By
James Poulos.
For
critics of police misconduct looking for an easy fix, one solution towers above
the rest: affix video cameras to cops. The idea is picking up steam in
California, where top officials are showing increased interest.
Yet
this also is a time when concerns about data harvesting and government
surveillance are also increasing. So questions remain as to whether augmenting
oversight with “foolproof” technology contributes to a frame of mind that
doesn’t serve civil liberties as much as advocates might hope.
California’s
on-body camera experiment is already underway in Los Angeles. As the Los
Angeles Times reports, Police commissioner Steve Soboroff led the push, raising
$1 million for an effort expected to culminate in some 600 body cams to be used
across the LAPD. But with Police Chief Charlie Beck describing the cameras as
“the future of policing,” future growth seems assured, barring some unexpected
mishap.
Who,
indeed, wants to be seen taking a stand against the future — especially the
future of public safety? In San Diego, the Times points out, politicians are
lining up to endorse the rosy view. There, the city council has allocated twice
Los Angeles’ planned spend, with city officials joining the incoming and
outgoing chief of police in embracing cop cams.
Southern
California’s swell of institutional support is a strong indication of one
powerful trend — government enthusiasm toward enlisting technology in pursuit
of public safety perfection. The case for videocams on police pitches a dual
rationale that seems to benefit both those who govern and those who are
governed. Citizens get a body of evidence in the event of officer misconduct.
And officers — and departments — get protection from adverse verdicts and
costly settlements in litigation surrounding alleged abuse.
What’s
missing from that balanced equation, however, is a reckoning with the broader
implications of perpetual police surveillance. The logic behind ubiquitous
officer-mounted video does not stop with miniature automated camcorders.
Wired
The
degree to which cops are “wired” is limited only by the state of the
technological art. The New York City Police Department predictably now is
testing Google Glass for use on the streets. The “future of policing” permitted
by technology is a future where police operations work more and more like
military ones — with officers back at headquarters closely monitoring and
directing cops in the field, using real-time, first-person video and
information.
For
civil liberties advocates concerned about what The Washington Post’s Radley
Balko calls “the rise of the warrior cop,” that’s not exactly a reason for
optimism. So long as no-knock raids, aggressive SWAT techniques, and
unreasonable or warrantless searches flourish under judicial protection,
invasive and violent policing can become the norm, no matter how
well-documented.
It’s
a process that can be accelerated by Americans’ frequent sense that a muscular,
active police force is a sign of social and political progress, and by the
pipeline that so often leads prosecuting attorneys “who get results” to seek
and gain higher political office.
Yet
the main argument against the trend set by on-body police cameras fails to
think very far ahead. The American Civil Liberties Union, for instance, which
generally accepts the move toward cop cams, focuses almost entirely on ensuring
that cameras cannot be edited or turned off by the cops who wear them.
Yet
many Americans are very uncomfortable with the idea of “always-on” webcams
embedded in their video game consoles. Isn’t the always-on issue even more
salient when it’s an entire police force equipped in that way?
Not
only is the bodycam trend apt to feed — and increase — the huge federal and
other government appetite for monitoring and databasing. It’s also likely to
atrophy our shared standards of individual responsibility, neighborhood trust
and civic freedom.
In
a world where every interaction with an officer is monitored, recorded,
overseen and archived, our relationship to power is fundamentally changed —
even if the kind of extralegal abuse associated with high-profile litigation
against police departments disappears.
Now
at the forefront of the tech revolution in policing, California’s often
anti-establishmentarian citizens have a unique opportunity to question whether
“the system” should forever be put between every private person and every law
enforcement official.