Urging police to wear cameras is just the first step
Thanks to cellphone cameras, it should now be obvious that the USA has a serious problem with police violence.
Too many officers have killed too many people under dubious circumstances, and too often police have tried to misrepresent or cover up what happened.
When a citizen captures police violence with cellphone video, as happened when a cop gunned down a fleeing man after a traffic stop in North Charleston, S.C., justice seems to be swift. But you can’t always count on someone with a cellphone being nearby.
Requiring police to wear cameras is one long overdue way to begin fixing the problem, not just to protect citizens from unwarranted abuse but also to clear cops of false allegations of police brutality. But calling for cameras is the easy part. How to make them work in practice raises two surprisingly hard questions: When should cameras be turned on? And who should be able to see which footage?
It’s tempting to say the cameras should roll all the time. But that could be intrusive and destructive. Cameras needn’t record officers’ bathroom breaks or their private conversations over lunch. Even cops on the job have a reasonable right to privacy. Confidential informants would likely clam up if they were recorded, and ditto for neighborhood wit- nesses who would rightly fear retaliation. Victims of abuse or sexual assault might think twice about calling the cops if they knew they’d be on video.
Similarly, the easy answer for who should see the videos is everyone, and all of it. But similar caveats apply. There’s little value in making public embarrassing video of people drunk or naked or both, as they often are when police make arrests. There are also privacy concerns for bystanders, witnesses, children, crime victims, the mentally ill and people recorded in their homes.
Balancing those interests will take some time, but until then, some general guidelines will help.
Police should have some discretion about when to turn cameras on and off, but with a major catch. If a camera is off during a violent confrontation with a civilian, the officer should be disciplined, and in any resulting court case, the burden of proof should be on the officer to disprove allegations of violence or misconduct, not the other way around.
Deciding who should see which videos is more difficult. But we agree with the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press that existing state public records laws offer a solution. The best of them already provide good tests for balancing the public’s right to know against privacy rights and the legitimate needs of investigations. Videos that have public value but intrude on privacy can be redacted by blurring faces, license plates and other details. Special software should make such a task easier and cheaper than many police departments claim.
Putting cameras on cops has already begun making it harder for police — and the public — to get away with misbehavior that has too often been covered up. The details are difficult, but they shouldn’t stand in the way of providing the evidence that can prove — one way or the other — whether excessive force was used.