Body Cameras for Police Are a Powerful Tool, Not a Cure-All

Eric Garner’s choking death at the hands of New
York City police was filmed. Yet the public distribution of the
video was
not enough to secure an indictment against Officer Daniel
Pantaleo. The result has led to concerns that maybe mounting
cameras on police is not going to be the fix some people think it
is. Here’s what Nia-Malika Henderson at The Washington
Post had to say about it and President Barack Obama’s push for
funding for more
body cameras for police:

The use of body cameras by police officers could certainly make
them police themselves more and have the same effect on people they
interact with. But they don’t seem to have increased the chances of
discipline when it comes to Garner, whose death was ruled a
homicide.

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio (D) said that he plans to
request
federal funding for body cameras. It’s unclear whether Obama,
who has made the most high-profile push for body cameras, will get
congressional support for his proposal.

But the videotaped death of Garner and the failure to get an
indictment will likely be used by activists to push for much more
than just cameras.

Henderson notes the heavily distributed statistics from Rialto,
California, after they fitted their officers with body cameras two
years ago. Incidences of use of force by police and complaints
against police plunged the year after they were put into use.
Nevertheless that filming of abuse didn’t help in Garner’s case
(nor did it help in
Kelly Thomas’ case) and that police may turn them off or try to
shield video from public access has introduced a “Is the case for
body cameras now damaged?”
narrative—and some frustrated tweets.

But that question really only makes sense if you confuse tools
for solutions and transparency for accountability. No, having
visual documentation of police misbehavior won’t guarantee the
officer in question will be punished. But there is no technology
that will guarantee that outcome. Even Minority
Report-style psychic powers or precognition skills could not
guarantee that a police officer will be punished for injustices.
All the tools provide is information. The only way police will be
held responsible for misbehavior will be through the actions of
actual human beings, through whatever system of judgment we use. No
technology can make people hold others in position of power
responsible.

By the same token, transparency is not the same as
accountability; rather it is a mechanism used to get the
information to hold people accountable. Even if the Obama
Administration’s claims to be the “most transparent administration
ever” weren’t a massive, absurd lie, the failure of the
administration to hold its people responsible for the poor conduct
or incompetence
that we do know of is a reminder that “transparency,” like
a body camera, is a tool, not a solution.

Two other thoughts, both fairly obvious: It’s going to be
impossible to document the abuse that doesn’t happen
because of the existence of body cameras, thus the emphasis on
those statistics from Rialto. Pointing to one or two cases where
police abuse was filmed and not punished as an indictment and
denial of all the other benefits is not logical or well thought-out
(and I’ve succumbed to such responses myself in the Thomas case).
 If one of the goals is to discourage bad behavior from the
police (and citizens they’re interacting with), we need to focus on
those statistics, not point to individual cases and then throw our
hands up in the air about it. If body cameras result in fewer cases
of police abuse it is an undeniable good, even if filming didn’t
help Garner or bring the officer to justice.

Second, consider the difference in responses to the grand jury
verdict in Garner’s case compared to many other cases of police
killing unarmed citizens that weren’t caught on film. How much
coverage have all those other cases gotten in comparison? Would
Attorney General Eric Holder come out and give a speech promising a
federal investigation if Garner’s death hadn’t been caught on film?
Would there even be a federal investigation if not for the
video? How much different would the protests had been and how much
coverage would they have gotten if Garner’s death hadn’t been
caught on film? Now imagine what could potentially happen
culturally if every single fatal police encounter (remember, there
were
more than 400 last year) was caught on film and shown to the
public. It’s easy to say that the trend of police protection will
continue because that’s how it’s been for decades, but look at the
responses to the grand jury decision. The typical
liberal-conservative divide on police authority is
just not there (not as pronounced anyway). This would not be
happening if not for video. Reforming police behavior is going to
be slow. Very, very slow. But given the amount of power and
discretion both civic leaders and the courts have given police, it
won’t happen at all without the assistance of transparency provided
by body cameras.

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