Let me preface my remarks in this post by saying that I have no desire demonize the law enforcement officials in the United States. I spent over 25 years of my working life in law enforcement myself (8 years as a corrections officer, 5 years as a patrol officer, and another 13 years working in parole -- both adult and juvenile). And I can honestly say that the overwhelming majority of the law enforcement officials I worked with were honest, professional, and would never dream of violating any individual's rights (or engage in any other kind of misconduct). They were brave men/women who put their own safety on the line to protect their community -- and they did it out of a desire to serve (not for the meager monetary rewards).
But that does not mean there aren't problems that exist. And the American public is very aware of those problems. As the chart above shows, a majority of Americans believe there are problems with police misconduct across this country -- especially concerning corruption (64%), brutality (61%), intimidation (59%), racial profiling (56%) and abuse of stop & frisk laws (50%).
And the public is right. These problems do exist -- and they exist in every state and most communities across this nation. The law enforcement officials who commit these offenses are only a tiny percentage of this nation's law enforcement professionals, but these few bad apples tarnish the reputation of all those trying to do a difficult job the right way. And despite what you may see on TV and in the movies, most law enforcement professional would be very happy to see these bad apples kicked out of the profession and convicted (where appropriate). The question is how to do that.
Some will say the profession needs to police itself. The problem with that is that no occupation or profession does a good job of policing itself (and law enforcement is no different than any other profession in that regard). Without absolute proof of misconduct, which is very hard to get, any profession (including law enforcement) will be prone to excuse the actions of their members. And the same goes for our courts. Law enforcement professionals are given much more "benefit of the doubt" by a jury than other defendants. While this protects some officials falsely accused, it also allows many guilty individuals to get off (and return to the streets to offend again).
Technology may have provided an answer though. There are now tiny high-quality cameras that can be worn unobtrusively -- and they will provide a video of exactly what happens between the individual wearing it and anyone he/she comes in contact with. These cameras can document wrongdoing, and they can also protect those falsely accused. They could provide the absolute proof needed to help both law enforcement agencies to police themselves, and the courts to make appropriate decisions.
I think it would be a good idea to mandate that police officers (and possibly some other law enforcement professionals) wear these tiny cameras while on duty. And it looks like a huge majority of the American public likes that idea too. Note in the chart below that 72% of the general public would be in favor of that -- and that support crosses all demographic lines (gender, race, age, education, and income).
What do you think? Would you support requiring police to wear cameras and videotape what happens on their shift?
These charts were made from information contained in a recent YouGov Poll -- conducted of a random national sample of 1,114 adults between July 11th and 14th, with a margin of error of about 4 points.
The main problem is that those little cameras have a bad habit of having "technical problems" during the time periods that are of interest. Furthermore, because of their limited battery life and storage space, the police officer has to manually trigger them on and off when interfacing with the public as vs. filling out paperwork or just cruising around, and police officers often "forget" to turn them on when intending brutality. In other words, the technology isn't there yet for 24/7 monitoring of a police officer's actions in a way that the police officer cannot easily defeat. Same problem with the dashboard cams in police cars, due to limited recording capacity (mine will record maybe 4 hours) they're supposed to turn them on when they pull someone over and turn it off when the encounter is done, but they seem to "forget" as often as they remember...
ReplyDeleteI see this problem of "forgetting" to turn the camera on as a leadership problem. If department leadership made a big enough issue of it, and disciplined those who "forgot", that problem would disappear. I was lucky enough during my career to work for bosses who made it clear abuse and/or misconduct would not be tolerated. And as employees, we liked that because it protected not only those we served but ourselves also. We didn't have cameras back then, but if we had them, you can be sure they would have been turned on -- and those who "forgot" would have been out of a job. Employees will do what leadership expects of them -- and if cameras are getting turned off or not turned on, then it's time to fire the weak leadership and hire someone who will demand compliance.
ReplyDeleteIf in court a good defense attorney can easily turn the "forgot to turn it on" into "I did not turn it on as I was going to act rather badly". Getting that done in court a few times and they would stop forgetting.
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