A “power struggle” among police, the media and the public is developing as cameras are increasingly being used to record police actions.
“Photography is power. What we’re seeing is a power struggle,” Jay Stanley, senior analyst at the American Civil Liberties Union, said Wednesday at the “In the Public Eye: Police, Cameras and the Constitution” panel discussion at the Newseum.
Cameras are being used by both law enforcement and the communities they serve. Body cameras are being added to police uniforms as part of President Obama’s 21st Century Policing initiative, while bystanders frequently are capturing video of police interactions on their smartphones.
Roberto Villasenor, police chief in Tucson, Ariz., who was streamed live into the session, said “video is not a panacea” to the recent problems between authorities and their communities.
While the other panelists agreed, all were torn about when and how the cameras should be used. And what their effect would be.
For police, concerns ranged from when the officers should turn their cameras on, to whether officers should be able to view the footage before they write their report.
Terrance Gainer, former chief of the U.S. Capitol Police, said many officers were concerned that they could get in trouble for being lenient on minor rule-breakers if their higher-ups saw film of them dismissing minor incidents.
Yet more policemen are worried that as the demand for body cameras increases, it could be taken as an admission of guilt if an officer forgets to turn on his camera. That could hold especially true in violent, quickly unfolded confrontations that don’t allow time to turn on the camera.
Police departments are especially concerned with when, and in what capacity, the footage should be released to the public.
“Everyone behaves a little bit better when they know they are being recorded,” Villasenor said.
Some states, such as Minnesota and Oregon, make all police footage available to the public. Other states allow none to be seen. This wide discrepancy sparked yet another dispute over what interactions with the public, from child abuse to grisly accidents, should be recorded and made available for public consumption.
“By and large, of those tens of thousands of interactions that the law enforcement has with the press, they all come out well,” Gainer said.
Some law enforcement officials have tried body cameras and have seen that there are benefits to the recordings.
“Many police officers have embraced cameras …realizing that in many cases it helps police officers having to deal with false accusations,” Stanley said.
Another issue is how much media time contentious police-civilian interactions receive and whether body cameras would help improve the police image with the public.
“When dog bites man it’s not news. When man bites dog it’s news,” said Villasenor, a member of Obama’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing. “[The media] is shaping the perspective that people have of law enforcement by the abnormal incidents that occur. [The media] is showing a select view that is tainting the perspective of policing. It’s upsetting for us.”
But the panel’s media representative, Mickey Osterreicher, general counsel of the National Press Photographers Association, said don’t kill the messenger.
“[Everyone says] let’s shoot the messenger. Let’s blame the media for the problem that the police is having,” Osterreciher said.
The debate over cameras soared after the shooting of Michael Brown by a police officer in Ferguson, Mo., almost a year ago. Since then, the death of Eric Green in New York and the shooting of Walter Scott in South Carolina have increased tensions between officers and their communities. The year of hostility culminated in the recent Baltimore riots, followed by the overly aggressive Texas officer who forcefully pushed and subdued a 14-year-old black girl wearing a bikini at a pool party.
It was the uncertainty about Brown’s cause of death due to lack of video evidence, combined with the evidence provided in the deaths of Green and Scott by videos taken by civilians, that encouraged the formation of Obama’s task force. One goal of the panel is to have 20 million cameras in circulation.
Delroy Burton, chairman of the D.C. Police Union, said the conflict between lower-income communities and their police departments extend past media portrayals and simple camera recordings.
“The distrust goes back to Jim Crow. It doesn’t matter if the police force is all black and the community is all black, the historical mistrust is there and it is all viewed through that lens,” Burten said.
Yet another struggle for power arises when trying to determine the rights of citizens who are holding cameras, so called “civilian journalists,” and how the police should handle them.
When it comes to filming, Villasenor said “everyone always thinks that everyone is out to get them.” That tends to increase the paranoia and defensiveness of officers around those who are recording, both passersby and journalists.
As Cal Perry, moderator of the “Voice of America” said, Tthe Constitution was never written with the kind of technology we have at our hands today.”
