You're on Candid Camera

Larry Elder in Townhall reports on an interesting and unexpected result arising from police use of body cams. Body cams were introduced in many jurisdictions to supposedly keep the police honest in interactions with the public during stops. Elder details the surprise finding, though, in a recent study:

"In 2012 in the city of Rialto, California, population approximately 100,000, cops were randomly assigned body cameras based on their shifts. Over the next year, use-of-force incidents on the shifts that had cameras were half the rate of those without cameras. But something rather extraordinary also happened. Complaints against all Rialto police officers with were down almost 90 percent from the prior year.

It turns out when civilians knew they were being recorded, they -- not the cops -- behaved better and stop making false accusations. The use of force by cops also declined, but, again, not because the police changed their conduct. No, the cops continued performing as they'd been trained. Civilians, aware that they were being taped, were less confrontational and were more likely to cooperate and follow instructions. As a result, cops needed to use force less frequently."

Are there bad cops? Sure, but the use of a camera makes all sides toe the line, and that's a good thing.