Be prepared to be angry all the time. Some cop somewhere is going to be rude, or cruel or overbearing with somebody.
And you’re going to see it. Each and every one.
Video cameras are everywhere and police body cams are coming to a force near you. There will be a never-ending supply of outrages. After all, there are some 800,000 cops in the U.S. and not all are going to be reasonable, professional, polite or even right.
Somewhere an officer in some Arizona town will be a bully. Or a trooper in Texas will threaten to Taze a woman after she refuses to put out her smoke. Or a cop will shoot someone in the back in South Carolina.
It doesn’t matter where it happens because it’s immediately broadcast on the phone in your hand. We are so inter-connected that everywhere is local. Time was — and we’re not talking that long ago — that someone had to get “lucky” to catch an incident in progress. Rodney King was 1992. But it was an eon ago, technologically speaking.
Now, every police interaction with the public is potentially part of a never-ending reality series.
We must always remember, just because some deputy in Toledo beats the snot out of a motorist doesn’t mean all cops are rogues. Of course it doesn’t. But in the age of information overload, it starts seeming like that. It’s got to have an impact on the law enforcing business, right? Is it corrosive. Or for the good?
It can run off good officers who are reticent to act decisively with cameras shoved in their faces. And it can poison the public to think police are brutes.
But after making a round of calls, my feeling is that the harsh light of videotaping is ultimately good for the profession. That is, after some growing pains.
“Obviously, policing is evolving,” said Lou Arcangeli, a retired Atlanta police deputy chief. “The early part of it is painful. The profession has to adapt to it. And now, we only see the problems.”
Of course. Airplanes land safely every other minute. But one slides off the runway and news crews scramble.
Arcangeli has been consistent on the subject. Not long after the Rodney King beating, Arcangeli, then a lieutenant for the gung-ho Red Dog unit, told residents at a community meeting “to tape us.”
Many of his fellow officers thought the veteran cop was speaking blasphemy. But he knew one thing: “People act different when they’re on camera.” Hopefully acting better, that is.
“I think we want (the extra scrutiny); 999 times out of a thousand the police officer is doing the best under the circumstances. And in that one case, we need that person off the force,” he said. “Cameras will move them to other fields. Many people are not suited for police work.”
‘Stay above the fray’
I called Cedric Alexander, the public safety director of DeKalb County. He was in Washington coming from the White House as part of the President’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing, a group set up after disturbances in Ferguson last year.
The task force report noted, “When police officers are acutely aware that their behavior is being monitored (because they turn on the cameras) and when officers tell citizens that the cameras are recording their behavior, everyone behaves better.”
Last year, President Obama called for $263 million to improve police training and help the purchase of 50,000 body cameras.
“The effect of videotaping is that it forces us — consciously and unconsciously — to conduct ourselves in a professional manner to remain above the fray,” said Alexander, who is also a doctor of psychology.
Some officers worry that Big Brother will ruin their career. But Alexander said he gives out simple advice, “Stay above the fray. That’s what I tell officers every day. You’ve got to go out and do your job the way the state trained you to do your job. Do it with honesty and keep your professionalism in mind.”
That, of course, is easy to say while in a study group, or in the police academy. But a cop surrounded by excited, screaming people, pumped up by adrenaline and fear, is apt to act like a scared, angry human being. Cameras will catch officers on their worst days, and sometimes may tell a story that is incomplete or even twisted by edited footage.
'Video cameras are the future of policing'
That, Alexander said, is a double-edged sword that will more often than not work in cops’ favor. The tape will weed out false complaints against police and help justify actions.
“The body cameras will make sure their stories are being told,” he said. “I’m not afraid of technology. I’m not afraid of body cameras.”
Studies on the effect of cameras are limited, but one study of the Rialto, Calif., force showed a 50 percent decrease in the use of force and more than an 80 percent drop in citizens’ complaints of such cases.
“So far, we should be encouraged by the results,” said Matthew Feeney, a policy analyst at the Cato Institute, which runs the National Police Misconduct Reporting Project.
The South Carolina cop who shot a man in the back, killing him, probably would never have done such a thing if he’d been wearing a body cam, Feeney suggested. He also noted that two cops in Texas were cleared of shooting a suspect who pulled a gun on them. And a tape proved that a DUI suspect falsely accused an officer in New Mexico of molesting her.
The technology is part of the landscape.
“Video cameras are silent witnesses,” said Arcangeli. “And those silent witnesses are the future of policing. They bring more accountability. And they’ll bring a more civil society.”
About the Author
