Recently, I had been assigned the task of writing an article that focused on applauding and advocating the application of police body cameras while mentoring at a program called the Korea Daily Leadership Camp. Needless to say, I hadn’t really injected my own opinion into the entirety of the article (with the exception being in the final thoughts of the article); the article was more of an objective representation of the positive outlook on the cameras – I had only provided the logic necessary to argue for it.
After having finished the article (with the help of my mentee at the camp, Johnny Jeon), I found myself to be slightly conflicted with the idea of police body cameras. If you read the article, you’d find that Johnny and I had written mostly about the positives, bringing little attention to more of the negatives and the reality aspect of the negatives surrounding the usage of the body cameras. I admit that I may have written the body cameras to be more positive and negative, however it isn’t completely true if I take in the reality of the situation. The body cameras right now, if applied, would have many loopholes in the system as there is no set terms for the use of them [the cameras]. There are currently many legal issues with the body cameras as well as they can infringe on the privacy rights of both civilians and police members (who are also citizens when off-duty). Nobody likes having their rights infringed upon and this is a major drawback – at least for now – for massive approval of the body cameras.
I mean, sure - the cameras would be a great way to monitor police activity and track their movements to prevent cases like Eric Garner and Michael Brown. However, the cameras could be like a double-edged sword (as my peer ChoHa would say) because the evidence found on the cameras could be used against citizens as well. But the main advantage of body cameras remain: accurate, solid, incontrovertible, and neutral evidence can be collected ultimately for the advantage of the justice system that is constructed within our government infrastructure.
I want to say that I believe that the majority of supporters of body cameras think that the application the devices in the police force is an ingenious idea that has no negatives besides an extremely expensive financial cost. However, that is a very narrow-minded view of the overall situation and I would be posing myself as a completely self-righteous person – which I’m really not. I realize that there are also people who also take a similar stance as I do as we recognize that there are both positives and negatives to the body cameras. After all, you can only improve by finding all of the negatives and finding a solution to them.
In actuality, I am in support of the body cameras. I personally think the devices are a great start on the way to fully solving issue of criminal injustice – another issue, alongside unlisted police homicide, that has been used as fuel for the body camera argument. However, the application of the devices is only a stepping stone to resolve series of issues surrounding the body cameras.
I found myself to also be affected by an interview that my mentor-mentee group had conducted with guest speaker Jeong Park, the Managing Editor of the Daily Bruin (UCLA). He pointed out that a better solution to the larger issue surrounding body cameras and police injustice in acts of homicide is that we “have to address the sentiment” and “addressing the rules.” The sentiment – I’m assuming a bit here – that Park was talking about is probably the concern of social inequity that still exists in the US. In that context, I took away from his opinion that we cannot consider the police to be above the law; the police force are enforcers of the law and that they must abide by it just as the citizens do. As a result, the police force should not have the ability to act on their own social values to create inequity in the communities that they had sworn to protect.
It would be nice if there was no inequity in the line of criminal justice, but that’s just being extremely wishful. The world would be filled with nothing but butterflies, unicorns, and rainbows if everything that we wished for waste to come true. However, the good news is that fighting social inequity isn’t a far-fetched dream. It isn’t impossible. Equal marriage rights were once joked to be impossible and to never be approved of in the United Stated, but it actually is a legalized motion in 2015. All that’s necessary is that people keep fighting against social inequity as they have just started to in recent news. As the issue gains more publicity, the solution will come closer into realization. All we need to do is take steps – even baby steps – to eventually resolve this issue.
Addendum: Maybe all we need is a “tipping point” to cause a drastic change against the issue of social inequity.