In response to another occurrence of police brutality, body cameras should be implemented even more by police departments.
The video of a Spring Valley student being assaulted by a school police officer recently became viral on all types of social media. It was posted and reposted on not only activist social media accounts, but by any account with an opinion. In a short frame, the video captured the problem people, specifically African Americans, have been dealing with: police brutality.
This issue, along with other problems dealing with race, gave birth to #BlackLivesMatter, an organization determined to remind us that black lives are not below the lives of others, specifically white lives. The movement is a fight against anyone’s life weighing more or less than another based on race. The creation of #AllLivesMatter was a response created out of misinterpretation. Proper responses were #TransLivesMatter, #LatinoLivesMatter and other movements that focus on placing the lives of people suffering from social injustices on the same level as white, privileged lives. In other words, “Why shoot a black child for having a toy gun, and then safely escort a white homicidal teenager to jail?”
A way to enforce social equality is through body cameras. I know there are factors making cameras out to be the less than ideal solution, but they could quite possibly be the answer to fully capturing what goes on between a police officer and an individual.
The media, along with citizen journalists, are catching the brutality with their phones and then publishing the footage to social media. The Spring Valley assault was not only recorded and posted online, it was also live-tweeted and given a reaction review by Aaron Johnson — a student and classmate of the victim.
The issue is that it is very unclear why the assault occurred. Some say the girl was chewing her gum too loudly, others said she was using her phone during class when the teacher asked her to leave. Even Johnson was unsure of what started the situation. All we know is that she allegedly refused and the officer was called in. With body cameras, the entire interaction between her and the officer would have been fully recorded.
While body cameras won't eradicate racist thoughts and actions, it is on the department’s shoulders to hire people with proper morals. The body camera is merely a solution to fully capturing the interactions and assisting with clarification. There is, however, a possibility that the cameras may push officers to check themselves before acting out on camera. The key point is that they will make the officers think twice, or more than twice, before placing a life below someone else because of their race.
Elizabeth Chidlow is a sophomore studying journalism.What do you think of police and body cameras? Email her at ec629914@ohio.edu.
