Essay: Body Cameras and Law Enforcement

Issue
Should police/patrol officers be federally mandated to wear body cameras to record citizen contacts?
Facts
In today’s world of technological advancement, there has been an increase in the ways technology can be used to help people on a daily basis. New technologies have led to the development of police-worn body cameras, which is a hot topic given the series of events that have occurred in relation to use-of-force since Michael Brown was killed by a Ferguson Police Officer, Darren Wilson. Unfortunately, that event was not captured on camera and it has left many trying to fill in the blanks as to what exactly happened on August 9, 2014. Politicians like Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton are using the issue of police-worn body cameras as a part of their presidential campaign to hold police accountable for their actions. Several police departments nationwide have already implemented body cameras, but there is still little evidence that either supports or defends the position that police officers should wear body cameras.
Discussion
Pros
1. Police officers wearing body cameras would allow the public and the police officer’s agency to view a possibly questionable interaction with an individual. If the police officer had been accused of using excessive force or if that same officer has a history of receiving citizen complaints, the officer’s agency can investigate and respond accordingly. The officer can be held accountable for his actions and all the evidence needed to successfully prosecute or relieve an officer of his duties would be on video.
2. On the other side, a police officer would be able to record an interaction like the one Darren Wilson had with Michael Brown, eliminating the possibility for suspects/arrestees and “eyewitnesses” to fill in the blanks. The entire encounter will be recorded and the police officer (if indicted or facing being let go) will be acquitted of any wrongdoing. The public (and a maybe even a jury) will be able to see the job through the officer’s eyes and will be able to fully grasp just how quick an officer needs to make a decision in order to preserve his own, or another’s, life.
3. Through the release of video captured on police-worn body cameras, both the general population and police will be able to gather a better understanding of each other. By seeing all encounters through a police officer’s lens, people will be able to learn why a police officer handles a particular situation the way he does – one that is common is a person getting out of their car on a traffic stop. The police officer usually meets that person with aggression, since a police officer has seen people run from traffic stops and/or has seen videos of police officers get killed by gunfire because the officer stopped someone who was “wanted” and did not feel like going back to jail. The general population probably just wants to bring their insurance card over or other required document they had trouble digging out of their glove box, but a police officer wants to go home to see his family just as soon as the individual he stopped does. People will react like that police officer was rude or too aggressive, but through a police officer’s lens they will be able to see that a traffic stop is a very tense and stressful citizen contact as it is the most dangerous.
Cons
1. There are legality concerns as the Constitution and subsequent case laws to the First and Fourth Amendments in response to “wiretapping” all limit the use of law enforcement’s ability to video/audio record. Such case law was written without much concern or mention of body cameras, leaving “significant gaps between what is sound policy and what is legal” (Freund 2015). Also, body cameras can enter into much more private realms than other devices like dash-cams and CCTV systems. Body cameras can enter victims’ homes and can record extremely embarrassing and emotional moments of the victims (Freund 2015).
2. There are privacy concerns for police officers. If the police were to wear body cameras and said cameras were to be running for the entire tour of duty, there would inevitably footage captured that intrudes into an officer’s personal life. Police officers are still granted First Amendment rights (even though we already know they are held to a higher standard), so anything that is recorded from the officer’s conversations with other officers, his wife/family, superiors, etc., there becomes the issue of protected speech. Not that an officer should be handling private matters while at work, but it may be concerning to hear how an officer speaks to his wife if an altercation ensued and then shortly thereafter arises an incident where that officer has to use deadly force – should a defense attorney be allowed to use the altercation with the officer’s wife against the officer to construe the situation, citing that the officer has already angry before he made contact with the victim of the deadly force. Does removing the conversation taint the evidence and/or does that even make a difference when determining whether or not the officer was justified in using deadly force in the eyes of a jury? “The cameras actually record even when ‘off,’ and automatically save thirty seconds of ‘buffer’ that precede being turned on. This is so that the cameras can capture the initial moments of an encounter” (Freund 2015).
3. There are privacy concerns for citizens. An Orwellian-esque style of policing may develop, as there are already cameras capable of facial recognition. There is already the idea that the police are intrusive, so giving the police more power to survey an area and scan with tools powerful enough to capture and remember faces would continue to destroy what little trust the community has left in the police (Shipley, 2015). Cities like Chicago and Los Angeles are already playing with the technology and have the ability to use city surveillance cameras to zoom in on things that are generally invisible to the naked eye. This technology of the ability to recognize suspects may make witnesses less likely to talk to the police, as their faces may be recognized and linked to crimes they may have committed in the past, and “if combined with an extensive CCTV system and FRT, body-mounted cameras could become part of a comprehensive surveillance system capable of tracking the movements of individuals as the go about their daily activities” (Freund 2015).
Recommendation
There is still little information on the impact body cameras have on the way police officers do their jobs, and it was even discovered in Rialto, California that while citizen complaints of police officers have dropped, violent crime has risen (Shipley, 2015). The value of holding officers accountable for their actions does not outweigh a police department’s ability to fight crime. At this point, the world is not ready for body-worn cameras on its police officers – in fact, while there are a little over one million cops in the United States, the FBI reported that in 2014 there were only 72 indictments of police officers for color of law violations like excessive use of force, sexual assaults, false arrest and fabrication of evidence, deprivation of property, and failure to keep from harm (FBI Website). While one indictment is too many, the percentage of police officers being indicted for the listed violations is 0.00000065%. Despite the current climate, the reality is police officers are almost always justified in their actions and when they are not, they are properly held accountable. Also, it seems like a concern of the general population is that police officers already have too much power; by introducing body-cameras into the world of policing, the potential for power only increases. Introducing an element that increases an officer’s (and consequently the government’s) ability to access very private moments increases the potential for an oppressive atmosphere and trust in the police and government will continue to diminish.
References
AMIRA, D. (2013, August 16). Rialto Police Chief: Body-Worn Cop Cameras Were Far From a ‘Nightmare’ Retrieved March 11, 2016, from http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2013/08/nypd-cameras-rialto-farrar-bloomberg.html#
Civil Rights – Color of Law Violations. (n.d.). Retrieved March 11, 2016, from https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/investigate/civilrights/color_of_law
FREUND, K. (2015). When Cameras Are Rolling: Privacy Implications of Body-Mounted Cameras on Police. Columbia Journal Of Law & Social Problems, 49(1), 91-133.
SHIPLEY, D. (2015, May 01). Hillary Clinton Is Wrong About Police Cameras. Retrieved March 11, 2016, from http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-05-01/police-cameras-still-a-bad-idea