Police Body Cameras.

Throughout the three months it took to resolve the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, US there has been lots of talk about forcing the police to wear video cameras on their uniforms to film everything they do while at work. Michael Brown's family have made it part of their campaign to make this a law and shares in Taser International who make the video cameras have soared. I however am not convinced.

Believe it or not due to my time as a traffic warden I am actually a fully trained and qualified law enforcement officer. Fair point it was only one law that I was enforcing and it wasn't a particularly important one. However the job did involve lots of wandering the streets in a semi-official uniform telling people news they didn't want to hear. Before that I used to steward at football/soccer games which involved effectively acting as a buffer between the public and law enforcement. In my time I have also been associated with activities of questionable legality and I've been arrested more times then I would care to remember.

If there's one thing I learnt from all that experience is that when it comes to the small, petty stuff justice comes more from a bit of common sense and discretion rather then a rigid enforcement of the letter of the law. It is much harder to use that discretion and common sense if every single thing you do is being filmed all the time.

A not particularly popular example given the circumstances comes from my football days. Throughout our training we were taught that our job was to politely and calmly defuse tension in order to avoid confrontation and violence. However once we actually started doing the job the first thing we were taught was basically how to subtly hit people in such a way as not to do them harm but to get your point across. This was very much less then lethal force and if you've seen a football match let alone a football crowd you would know that this is kind of expected. In fact it was often an important step in winning the respect needed to negotiate and defuse confrontations that would have led to much more serious violence. However if any of us officially admitted that was how the system worked we would expect to be sacked on the spot.

An example of how it can help the public comes from my time as a traffic warden. Without getting into tedious technical detail where I was working there were free parking bays where you could park for free but only for like a maximum of 2 hours. One day I was dealing with these bays when a guy who was either a plumber or an electrician came out and explained that he was working in a house nearby and had to keep going backwards and forwards to his van. However because it was an emergency call-out he hadn't been able to obtain the proper waiver so wanted to know if I could do him a favour.

I replied by explaining that I couldn't possibly ignore an offence but to be sure an offence had been committed I would have to carefully make note of all the vehicles in the bays and then come back in 2 hours. However if as I was doing this someone was talking to me like he was I might get confused and forget to note down a vehicle like that white van over there with a big picture of a tap on the side. He smiled, nodded and told me to get a proper job before walking off happy.

I've also benefited from this type of thing myself. What must've been 15 odd years ago now the police in London started using airport-style metal detectors at railway stations to cut down on the number of people carrying weapons like knives. One day I found myself at one of these checkpoints being forced to had over a bag to be searched knowing full well that it had a small (like 4g) amount of marijuana in it. The police officer carrying out the search immediately found the baggie of marijuana and held it in his hand while he continued to search the bag. When he'd finished he simply said; "No weapons there," put the marijuana back in my bag and let me continue on my way.

In that last example I'm pretty sure the police officer was committing a criminal offence by turning a blind eye and in the other two I was certainly committing a sackable offence. Therefore if we'd had a video camera recording our every move it would have much more likely that we would have enforced the letter of the law rather then the spirit of the law regardless of the consequences.

This strikes me as being a particular problem in Ferguson because the main complaint of racist oppression the protesters can manage is a system of financial penalties and asset seizures that mean if someone is seen by a police officer committing a crime such as driving an un-roadworthy vehicle they will not only be issued a ticket but also expected to pay the fine. In those circumstances I suspect that more video cameras will mean more tickets issued and more fines paid.

Of course one of the other main driving factors behind calls for the police to wear video cameras is that where they are used complaints against the police drop by about 90-95%. That's simply because people like those witnesses who claimed that Brown was shot in the back as he was running away learn not to make bullsh*t allegations of police brutality and racism when they know everything's been caught on camera.

13:45 on 30/11/14 (UK date).