Bike camera and reporting to police.

Today I tried to report that taxi driver to the police. But they had no
way to view the video files (I took them on a CD - I think they could
read the CD, just not play the files)

I know there's someone else (I think in Cambridge) who's had some
success taking videos to the police. But I can't find him now in Google.
I think the name is Jackson, and I think he sometimes posts here.

Can anyone help me contact him?

Thanks in advance,

Tim.

(My reply-to: address is valid. Emails to the from: address will
disappear into a black hole)

p.s. The police suggested I use
www.londontravelwatch..org.uk/complaints/. I'll give that a try but I'm
not sure how I send them the video and also I think they're going to
reply that this is something that the police have to deal with.

--
God said, "div D = rho, div B = 0, curl E = - @B/@t, curl H = J + @D/@t,"
and there was light.

http://tjw.hn.org/ http://www.locofungus.btinternet.co.uk/

On Feb 26, 10:58 pm, Tim Woodall wrote:
Today I tried to report that taxi driver to the police. But they had no
way to view the video files (I took them on a CD - I think they could
read the CD, just not play the files)

I know there's someone else (I think in Cambridge) who's had some
success taking videos to the police. But I can't find him now in Google.
I think the name is Jackson, and I think he sometimes posts here.

Can anyone help me contact him?

Thanks in advance,

Tim.

(My reply-to: address is valid. Emails to the from: address will
disappear into a black hole)

p.s. The police suggested I usewww.londontravelwatch..org.uk/complaints/. I'll give that a try but I'm
not sure how I send them the video and also I think they're going to
reply that this is something that the police have to deal with.

Ian Jackson. See here (for example)
http://groups.google.co.uk/group/cam...092806cab83739

best wishes
jamee

Tim Woodall writes:

Today I tried to report that taxi driver to the police. But they had no
way to view the video files (I took them on a CD - I think they could
read the CD, just not play the files)

I know there's someone else (I think in Cambridge) who's had some
success taking videos to the police. But I can't find him now in Google.
I think the name is Jackson, and I think he sometimes posts here.

Can anyone help me contact him?


It's Ian Jackson. Check cam.transport for more details.

In article , Paul Rudin wrote:
Tim Woodall writes:

I know there's someone else (I think in Cambridge) who's had some
success taking videos to the police. But I can't find him now in Google.
I think the name is Jackson, and I think he sometimes posts here.

Can anyone help me contact him?

It's Ian Jackson. Check cam.transport for more details.

Or http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~i...n/contact.html

Tim Woodall said the following on 26/02/2008 22:58:
Today I tried to report that taxi driver to the police. But they had no
way to view the video files (I took them on a CD - I think they could
read the CD, just not play the files)

The files you posted are just bog-standard AVI files that can be read by
any Windows-based PC, or probably any other OS for that matter! You
don't sound entirely sure that they could read the CD though - make sure
you don't use a CD-RW with a proprietary format - we get those sent to
work sometimes and the customers express surprise when we say we haven't
got Acme CD Co's software installed to read them.

--
Paul Boyd
http://www.paul-boyd.co.uk/

"Paul Boyd" usenet.is.worse@plusnet wrote in message
...
Tim Woodall said the following on 26/02/2008 22:58:
Today I tried to report that taxi driver to the police. But they had no
way to view the video files (I took them on a CD - I think they could
read the CD, just not play the files)

The files you posted are just bog-standard AVI files that can be read by
any Windows-based PC

Provided the appropriate codec is installed. Both my digital cameras have
produced video files which require stuff to be installed onto the PC (one
was a avi codec, one is quicktime I think. or something like that).

cheers,
clive

On Feb 27, 10:01 am, Paul Boyd usenet.is.worse@plusnet wrote:
Tim Woodall said the following on 26/02/2008 22:58:

Today I tried to report that taxi driver to the police. But they had no
way to view the video files (I took them on a CD - I think they could
read the CD, just not play the files)

The files you posted are just bog-standard AVI files that can be read by
any Windows-based PC, or probably any other OS for that matter! You
don't sound entirely sure that they could read the CD though - make sure
you don't use a CD-RW with a proprietary format - we get those sent to
work sometimes and the customers express surprise when we say we haven't
got Acme CD Co's software installed to read them.

It's a standard CD-R. The iso is standard iso9660 compiled with
mkisofs. No joliett, rockridge or any other extensions.

When I try and play them at work it starts up real-player. But my work
pc will also play them in windows media player (Actually this is a bit
of a surprise to me because these machines used to be so locked down
that they wouldn't even read a cd or a usb flash drive. This has
obviously been changed at some time in the past)

Tim.

In article ,
Tim Woodall wrote:
I know there's someone else (I think in Cambridge) who's had some
success taking videos to the police. But I can't find him now in Google.
I think the name is Jackson, and I think he sometimes posts here.

Hi. That's me.

I have had zero, nada, zilch, success. You can read about my
experiences with trying to use video evidence to obtain prosecutions
he http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~ijackson/bikecams/

My problem have been almost entirely with Cambridgeshire
Constabulary's attitude towards and ignorance of cyclists and cycling.
I wish you better luck with your police.

Some advice if you're going to go down this road:

* Make your own writeup of an event before you go to the station to
report it. Then when they write your statement-in-your-own-words
in their weird police words for you, make sure that everything from
your writeup is included, and make sure to leave a copy of your own
writeup with the police.

* Make notes at your meeting with the police of everything they say
and promise.

* Ask them to email you or perhaps phone you to say how things are
going, and get them to promise to do so by a specific date. If you
don't hear, chase it up, by letter if necessary. There is a 6
month statutory limitation on bad driving offences.

* Specifically, get them to promise to issue a NIP (and make a note
of that promise). There is a very short time limit for this but
IIRC the clock starts slightly later than the actual incident.

* Expect all officials, MPs and councillors staff, etc. etc. to be
prejudiced. For example, I tried to get my (very good) MP to help
and he told his staff to write to the Chief Constable. The staff
mangled it into a request that `the complaint against the cyclist'
should be taken seriously. (See the TfL study on driver attitudes
as to why this kind of thing happens.)

* Consider whether to complain to taxi licensing, bus operator, or
whatever, instead. I have not had much luck with complaining to
both police and a civil regulator: the regulator said `we should
wait for the police to finish'; the police sit on it for months and
then write to the offender notifying them that they're not going to
prosecute; the offender shows this letter to the regulator who then
tells you that in that case they won't do anything either.

And if the police are useless and you want to make a complaint:

* Do not make your complaint until you have obtained all the relevant
the documentation to support it - witness statements, statement
under caution by the driver, etc. In my case this is going to
involve a protracted FOI battle. There is no time limit for making
your initial complaint, but there are limits later in the process.

* Do not agree to `Local Resolution' unless you have utmost faith and
confidence in the person who is dealing with your complaint. There
is no substantive appeal if they turn out to be useless - in
particular, you can't appeal just because the findings of Local
Resolution are completely at variance with the evidence and
reality.

* Do not expect the IPCC to be useful. See this week's newspapers
for details of how dreadful they are. They were dreadful to me
too. If you find yourself wanting to appeal to the IPCC, see if
you can get legal assistance from a body such as the CTC, CDF,
Liberty, etc. - because you'll probably need to threaten them with
judicial review, which would take serious legal backing.

--
Ian Jackson personal email:
These opinions are my own. http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~ijackson/
PGP2 key 1024R/0x23f5addb, fingerprint 5906F687 BD03ACAD 0D8E602E FCF37657

In article , Tim
Woodall
says...
Today I tried to report that taxi driver to the police. But they had no
way to view the video files (I took them on a CD - I think they could
read the CD, just not play the files)

Stick it on a DVD using a video authoring package, then plod won't have
to figure out how to work a PC.

I know there's someone else (I think in Cambridge) who's had some
success taking videos to the police. But I can't find him now in Google.
I think the name is Jackson, and I think he sometimes posts here.

Can anyone help me contact him?

Thanks in advance,

Tim.

(My reply-to: address is valid. Emails to the from: address will
disappear into a black hole)

p.s. The police suggested I use
www.londontravelwatch..org.uk/complaints/. I'll give that a try but I'm
not sure how I send them the video and also I think they're going to
reply that this is something that the police have to deal with.

Sounds like an exercise in buck-passing to me.