President Obama has unfortunately decided to add to the racial demagoguery in the wake of Ferguson rather than trying to stop it. But he has half a good idea here:
President Obama on Monday will announce $263 million in funding for law enforcement agencies to purchase body-worn cameras and improve training.
The White House said the funding, which would need to be matched by state and local police, could purchase 50,000 body-worn cameras.
No, not the "training," which I suspect will be the usual "how to be sensitive to the communities that just don't like you" nonsense. The body cameras. Certainly some cops will learn how to game them, turn them on and off precisely when they want something seen or not seen. But I think cameras in cars have over the long term contributed to the public record of police-citizen encounters and added a lot topublic safety, and body cameras should take all that to the next level.
Of course, eventually we'll all have cameras as part of our apparel (if not our bodies) and privacy as we know it will be a thing of the past, but that's a whole other post.
