Have you ever heard of the idea of body-mounted cameras on police officers? If not, David Brooks will introduce you to the idea that was discussed in an article from New York Times called “The Lost Language of Privacy”. In this article, the author addressed both the positive and negative aspects of this topic but mostly concerned with privacy invasion for Americans. Although that is a valid concern but on a larger scale, he neglected to focus greatly on the significant benefits that we all desire.
While it is accurate that everyone needs privacy but has that gone too far? David took privacy a little too far in the article and definitely neglected to mention that it is rarely for any of us has to deal with situation that involved police
…show more content…
officers. Being surrounded by cops is not an everyday thing that anybody is exposed to.
Therefore, discussing the fact that having cops in our lives, we tend to lose all privacy to a great length in the article can be extreme. It must be noted that we are not living with a cops in our homes 24/7. His point of view seems contradictory in the introduction versus the conclusion.
It is worth mentioned that the author pointed out a positive note by addressing that very often, cops are being called to mediate disputes or helping someone mentally and far less often that they come to a home for felony cases. On the other hand, he mentioned that police is invading someone’s privacy when he shows up at a house with a camera. However, that is completely expected as the individual that placed the phone call is already aware that their privacy is about to be invaded by a stranger. Hence, they are already mentally and physically prepared
…show more content…
for it by accepting that fact. Another justification made in the article to consider is the concern with cops’ cams insults an individual integrity. This further described as videos being posted on social media sites with naked crime or berserk drunk victims. Although this is a good point to consider but those behaviors or crimes should not have been committed to begin with if humiliation is a concern. You are right, Mr. Brooks, "Cop-cams strike a blow for truth," but most importantly they also strike a blow for public safety and a reduction of the epidemic of poorly-trained, white police officers murdering citizens of color for, at best, minor violations. You are mistaken to consider this issue as involving privacy at all since the police are "public servants" who are sworn to "serve and protect" the public. If it takes making their behavior public in order for them to be more "humane," then we will all be safer and more "trusting." "When a police officer is wearing a camera, the contact between an officer and a civilian is less likely to be like intimate friendship and more likely to be oppositional and transactional." The argument does not present a balance between facts and inferences as he briefly touched the opposition point of views in the introduction but only developed the privacy in the body of the article.
"Cop-cams strike a blow for truth, but they strike a blow against relationships. Society will be more open and transparent, but less humane and trusting." This is absolutely true. One of his concerns is that society will be less humane due to the transparent of reality with cops’ cams. However, would you rather have that and know that you are safe or cops violated his authority to mistreat a citizen or worst, commit a crime themselves? So as the ground-level policies of cameras are being implement, state and federal legislation should be enacted in tandem as a result, for the very reasons Brooks offers in this column. Law makers must be urged to pass use and leak laws, making it a felony to publicly leak and post "cop cam" footage that has been obtained by law enforcement during the regular course of active duty. This should be a punishable offense, the consequences should be time spent in jail. In a day and age where we click away our privacy in the most nonchalant manner and justice rarely meted out when it's violated in the most obscene way, it is a moral imperative that we take legislative measures to enforce and protect what privacy we have
left. On the other hand, Mr. Brooks, sunlight is the best disinfectant, and the police and their love of shooting first and asking questions later needs to be walked away from the Blue Wall of Police Silence, Violence and Corruption. What better way to stop police criminals from committing unprovoked manslaughter, murder and mayhem in the community and encouraging them to rejoin society. Police can still joke around when they're being filmed. Police can still exercise individual judgment when they're being filmed. Police can still be lenient when they're being filmed. Police can even still be violent, racist, bullying thugs and murderers when they're being filmed, but at least they'll be a public record of that behavior to sort out the bad from the good. Keep in mind that the police are public employees, paid for by public dollars and employed to protect and serve the public. Police cameras will serve the public where the police have failed to serve the public and instead have served their own paranoia, racism, narcissism and metastasized egos. Police cameras are a stroke of modern justice against police authoritarianism.
Our current society is very much like Big Brother and 1984. The Federal government are not watching us through a telescreen but they are watching and going through our things. I know this because there is a Ted Talk that I watched about privacy and how the FBI goes through our emails, messages… etc, without our permission. To sum that up, in the article “Long Beach Police to Use 400 Cameras Citywide to Fight Crime,” in paragraphs 2 and 3 says that “Chief McDonnell is turning more than 400 cameras citywide as a solution to stop crime,... McDonnell has set up to tap into hundreds of privately owned cameras” to watch over the city and what goes around. Big Brother used telescreens to watch and hear everything, Chief McDonnell uses cameras to see everything that’s going on. My 4th teacher would most likely disagree with me, he is a LB police officer, so he knows having cameras to watch over the city is only making the city a better/ safer place.
Although they can be easily tracked, people overlook the invasion of privacy possibility because of the convenience they bring to every day life. Systems like OnStar installed in cars have made the tracking of stolen cars practically effortless. Similar tools are being used by law enforcement, Penenberg stated “cell phones have become the digital equivalent of Hansel and Gretel’s bread crumbs” (472). He then goes on to discuss how in Britain in 1996, authorities installed 300 cameras in East London. Although this didn’t affect the terrorism, it did affect the crime rate which fell 30 percent after the cameras were put into place. Penenberg closes his essay by mentioning that the surveillance is not only used to watch the citizens but also for citizens to keep an eye on the government. Through his organization, relevant information, and professional tone, Penenberg creates an effective
However, protection of our citizen’s privacy is of utmost importance. Police and other law enforcement agencies have to learn to work with and around the laws in order to get their job done.
One of the sources used to disprove that body camera isn’t the answer includes Jamelle Bouie article, Keeping the Police honest. Mr. Bouie is the chief political correspondent at Slate who graduated from the University of Virginia with a political and social thought degree (Tumblr.com). His work consists of issues relating to national politics, public policies and racial inequality. His work has also been published in Slate online magazine, the New Yorker, the Washington Post and TIME Magazine (Tumblr.com). Slate is an online magazine that post about the news, politics, business, technology and culture (slate.com). In Jamelle article, Keeping the Police honest he talks about incidents where police officers were being recorded and took excessive
Police officers with their body cameras: a history and back ground paper to answer the question if should all police officers wear body cameras, it is important to first look at the history and back ground of the topic. According to article of Journal of quantitative criminology, writers Ariel, Farrar, Sutherland, Body cameras have been given a new eye opener to people about the excessive use of force against their community members. Arial, Farrar, and Sutherland in the article state “The effect of police body warn cameras on use of force and citizens’ complaints against the police: A randomize controlled trial” describe their observation as:
“Keeping the videos hidden will only heighten mistrust and spur conspiracy theories about what they really show”. Law enforcement also have confidence in body cameras, diminishing police brutality and crime, by exposing all types of misconduct. They would minimize environments where victims feel powerless and belittled when up against an officer. “Body cams can not only record the entire context of a police encounter, but are invaluable in assessing the demeanor of victims, witnesses, and suspects,” said Smith. The cameras will help collect evidence of wrongdoers in any aspect.
If misused, body-cameras can be a violation of privacy. In order to prevent this, proper legislation needs to be enacted in order to ensure privacy rights are protected. The only policy related document regarding police body cameras is the “Guidance for the use of body-worn cameras by law enforcement authorities” which is issued by the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada. This document discusses that rules should not be enforced only by local police departments, but for Canada as a whole. As this is the only document related to police body cameras, it is undoubtable that there needs to be serious legislation created. As it is suggested that body cameras pose as a risk for privacy rights, it is evident in order to implement them effectively, there needs to be regulation constructed. Body cameras can be an effective and useful tool, but without legislation, they can cause problems. Bruce Chapman, president of the Police Association of Ontario expresses, “We want to do it right. We don’t want to do it fast” when asked about the implementation of body cameras. While body cameras, are important to have in today's society, it is also dire to have it done properly. By enforcing strict guidelines, and documents addressing body camera legislation, it will ensure the process is done correctly. In order to implement body cameras properly, privacy rights need to be assessed. This process takes time, and proves body cameras need to be implemented at a pace legislation can follow. Thomas K. Bud, discusses the worry that privacy will be violated with body cameras. Factors such as facial recognition, citizen consent of recording, and violations of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms all pose as risks. While legislation has not matched their guidelines with modern technology, it proves how important it is to create new documents, in order for changes to be made. Therefore body
There have been lots of modern technologies introduced in the United States of America to assist law enforcement agencies with crime prevention. But the use of body-worn cameras by police personnel brings about many unanswered questions and debate. Rising questions about the use of body cam are from concern citizens and law enforcement personnel. In this present day America, the use body cameras by all law enforcement personnel and agencies are one of the controversial topics being discussed on a daily base. Body worn cameras were adopted due to the alleged police brutality cases: for instance, the case of Michael Brown, an African-American who was shot and killed by a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri, on August 2014, Eric Garner died as a result of being put in a chokehold by a New York police officer, and John Crawford, shot and killed by a police officer at a Walmart in Beavercreek, Ohio.
Since their inception, police body cameras have been a controversial topic as many do not agree on their effectiveness and legality. To the trained eye, body cameras clearly have no negatives other than the sheer cost of their implementation. Some people, nonetheless, do believe that it is an encroachment of privacy for police to record private and/or public interactions even though it is purely legal. While that may be seen as a negative, it is wholly subjective and must be completely ignored when considering the factual analysis of police body camera use that is necessary to verify their validity. When only taking fact into account, there is no way to deny the nearly infinite benefits of body cameras.
... problems in the community. Mateescu, Rosenblat, and Boyd state this concern perfectly by bringing up, “embarrassing dashcam video footage of the arrests or traffic stops of naked women, athletes, and celebrities are sometimes disseminated online, and the same privacy concerns exist about the potential for body-camera footage to be consumed as public entertainment”. The relevant data collected from the study will be used to determine if the null hypothesis of “body-cameras have no effect on a subjects willingness to communicate with the police” is true or if the hypothesis of “the use of body-worn cameras reduce the likelihood that an individual would be willing to communicate with police”. This will be done by giving the individual questions numerical data points and calculating them in order to determine the relevant information in association with the hypothesis.
Police officers should be required to wear body cameras because it will build a trust between law enforcement and the community, it will decrease the amount of complaints against police officers, and lastly it will decrease the amount of police abuse of authority. In addition, an officer is also more likely to behave in a more appropriate manner that follows standard operating procedures when encountering a civilian. “A 2013 report by the Department of Justice found that officers and civilians acted in a more positive manner when they were aware that a camera was present” (Griggs, Brandon). Critics claim that the use of body cameras is invasive of the officers and civilians privacy.
In “Body Cameras Will Stop Police Brutality.” the author Adam Schiff announces, “With half of the police department wearing cameras recording each interaction with the public, the department experienced an 88 percent reduction in complaints against officers.” This statement shows protecting the officers because this shows the cameras did something to deter the people who made false accusations against the police officers because their was evidence. Schiff also acknowledges that, “…shifts without cameras experienced twice as many use-of-force incidents as shifts using the cameras.” The fact that the use of excessive force was cut in half due to cameras shows that the citizens are benefiting due to this because the officers knew that it wouldn’t be their word against a civilian and the body cameras hold them accountable and makes them believe that they have to answer to the law as
Warrant: This is true because concerns that excessive recording with body-worn cameras may damage the relationships officers have developed with the community and hinder the openness of their community policing interactions. Some police executives fear, that people will be less likely to come forward to share information if they know their conversation is going to be recorded, particularly in high-crime neighborhoods where residents might be subject to retaliation if they are seen as cooperating with police, according to PERF.
Video cameras are being deployed around the nation to help with crime solving, but some people are concerned about their privacy. Having cameras to monitor public areas have shown to be useful in situations such as identifying the bombers of the Boston marathon in early 2013. There have also been issues with these cameras however, as people are concerned they are too invasive of their privacy and have been misused by police officers in the past. Some people want to find a balance in using cameras in public so that they can continue to help with crime solving while making sure they are not too invasive and are properly used.
The increased presence of surveillance cameras is almost compared to George Orwell’s novel from 1984, where he imagined a future in which people would be monitored and controlled by the government. One question that needs to be asked is: do the benefits of law enforcement security cameras outweigh the negative side to it? Although the invasion of privacy is a serious argument against law enforcement cameras, it should be seen as a valuable tool to help fight crime. As long as surveillance cameras are in public places and not in people's homes, privacy advocates should not be concerned. There are many benefits to having law enforcement security cameras, which people take for granted, and are quick to point out the negative.