Ferguson is likely to spark at least one concrete change in policing
Following the Ferguson grand jury decision, the parents of slain teenager Michael Brown released a brief statement asking for support in their campaign to make police wear body cameras filming all interactions with citizens. It’s a wish they're likely to have granted, as experts say Brown's case has forced the issue for police departments which were on the fence about the technology in the past.
While some police unions have opposed body cameras, the benefits are proven for police as well as civilians. When the cameras were used for about a year in Rialto, California, "the number of complaints filed against officers fell by 88 percent compared with the previous 12 months. Use of force by officers fell by almost 60 percent over the same period," reports the New York Times.
Accountability by camera seems to be a simple way to reduce police brutality — and provide a perfect witness when incidents like Brown's death do happen.
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Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.
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