With the discussion of body cameras for police I really have to wonder why we seem to default to technology.
I am a Nerd, I play with Computers, Robots and Lasers all the time. I’m sitting here writing this six feet from a scanning electron microscope. Even so, when people are involved technology is not where I would start.
Cameras sure, but only with the deep understanding that they are only a patch and do nothing about the underlying problems. Will giving officers cameras just like Seal Team Six do anything about the militarization of the police? Will any technological fix change the isolation of communities, communities we are dependant on to provide the recruits we need to make the force look more like the communities they police?
Don’t forget the other side of the human equation also. That isolation fuels the us against them mentality of the department, those cameras indicate a lack of respect and trust. We put a lot on the cops. They are called into a wide variety of of very stressful situations that no amount of training could ever prepare them for. We measure them by battles won, when the battles avoided are what we really want.
So lets get a little more creative. Realizing where we are and where we strive to be, we need to think about ways to create human systems that allow for the opportunity of change.
What if for example we paid for 10% of an officer’s time to be devoted to community support in the area they police? Call it outreach or intelligence gathering for all I care, but get them into situations outside of the basic confrontational day to day and into situations that may allow empathy on both sides to develop. Lets understand that kids may approach coach who would never approach officer and coach is likely to react a bit differently than officer. Food shelves, heck garden clubs all offer opportunities for meaningful interactions and the opportunity to understand the community. Humanizing both sides of the divide that has grown and interlocking circles of acquaintanceships. “My friend told me” can be very useful, if the connection has been made that allows for a judgement of motives. Giving our guardians another source of job satisfaction wouldn’t hurt also.
So with the understanding that even some of the angels fell, and any human endeavour is by definition flawed. We need to start thinking of fixes and start thinking of human systems.
Technology can isolate given the chance. We need to guard against that even here on the big orange. Would it help us for example if one of the Sunday front posts was written by a conservative blogger.