Press: Cameras don’t stop violence

Some things don’t work as well as planned. After the death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., we believed body cameras and dashboard cameras would reduce the number of young, unarmed black men shot and killed by white police officers.

Remember? Require body and dashboard cams and two good things would result: Cops would be less likely to use lethal force, and we’d know immediately whether an officer was justified in the use of force.

{mosads}But that’s simply not the case. Cameras aren’t always turned on. Police departments don’t always release the videos. And even when they do, they leave many questions unanswered.

This week saw three more young African-American men shot and killed by police officers. In Columbus, Ohio, running from an attempted robbery with a BB gun, 13-year-old Tyre King was shot and killed by a white police officer. Was the officer justified in feeling threatened? We’ll never know. Columbus police officers don’t have to wear body cameras.

In Tulsa, Okla., Terence Crutcher committed the crime of having his car stall in the middle of the highway. When police officers arrived on the scene, he began walking slowly toward his car with both hands in the air. Arriving at his vehicle, he placed both hands on the car, whereupon one officer immediately tasered him and white Officer Betty Shelby instantly shot and killed him. He had no gun, nor was there any gun in his car. 

In Charlotte, N.C., Keith Lamont Scott was sitting in his truck, waiting for his son to come home from school, when police officers, believing he was rolling a joint, ordered him out of his vehicle. He was shot by a black police officer as he was walking backward from his car, hands at his sides. If he had a gun, as police officers claim, it is not visible in the video, and he was not pointing it at anyone. 

From the evidence, all three of these shootings appear unjustified. And, sadly, from these cases and others, we’ve learned that body and dashboard cams alone won’t solve the problem. Too many police officers still believe that, because they’ve been trusted with a gun, they have the right to shoot first and ask questions later, especially when the target is a black man.

Cameras are only part of the answer. Police violence won’t stop until we do a better job of screening candidates for police departments, provide better training and weed out trigger-happy officers from the force. Real change won’t come until elected officials demand reform by police departments, until police chiefs lay down the law that guns must be used as a last resort only, and until police unions recognize that their job is to serve the public, not just their members, and stop defending every police officer involved in a fatal shooting, no matter how serious the evidence against him or her.

This problem can be solved. White mass murderer Dylann Roof was apprehended by police without being shot and killed. Why can’t young African-American men get the same treatment?

Press is host of “The Bill Press Show” on Free Speech TV and author of “Buyer’s Remorse: How Obama Let Progressives Down.”