Building back trust
The amount of outrage that has come from the Michael Brown shooting and jury decision not to indict the officer in Ferguson, Mo., is akin to the Los Angels riots in the 1990s.
Things didn’t get any better in the public’s perception of police when a 12-year-old boy in Cleveland, Ohio, was shot and killed by a rookie police officer when he was waving a toy gun around on a playground.
And things got even worse for the public’s perception of police when the 2009 story of an off-duty police officer chasing a robbery suspect was shot and killed by another officer resurfaced.
The common theme in each of these cases is that the victims were black and the officers are white. Racial tensions are high across the country, and things don’t look to be calming down anytime soon.
What could have prevented public opinion from going the direction that it did was video proof of what happened. We are aware that the surveillance video of the Cleveland shooting was released, and its angle makes it difficult to discern if the officer was in the right or wrong to shoot the child so quickly – a mere two seconds after pulling up in the police cruiser.
Earlier this week, President Obama announced a plan to provide funding to police departments so that they could equip themselves with body cameras – which, when reviewed, will show the officer’s perspective.
According to a fact sheet from the White House press secretary, “The President also proposes a three-year $263 million investment package that will increase use of body-worn cameras, expand training for law enforcement agencies (LEAs), add more resources for police department reform, and multiply the number of cities where Department of Justice facilitates community and local LEA engagement.”
Not only will the body cameras leave little doubt in what takes place on the scene, but it should keep officers behavior in check. We realize that most police officers are upstanding members of the community doing their job to protect the community – but we also realize that there are some officers who don’t always act appropriately and professionally.
It is our hope that the funding comes through and is readily available to every police department in the country and that the public’s trust in police is restored.