Cell Phone Cameras Can Guard the Guards

Technology is the best area to see the law of unintended consequences at work. For example, who would have thought that adding cameras to cell phones could help citizens keep an eye on the police? Yet in Los Angeles, three excellent examples of this have hit the media. “Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?” asked the Romans. Thanks to digital recording technology, everyone can guard the guards themselves.

Jill Serjeant at Reuters described the incidents, “One cell phone video shows Los Angeles police beating a man repeatedly in the face. Another shows a handcuffed, homeless man being blasted with pepper spray in the face. A third grainy video has campus police using a Taser stun gun on a student who refused to leave a Los Angeles university library.”

Now, to be fair to the police, there hasn’t been a definitive investigation that has determined anything one way or another. Los Angeles Police Chief William Bratton said, “I cannot make judgments based solely on videos or portions of videos.” Indeed, no one else should either. Context matters, sound recordings may compicate the matters, and there is the capacity to edit digital recordings. Moreover, the cops are asked to do an almost impossible job, protect the community while observing the civil liberties to which Americans are entitled. And their actions are second guessed by lawyers, reporters, and social workers who have the luxury of doing their analysis in climate controlled offices without time constraints. Cops have to make split second decisions in real time. Mistakes happen, and nothing has been proved yet.

That said, there is, in many precincts, a blue wall of silence. Good police officers, out of loyalty, will not cooperate with internal affairs, prosecutors or victims of police brutality to get the bad ones off the force. Until the ubiquitous cell phone camera, one had to rely on civilian review boards and the like, where it was often the victims’ word against the crooked cop’s. Now, police who are out of control may be filmed, and with pictures as evidence, there is a better shot at cleaning up a bad situation.

© Copyright 2006 by The Kensington Review, Jeff Myhre, PhD, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent. Produced using Fedora Linux.

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