Tag: Ferguson

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Accountability crime and punishment government transparency responsibility

Ferguson Finally Wins

Ferguson, body camera, lapel camera, video, vote, election, police

Yesterday, on the 49th anniversary of Martin Luther King’s assassination,* voters in Ferguson, Missouri, passed a charter amendment requiring police to wear body cameras while on duty. The measure also provides the public access to that footage, along with reasonable rules about privacy.

In August 2014, Ferguson came to the nation’s attention — and the world’s — when a black resident was shot and killed by a white policeman. In the aftermath, the nation witnessed a militarized police response to senseless riots that destroyed 17 local businesses. 

People there and across the country jumped to fact-​free conclusions about who was at fault: the deceased Michael Brown or the policeman, Officer Darren Wilson. 

“If there’s one thing that I think everybody in Ferguson would agree on, it’s that we’d like to have a video of what happened on Canfield Drive back in August of 2014,” remarked ballot measure proponent Nick Kasoff.** “If we had that, Ferguson wouldn’t be a hashtag. It would be just another quiet suburb of St. Louis.”

Police began wearing body cameras after the Michael Brown shooting, and the consent decree the city reached with the Department of Justice set some useful parameters. But the rules in the just-​enacted charter amendment go much further to guarantee the public access to the video. 

Not to mention that just this week, Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced a review of all such consent decrees nationwide. Without yesterday’s victory at the ballot box, the police cams policy might simply be abandoned.

Not now. The voters have spoken, 71 to 29 percent.

Spurred by Ferguson, there’s been a ton of talk about reforming criminal justice in recent years. But I like action a whole lot better.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* Yesterday also reminds me of 1984, George Orwell’s classic dystopian novel, because the book’s protagonist Winston Smith begins his diary on April 4, 1984.

It’s my favorite book, and has enjoyed quite a surge in sales since last November’s election. Yesterday, the movie was shown in nearly 200 theaters in the U.S., the U.K., Canada, Croatia and Sweden. 

** Nick Kasoff led the six-​resident committee that drafted and petitioned the measure onto the city ballot, with assistance from Liberty Initiative Fund (LIFe). Regular readers may remember that LIFe is where I have my day job — and that without contributions like yours, fewer successful measures like this Ferguson body camera initiative get off the ground.

 

More on the issue

Townhall: “Finding Ferguson”

Townhall: “First Step for Ferguson”

USA Today: “Ferguson residents push for body cameras”

Townhall: “The Citizens Are In Session”

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Accountability crime and punishment government transparency Popular responsibility

Five for Ferguson

Ferguson, Michael Brown, body camera, police, lapel camera, rights, accountability, abuse

Michael Brown is dead. No video can bring him back.

As the world remembers, Brown was the unarmed 18-​year-​old black man killed in a violent 2014 altercation with Officer Darren Wilson, who is white — making Ferguson, Missouri, famous.

Or rather, infamous.

With little information, folks quickly picked sides. Some claimed Brown was gunned down in cold blood with his hands up, yelling, “Don’t shoot.” After seeing footage from a convenience store surveillance camera, which showed Brown seeming to strong-​arm an employee and steal cigarillos* mere minutes before the fatal police encounter, others placed the blame on Brown.

Subsequent rioting left dozens injured, seventeen businesses torched and millions in property damage. Meanwhile, President Obama’s Department of Justice found Officer Wilson’s actions justified.

However, had Wilson been equipped with a lapel camera, that footage would have enhanced finding justice. Moreover, the knowledge that the public could see the truth of what happened might have prevented the riots and recriminations.

More information is better.

That’s why the best news of all is this: on April 4, three weeks from today, the people of Ferguson will vote on The Public Video Recording Accountability Amendment to Ferguson’s City Charter. The charter amendment mandates that officers wear lapel cameras while on duty and sets sensible rules for allowing maximum public access.

The campaign needs your help to alert Ferguson voters about the election by mailing information on the ballot measure. For instance, studies demonstrate that not only do police behave better when wearing cameras, but so do the citizens with whom they interact.

Would you give five dollars for Ferguson?

Please help bring a better day for justice and transparency.

It’s Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* Over the weekend, more video surfaced from the convenience store as part of a documentary entitled, “Stranger Fruit,” which suggested Michael Brown had made a drug deal at the store, and not stolen anything. A St. Louis County prosecutor disputed the filmmaker’s interpretation, and released more footage.

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crime and punishment ideological culture

Against Protester Brutality

Most people agree about the wrongness of police brutality, if not about whether a particular police action is an example of it.

But what about protester brutality? Again, most oppose it. Still, skeptics on this point have been particularly loud and insistent lately. Some even suggest (or scream) that violence against the innocent is fully justified if that’s what it takes to protest injustice.

But the existence of police brutality does not justify protester brutality, protester vandalism, protester indifference-​to-​evidence, or any other violence or irrationality.

The grand jurors in Ferguson were not dealing with injustice in the abstract, but with a particular incident and the relevant evidence. They were not asked to determine whether police ever wrongly shoot or kill, but whether there was evidence that a particular officer had done so, enough to justify a trial. Even assuming legitimate grounds to disagree with their conclusion, too many commenters declaim as if the evidence is irrelevant and the jurors’ motives not possibly honest. The man had to be indicted regardless.

Of course, had Officer Wilson been tried, on this assumed-​guilty approach only one outcome would have then been deemed acceptable, regardless of evidence: conviction. Absent that conviction, violence against the innocent would still have been rationalized.

No injustice is properly fought by either sweeping aside facts or by attacking the innocent in the name of protecting the innocent. If we ignore the requirements of justice in order to advance a Cause, how can that Cause be justice?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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links

Townhall: First Step for Ferguson

On Townhall this weekend, a frank and honest discussion about … what’s really behind the problem in Ferguson.

It isn’t race.

The title refers to a first step at some resolution of the underlying problem, mentioned in Friday’s Common Sense and Saturday’s featured video.

Click on over to Townhall for where those on the left (Eric Holder) and right (Bill O’Reailly) go wrong about the blame for the Ferguson debacle. Come back here to load up on information.

Categories
Accountability crime and punishment government transparency

Candid Cameras for Cops

Should policemen be required to wear cameras?

Some already do. The rationale for the proposal is this: when police wear cameras that — with a few carefully defined exceptions — must be on whenever officers are on the job, they do their jobs better.

With respect to the furor in Ferguson, Missouri, a big question is what exactly happened there the day a cop shot and killed Michael Brown.

Officer Darren Wilson claims self-​defense; he and eyewitnesses disagree about details.

It would have been helpful to have video of what happened. (We do have video of an immediately preceding incident: of Brown, a large man, robbing cigars from a local store and shoving the protesting store owner, a much smaller man.)

Or consider another case I’ve discussed, that of Eric Garner, the New York City cigarette seller killed by an officer’s chokehold despite Garner’s repeated insistence that he couldn’t breathe. That death was recorded on a bystander’s cell phone. What if it hadn’t been? The shock has spurred renewed calls to begin outfitting NYPD with cameras.

But there’s no reason to limit pilot programs to the Big Apple.

Some police work, like meetings with confidential informants, cannot be recorded without making the work impossible. But cops who are on the beat, entering a home, stopping motorists and the like should be recorded while doing these things. With appropriate safeguards against “malfunction,” the cameras could both prevent unnecessary violence and support officers who are in fact justified in using deadly force.

Until the advent of universal peace and harmony, let’s give the cameras a try.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
crime and punishment media and media people

Absence of Talk

Yesterday morning, Paul Waldman of the Washington Post wondered why libertarians and limited government conservatives weren’t all over the Ferguson riot suppression, and the police shooting that sparked the whole fracas. He recognized that Reason magazine’s website has covered it, but, he noted, “the politicians and conservative media figures who claim to be the most fervent advocates of individual freedom and to care the most about misuse of government power have been silent.”

One might be tempted to conclude they believe that when somebody’s grandson has to pay taxes on their inheritance, it’s a horrifying injustice that demands redress, but when somebody else’s grandson gets shot walking down the street, that’s just how things go sometimes.

Or maybe one should yield, instead, to the temptation to wait and see what they say when they say it. Rep. Justin Amash tweeted about it later in the day. But Waldman got his licks and innuendo in first.

The whole thing smacks of bad government to me — deadly misgovernment — but I can understand why many folks might want to reserve judgment.

Weighing on the wait-​and-​comment-​later side of this particular debate, it is worth acknowledging that the information so far has been awfully confusing. Especially since the Ferguson government has been cracking down on reporting and video recording, as well as being not very forthcoming about the initial shooting or the autopsy.*

The 24-​hour news cycle is bad enough. The 24-​hour commentary/​reaction cycle is doubly daunting. Forgive me if I don’t have anything profound to say yet. I’m sure, when the facts become clearer, at least I will make my thoughts known.

Isn’t it too early to make comments about comments not made?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* Those are good reasons to be protesting in Ferguson. There are no good reasons for looting Ferguson businesses.