They won’t completely solve the problem of cops killing innocent people, The Washington Post reports.
Here’s why:
1. Body cams don’t always capture the whole story. Right after police in Ferguson, Missouri, killed Michael Brown, they began wearing body cameras. Tom Jackson, who was then police chief, said the images his officers were recording were good quality. One shocking video of an Albuquerque police officer firing off eight shots at a fleeing suspect showed a high degree of clarity. In the video, officer Brian Pitzer can be seen shooting armed suspect Juan Ortega as he flees. The video even shows Ortega tossing a gun into the air after being fired upon. Little, if any doubts here, about what’s going on.
Videos that are this clear are rare, the Post reports.
Law officials told KOAT Albuquerque they’d received reports that Ortega was armed with a gun and said he’d allegedly tried to carjack someone, then robbed a grandmother and her grandson at a bus stop. Then he allegedly tried to carjack another person.
Prior to that, police allege that Ortega took pills and drank alcohol, then drove through his neighborhood, running people off the road and firing his weapon.
Like stationary public surveillance cameras or CCTV (closed-circuit television), body cameras can be just as limited. These limitations can include the camera’s viewshed, available lighting, and low-visibility weather conditions. The officer’s movement can mask or distort incidents when played back. When Nancy La Vigne, the author of the Washington Post Op-ed, interviewed police investigators as part of an Urban Institute Evaluation of CCTV use in three U.S. cities in 2011, she and her colleagues found that low-quality footage was a significant problem.
Cameras can also capture different details depending upon where the officer positions them, and typically the officer can choose whether the camera is mounted on the head, chest, or shoulder. Made by Taser, the AXON camera, offers “multiple on-body mounting positions.” While the Justice Department offered model policies, it’s kept quiet on the topic of where the camera should be placed, La Vigne writes.
Another flaw: Because they are in a fixed position, like surveillance cameras are, body-worn cameras can only capture the perspective of the officer and the direction in which that officer is facing. This means that crucial context such as the presence and actions of others outside the frame may be left out. These cameras rarely capture the “smoking gun” and aren’t likely to replace witness testimony. In many cases, they are little more than a complement to it at best.
2. They are on 24/7. We may be entering a “brave new world” Chuck Wexler of the Police Executive Researcher Forum (PERF) said last year. We’re entering a time when officer privacy may be compromised. Will the cameras be on while the officers are in the bathroom, or are eating lunch? As it stands now, officers have a fair amount of discretion in choosing when to turn their cameras on, and of course, this affects what they may or may not capture and how effective the footage may be.
Officers have all sorts of chances to, whether intentionally or not, to fail to activate their cameras in a timely fashion, La Vigne reports. In one instance, the Mesa, Ariz. police department found that giving officers discretion on this issue resulted in 42 percent reduction in video files generated each month. Sure, that saves data storage, but it also means police cameras may not be turned on in moments leading up to violent interactions. If police departments, along with the general public want a visual record of all interactions, from beginning to end, between citizens and cops, municipalities will need to mandate it.
When police in Denver began adding body cameras, chief Robert White said that people in this city “should know officers are being held accountable” and added that “the only officers who would have a problem with body cameras are bad officers.” So you’d think that by introducing body cams, bad cops will be weeded out. Well, yes and no.
Police unions are weighing in as to whether law enforcement agencies adopt these cameras. There’s an ongoing debate in Washington and elsewhere regarding proposed polices that would prevent the review of footage in order to identify misconduct. Also, guidance from the PERF says that the reviewing of footage should be restricted by supervisors to training purposes, a documented pattern of abuse or misconduct, or as a response to citizen complaints.
On CNN, Mark O’Mara, an attorney who represented George Zimmerman, argued that “people act better when they know they’re being watched,” but if there’s anything we’ve learned from Eric Garner’s death, it’s that police-citizen interactions can take a deadly turn, even when someone’s filming it with a mobile-phone, La Vigne writes.
While the grand jury did not charge Officer Daniel Pantaleo over Garner’s death, the video still had a huge impact, O’Mara writes.
“…without the video, the story wouldn’t be leading the headlines, and protesters wouldn’t have assembled to demand change. Also, the video of Garner’s arrest came from a cell phone, not a police body camera.”
He asks:
“Would Pantaleo have used a banned chokehold if he knew his supervisor would be reviewing video of the arrest? Probably not. A body camera might therefore have saved Garner’s life.”
4. If it’s a public record, the public has access to it. Yes, police are civil servants, and yes, their body cams are public equipment. And it’s true that the videos they record are technically public records. But don’t think this means the public will get immediate or unlimited access to the footage the cameras produce. La Vigne writes that while public demand for the release of video footage is high, meeting that demand is costly because it requires redacting (removing sections that aren’t for public consumption) prior to being released. It takes 17 hours to prepare a mere four minutes of footage, D.C. police chief Cathy Lanier told the Post.
Why go to all this trouble?
This costly and time-consuming process is necessary to protect the privacy of victims, innocent bystanders, and children. Solutions for this leave much to be desired. The Seattle Police Department posts footage on YouTube, but the feeds are blurred and soundless and because of this, their views are pretty low. And there is no automated redaction software, La Vigne writes. Until it arrives, police agencies may decide privacy trumps transparency.
5. Cameras will keep us safer. Isn’t that what they’re supposed to do? Senator Tim Scott, who has been pushing for body camera funding in Congress, says that if a picture’s worth a thousand words, then “a video is worth a thousand pictures and untold lives.” However, the jury’s is still out on this one. Research conducted with the Rialto police department did show that camera use is associated with lower rates of police use of force and citizen complaints, which may mean that cameras have a “civilizing effect” on officers and the public, The Huffington Post reports. And that’s certainly good news. However, all of this is going to take time, research, and — unfortunately, and perhaps tragically — additional trial and error in order to say whether indeed body cameras have a serious impact on the number of deaths at the hands of officers.
So perhaps this may be a small step, but it appears to be heading in the right direction.
Lastly, a word of advice to law enforcement: If someone says “I can’t breathe,” relax your grip.
