The Movement Toward Police Body Cameras

“Bad Black People.” Why Bill O’Reilly Is Wrong Even When He’s Right”
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2014/08/oreilly-on-bad-black-people-why-bill-is.html 

"Study: Cops Not Wearing Body Cameras Twice As Likely To Use Force"

http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2014/12/study-cops-not-wearing-body-cameras.html

"Open Season On Unarmed Black Men. Another White Cop Kills An Innocuous Black Man"

http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2014/12/open-season-on-unarmed-black-men.html

"The Movement Toward Body Cameras"

http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2014/08/the-movement-toward-police-body-cameras.html

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White House faces pressure on police body cameras. "A White House petition created days after 18-year-old Michael Brown was fatally shot by a police officer in Ferguson, Mo., surpassed 100,000 signatures, the threshold that now requires the Obama administration to respond. Posted to the White House’s 'We the People' page, the petition calls for all police to wear cameras....Since the Aug. 9 shooting...there have been widespread calls for police to wear cameras on their vests. If Officer Darren Wilson had one...so many questions about how the shooting unfolded could perhaps be answered. Ferguson police said Tuesday in a statement that the department would raise money to purchase cameras for police vests and for the police cruiser dashboards." Colby Itkowitz in The Washington Post.

Their use is on the rise despite privacy concerns. "And there are no national guidelines for how they should be used....Still, the cameras have been embraced by civil libertarians...and they’ve been snapped up by hundreds of police departments across the country. Though police unions were once ardently against these systems, much of the resistance has faded. In a few small studies, on-body cameras have been shown to significantly reduce both complaints against officers as well as episodes in which officers use force. Consequently, they often pay for themselves by reducing the cost of litigation." Farhad Manjoo in The New York Times.

Companies like Taser are counting on body-camera requirements. "The stock for Taser, the stun-gun maker that also makes a line of wearable cameras for police officers, has jumped as much as 30 percent since the events in Ferguson first gained national media attention. VieVu, a Seattle-based firm, has seen requests from police departments for free trials of its wearable camera jump 70 percent in just the past few days....Business for companies like Taser and VieVu was already booming even before events came to a head in Ferguson, Mo." Hayley Tsukayama in The Washington Post.

Should we tape everything? "Last week, I argued that on-duty police officers should be required to record their interactions with civilians with the aid of so-called 'body cams' and, more controversially, that teachers should be recorded in the classroom. Though I lumped these two arguments together, they deserve to be teased apart. First, I should note that I fell prey to technological triumphalism. The 'hardware' of body cams can improve our criminal justice system. But what really matters is the cultural 'software' that undergirds the system. The case for police body cams is, for the reasons outlined in the column, fairly strong. Yet they’re certainly not a cure-all." Reihan Salam in National Review.