Watching Out for Number One

 

After numerous high profile cases of questionable use of deadly force by the police in the past few years, the cry has gone up from the public and from politicians for more widespread use of police body cameras to augment the already prevalent use of dashboard cameras in police cars. The technology does not present a difficulty since data storage capacities have skyrocketed and battery strength in a compact device has increased enough to allow recording over an eight hour shift. The difficulty is with how human beings implement the technology and whether the technology will improve how police interact with citizens.

 

There is evidence that when police wear body cameras the incidences of police violence and abuse of authority declines. That is, the incidences decline when a rigorous protocol for the use of the body cameras is instituted and enforced by civil authorities and police management. In some places, the police have body cameras but their use is left too much up to individual officers, and that naturally leads to the officers recording only the encounters that they calculate will make them look good. A lax protocol like that amounts to none at all. The American Civil Liberties Union has put out an excellent article detailing the best ways to deploy police body cameras and the drawbacks their use may entail.
Barney Miller cast 1974
1974 cast photo from the television series Barney Miller. Clockwise from left: Ron Glass (Ron Harris), Jack Soo (Nick Yemana), Hal Linden (Barney Miller), Max Gail (“Wojo” Wojciehowicz), Abe Vigoda (Phil Fish) (back toward camera). The show took place in the fictional 12th Precinct in Greenwich Village, New York City. Over the years since its initial airing in the 1970s, police have praised the show as a more realistic portrayal of day to day police work than many higher octane TV shows and movies.

 

It’s not surprising that police behave better when they know they’re being watched. The question is why they bear watching. Certainly police work isn’t like warehouse work; police work is often stressful, with the ever present possibility of a dangerous encounter, and by its nature the work involves dealing with other people every day in an environment that can be hostile. That’s the job they volunteered to do. No one drafted them. The fact that it’s not relatively placid like warehouse work is therefore no excuse for police officers acting like dangerous loose cannons when the going gets tough, and definitely not when they feel like going off on someone for some piddling reason that they will later claim “made them fear for their life”. As the saying goes, you knew the job was dangerous when you took it.

 

Fort Apache Police Precinct, 2007
The former 41st Precinct Station House at 1086 Simpson Street in Foxhurst, The Bronx, New York, in the summer of 2007. The building was formerly known as “Fort Apache” due to the severe crime problem in the South Bronx; photo by Bigtimepeace.

The real problem is lack of accountability for officers who behave criminally, and a police culture that from academy training onward instills an “Us vs. Them” mentality. Body cameras are all well and good, and as a purely technological answer to the problem they are excellent, providing privacy issues for both the officers and the public are addressed. But body cameras will take the solution only halfway, if that. Until the public demands that criminal police officers face the kind of punitive and fiscal penalties everyone else in society must face, we’ll continue to see the same violent, bullying behavior from some cops. Paid administrative leave (a paid vacation for being a jerk!) and penalizing the taxpayers with a fine is not going to do it. How could anyone in their right mind, excepting a police union boss, expect otherwise?

The matter of police culture is harder to address. It starts with training and continues with taking away all the militaristic toys police departments have acquired in the past forty years, and most of that in the past twenty. No, you are not a soldier on garrison duty in a hostile foreign country. You are a police officer – a peace officer, if you will – at home amongst your fellow citizens, friends, and neighbors, vile as some of them may seem to your law abiding heart. Playing dress up in GI Joe gear with full body armor and intimidating your fellow citizens with armored personnel carriers and other cool stuff should not be part of the job description. Changing that macho police culture won’t happen, however, until the public stops living in fear of every little thing, handing over far too much authority, money, and blind obedience to a group of men and women meant to be our servants and not our masters, some of whom unfortunately respond to the situation by puffing themselves up with arrogance and steroids, looking and acting like goons any sensible person would run away from, rather than the friendly cop on the beat, a fellow citizen instead of an overseer.
― Techly

 

 

How Dry I Am

 

Last Friday the Justice Department released their report on abuses committed by the Chicago police. At a news conference held by US Attorney General Loretta Lynch, Chicago Mayor Rahm “#%*@!” Emanuel, and Chicago Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson, Emanuel said he found the report “sobering.” Are we to infer from his remark that he was smashed out of his gourd when he allegedly colluded with the Chicago Police Department to suppress the dashcam video of the 2014 Laquan McDonald shooting while he sought re-election in 2015?

Grawlix
Grawlix within a speech bubble,
by Myresa Hurst.

Police brutality has never been a secret to poor and minority communities in this country. A few things have changed in the last generation, however, to bring that brutality up front where the larger community can no longer ignore it. Foremost is the prevalence of cell phone cameras which allow citizens to document abuse as it happens. While the existence of photographic evidence seems to have had little effect in seeing that abusive police actually get jail time, it has had the effect of waking up the populace to the abuse.

Secondly is the “Us vs. Them” culture which has taken hold in police departments across the country. Police often behave now as if they are soldiers in an occupying army rather than civil servants pledged to “Protect and Serve” their fellow citizens. They shoot first and ask questions later, if at all, and do so with impunity because they know their union and the rest of the police department “has their back.” The local district attorney will file charges and investigate police brutality with reluctance because he or she needs the daily cooperation of the police in resolving other cases on the docket.


Rahm Emanuel, official photo portrait color
Infamously foul-mouthed
Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel

A third and often overlooked factor is steroid use by some cops. Steroids can lead to hostility, hyper-aggressiveness, and poor judgment, all of which are prominent factors in police abusing their authority. Instead of defusing a situation, a cop on steroids is just as likely to escalate it by being confrontational and by issuing impatient demands for a suspect to obey orders, however irrational and impetuous.

There are ways to confront and remedy at least some police misconduct other than the standard police department method of placing an officer on administrative leave – a paid vacation – while they conduct an internal investigation until they hope everything blows over and everyone has forgotten about the incident in question, at which point the officer and the department can return to business as usual. It is police culture that is at the root of the problem, and until we address that, we should understand that adjudicating individual incidents of police brutality is merely playing at whack-a-mole. Along with Mayor Rahm “&+#!!” Emanuel, we need to sober up and hold cops accountable if we expect them to behave with accountability. Every good parent understands this principle.
― Ed.