With videos, more eyes and more pressure are on police...

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http://www.dallasnews.com/news/local-news/20150730-with-videos-more-eyes-and-more-pressure-are-on-police.ece

They began as workaday interactions between the police and the public, often involving minor traffic stops in places such as Cincinnati; North Charleston, S.C.; and Waller County. But they swiftly escalated into violent encounters. And all were captured on video.

Those videos of white officers and black civilians have become ingrained in the nation’s consciousness — to many people, as evidence of bad police conduct. And while they represent just a tiny fraction of police behavior — videos that show respectful, peaceful interactions don’t make the news — they have begun to alter public views of police use of force and race relations, experts and police officials say.

Videos have provided “corroboration of what African-Americans have been saying for years,” said Paul Butler, a professor at Georgetown University Law School and a former prosecutor, who called them “the C-Span of the streets.”

On Thursday, the family of Samuel DuBose, an unarmed black man who was shot to death July 19 by a University of Cincinnati police officer, said the officer would never have been prosecuted if his actions had not been captured by the body camera he was wearing.

To the police, that poses a new challenge in trying to regain public confidence.

“Every time I think maybe we’re past this and we can start rebuilding, it seems another incident occurs that inflames public outrage,” said James Pasco, executive director of the Fraternal Order of Police. “Police officers literally have millions of contacts with citizens every day, and in the vast majority of those interactions there is no claim of wrongdoing, but that’s not news.”

Shifting opinion

Some polling bolsters such concerns. In a Gallup national survey conducted in June, 52 percent of people said they had “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in the police, down from 57 percent two years earlier and 64 percent in 2004.

In 2007, 37 percent of Americans had high confidence that their local police would treat blacks and whites equally, the Pew Research Center found, but last year, that was down to 30 percent.

At the same time, video may be changing the way prosecutors handle cases in which the police are accused of misconduct. Not only can video contradict an officer’s account of what happened, it can also create immense public pressure for action against officers.

Such was the case with fatal police shootings in North Charleston and Cincinnati, and with the arrest in Baltimore of Freddie Gray, who was fatally injured in police custody. In all three cases, prosecutors brought rare murder charges against officers within days — remarkable speed for a process that in the past could take weeks or months. Those swift actions have been applauded by many African-Americans.

But some prosecutors have raised concerns that the public outcry generated by video can also put pressure on prosecutors to file charges.

“We don’t want to rush to judgment simply because of what the video shows,” said Peter Weir, district attorney for Jefferson and Gilpin counties in Colorado, who says he believes police body cameras enhance public trust in the system.

Body cam questions

The proliferation of video has coincided with a paradox: Public views of the police have grown worse, yet experts say police use of force has probably been lower in the last few years than in generations. (There is, however, no precise accounting of the number of people killed by police officers each year.)

Polls show overwhelming public support for police body cameras — 92 percent in a New York Times survey taken this month. But law enforcement officials warn against unrealistic expectations of a simple transition that will provide a kind of impartial witness to every interaction.

Routine use of cameras raises multiple questions for police departments: how to pay for them, how much discretion to give officers in turning cameras on and off, how long to store recordings, when to make them public, and how to safeguard the privacy of people, such as crime victims, who might turn up on video.

“The benefit of being able to hold police accountable in many situations where they are now largely immune is probably worth the cost alone,” said Jonathan Simon, director of the Center for the Study of Law and Society at the University of California, Berkeley. “But even more so when you consider how often the same cameras will provide damning evidence against criminal suspects as well.”