For those of us who have pondered the benefits of, and problems with, police video, it has long been understood to be the most critical weapon in changing attitudes about cops while falling far short of a panacea.  Understanding the complexity of solutions, and addressing them, has been hard for many to wrap their heads around, and ignoring the myriad problems does little to fix them. Okay, nothing surprising or new in that obvious observation.

So when Bronx Defender Sarah Lustbader’s op-ed in the New York Times screams of the “real problem with police video,” those of us who have struggled with the many problems, the depth of the problems, the forces and countervailing forces affecting the problems, shake our collective heads.  Why do people persist in reducing complex issues to simplistic solutions?  Do they really hate Mencken that much?

But putting aside the hype of the title to her op-ed, Lustbader has a point about the broad adoption of police cameras.

But as currently implemented, body camera programs in the United States too often fail to serve those goals because the police own and control the footage. This is the fox guarding the henhouse. Not only can the police retain footage that they would rather not release; they can also use it for purposes that have nothing to do with transparency and accountability, such as mass surveillance. Until control of this footage is taken away from law enforcement and vested in a neutral third party, with equal access for all interested parties, body cameras will further empower the very party they were designed to check.

The primary argument favoring the use of police video is two-fold, police safety and preservation of evidence.  Lustbader raises a very different concern, missing from the rationale for cameras.

Nowhere does it mention transparency, accountability or civilian safety.

The answer she offers is that video be held by a third-party neutral, whether a different governmental entity or an outside neutral.

We can do better. All body-camera footage, from the moment it is uploaded until it is deleted, should be managed by an impartial third party, either private or government-run.

But what about the cost?

Third-party management should not be any more expensive or complicated than police management. Data-storage companies are inherently better equipped for the task, and police departments would not have to pay officers overtime for logging data or learning to use new software.

Well, this may be a bit myopic. Outside vendors need to make a profit to keep their business alive, and the police will still need access to video as it’s evidence. Ironically, Lustbader works for an institutional defender doing public defense, where the scarcest of resources is money to pay for sufficient defenders. She, of all people, should be circumspect in blithely leaping over the very real issue of cost, since it could well be money spent on her salary.

But even if it were more costly or complicated, that would be a cost worth paying. If we cannot afford to implement body cameras properly, then we cannot afford body cameras.

That’s a bit facile. The same can be said of every component of a system that works, except it would be hugely expensive and far beyond society’s willingness to pay. Hell, people won’t pay now for public defense, which demands far better funding, so let’s add more costs to the mix? Is the cost of a neutral video repository a better use of funds than a lawyer standing beside an indigent defendant?

In addition to bringing greater transparency and accountability to policing, third-party management of body-camera footage would actually benefit the police. Video footage would be more credible in the public eye; police officers wouldn’t be suspected of doctoring footage after every technical glitch. It would also protect individual officers, especially those, such as whistle-blowers and union activists, who had reason to fear that supervisors might comb through their footage for any minor infraction to use against them.

Police buy-in to any new idea is important, as there remains significant resistance to Big Brother watching them do the job.  But this argument comes from the outside looking in. For cops who hate video, there’s an easier solution. Don’t do it, with the added benefit that it costs nothing.

Third-party administration would protect privacy rights, too. Civil libertarians could sleep easier knowing that a large cache of mass surveillance was in neutral hands.

And yet, that doesn’t mean the cops won’t have unrestricted access to it, and the argument that they should be able to access evidence is hard to counter.

Lustbader is looking at this “real problem” through the lens of what happened with the Laquan McDonald video. For those of us who have been thinking hard about police video for years, the view is different. We realize that 90% of police video is inconsequential and monumentally boring. We realize that within that video, there are people who aren’t at their finest, and whose worst moments need not be revealed for public amusement and ridicule.

Of the video, maybe 10% is of any consequence, and of that 10%, maybe 1% reveals police misconduct.  And yet, Lustbader is right that the 1% demands transparency so that a cop murder can’t be concealed from the public.  That 10% is why video is critical. That 1% is what has changed the world of criminal law from the old days where no cop ever did anything wrong.

If we want these body camera programs to serve their intended purpose, we must insist on equal access to footage for all interested parties. There is no legitimate reason to give the police exclusive control, and there are many good reasons not to. A fair program would help level the playing field and would promote mutual trust, so that the police would no longer be automatically trusted in the courtroom and mistrusted on the street.

There is certainly truth here, but making this happen in a way that will serve both transparency as well as the institutional needs of the system is a very complicated problem.  And it’s just one of the many problems that surround the critical use of video.  The police should not have “exclusive control” of video, but who should, and under what terms, and with what protections, and at what expense, and more, demands far more than the creation of yet another internal bureaucracy or external vendor for profit.

But a body-camera program warped by law enforcement interests does the opposite. It’s worse than no program at all.

No, it’s not worse than no program at all.  Despite falling far short of its promise, video has opened a window on police conduct that never existed before, and it has exposed to the world that misconduct lies and abuse, even murder, happen.  This doesn’t mean that Lustbader isn’t on to a problem, but her contention that if it’s not done her way, it shouldn’t be done at all is just wrong.

The existence of police video has changed everything. But there remains much to be figured out to maximize its use and benefit for the greater good. Lustbader brings a new, valid problem to the table. Like all such problems, it won’t be easily solved.