By
Tom McKay
Police
brutality in the United States is out of control. Last month in Baltimore, a
concerned stranger paid $15,000 to bail 25-year-old Calvin Wilkes and two
others out of jail after witnessing an arrest she described as "one of the
worst things I've ever seen" — beating one suspect until he bled from the
mouth after the trio caused a public disturbance.
In
Knoxville, Tenn., a sheriff's deputy was photographed choking a college student
until he passed out while he was being placed in handcuffs. In Troy, N.Y., cops
burst into a bar and began beating people after getting into an argument with a
patron.
Police
brutality can be found anywhere, not just in big cities or towns in the Deep
South. Videos of police harassment and misconduct abound on the Internet, yet
officers seem largely free to act above the law. In 2011, the Justice
Department investigated 17 police departments simultaneously, "more than
anytime in the division's history." An estimated 84% of people in 2008 who
had contact with police and experienced force or were threatened with force
thought police were acting improperly.
There's
a solution: Make sure every incidence of contact between police officers and
civilians is well documented. In Rialto, Calif., all 70 officers were required
to wear small cameras while on duty in a controlled study.
The
results were astounding: Complaints against officers fell by 88% and use of
force plunged by 60%. The implications are unavoidable — when officers know
they will be held accountable for misconduct, they simply don't act improperly.
And citizens are more amenable to policing, with improper objections withdrawn
and situations escalating less often.
While
the Orwellian nature of the cameras didn't go unnoticed, even the Southern
California ACLU said that with proper controls, the gains in accountability
outweighed privacy concerns.
It's
not the only way to increase police accountability. Cops in Grenada, for example,
all have department Twitter handles sewn onto their uniforms.
Rialto's
experiment has already been so revolutionary that full-scale experiments are on
the way in England and Wales, and similar successes have been noted in
Chesapeake, Va. The first major department to roll out the cameras may be the
scandal-plagued New Orleans Police Department, and others are soon to follow.
