's location on the multiple disks in the drive, it will require either a lot of painstaking review or some clever software to locate and copy the evidence in this case.
This may be part of the reason for the delayed inquest. Then again, it may not.
Excaliber
"An unarmed man can only flee from evil, and evil is not overcome by fleeing from it." - Jeff Cooper
I am not a lawyer. Nothing in any of my posts should be construed as legal or professional advice.
Excaliber....Or anyone here qualified to comment. Can you explain beyond what the media is reporting about the problems associated with the Coroner's Inquest process in Nevada that has the ACLU complaining? I have never served on a Texas Grand Jury, but the process sounds very similar.
Also, I would like to know more about the the process in the Texas legal system for an officer-involved shooting. Do the Texas Rangers automatically get involved? Or is it by invitation? Does the FBI automatically investigate? And do the Feds do their own independent investigation, or do they just look over what the local PD has found?
I have been involved in a couple of shootings where our department has asked the Rangers to conduct their own independent investigation to prevent the kind of community mistrust from happening like that which is obviously going on in Las Vegas. Seems most people trust the Rangers implicitly.
PeteCamp wrote:Excaliber....Or anyone here qualified to comment. Can you explain beyond what the media is reporting about the problems associated with the Coroner's Inquest process in Nevada that has the ACLU complaining? I have never served on a Texas Grand Jury, but the process sounds very similar.
I have read that many people consider the Coroner's Inquest to be a "rubber stamp" and that the inquest process has only found one person accountable for a death in Las Vegas. http://www.associatedcontent.com/articl ... tml?cat=17" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
The latest news is that the Inquest has been indefinitely delayed because of the large witness list. The LVPD has not given the information to the coroner's office so that they can subpoena the witnesses.
PeteCamp wrote:Excaliber....Or anyone here qualified to comment. Can you explain beyond what the media is reporting about the problems associated with the Coroner's Inquest process in Nevada that has the ACLU complaining? I have never served on a Texas Grand Jury, but the process sounds very similar.
Also, I would like to know more about the the process in the Texas legal system for an officer-involved shooting. Do the Texas Rangers automatically get involved? Or is it by invitation? Does the FBI automatically investigate? And do the Feds do their own independent investigation, or do they just look over what the local PD has found?
I have been involved in a couple of shootings where our department has asked the Rangers to conduct their own independent investigation to prevent the kind of community mistrust from happening like that which is obviously going on in Las Vegas. Seems most people trust the Rangers implicitly.
Sorry for all the questions.
I have no direct knowledge of the Nevada coroner's inquest system and am therefore not qualified to comment.
In Texas, the Rangers are not automatically brought into shootings by officers of municipal departments without exceptional circumstances. They are sometimes asked to conduct impartial investigations to reduce the chances that a department's own investigation may be perceived as biased by the public, as in the situations you cited.
The FBI has jurisdiction only in violations of federal law. Their involvement in municipal police shootings usually comes about in cases where there are credible allegations that an incident included violations of someone's civil rights.
Excaliber
"An unarmed man can only flee from evil, and evil is not overcome by fleeing from it." - Jeff Cooper
I am not a lawyer. Nothing in any of my posts should be construed as legal or professional advice.
seniorshooteress wrote:Something is smelling mighty fishy right about now. The cops getting a paid vacation? Calling it admistrative leave w/ pay.
I'm pretty sure that's standard procedure for an officer-involved shooting. IIRC, a phrase very similar to that is included in most such incident reports on Houston TV.
I think a lot of the suspicion about this incident has to do with it happening in Las Vegas. Police somewhere like Montana or Idaho would get more benefit of doubt.
That's the $64,000 question.
