Editorial: Move quickly on police cameras

Sen. Tim Scott is moving decisively to help our country solve a damaging problem, and that is the suspicion and disbelief about what takes place during a police-involved shooting. The Republican U.S. senator has matched his passion for increasing the use of body-worn cameras by police officers with a new call for the federal government to help cover the costs, a deterrent in many communities.

Under the proposal Scott announced last week, the federal government would provide $500 million over five years to help law enforcement buy body cameras. He’s absolutely correct in his assessment that these cameras “bring clarity to very often contentious and unclear situations.”

His proposal would expand a pilot program started earlier this year in which the U.S. Justice Department put up $20 million for body cameras with a match from local governments. The new program still would require a local funding match of 25 percent, but would leave it up to local participants to determine policies and procedures such as a way to store video and protocols for releasing videos to the public. Scott said he is opposed to a national standard and his proposal seems fair and comprehensive.

This issue is personal for Scott, a Charleston resident hit particularly hard by two recent tragedies. It is undeniable that a particularly horrific incident in North Charleston would have produced different results if a bystander had not filmed a police officer shooting Walter Scott multiple times in the back when Scott fled on foot from a traffic stop. What the video clearly showed repulsed people and disputed early police reports of what had occurred. The officer has been charged with murder.

Scott’s good friend, the late state Sen. Clementa Pinckney of Charleston, worked feverishly on getting the South Carolina Legislature to adopt a bill calling for law enforcement agencies in our state to use body cameras. The agencies have nine months to come up with policies for the use of body cameras, and they can apply for state funding next year after the policies have been reviewed by the state Law Enforcement Training Council. One month after eloquently arguing on the Senate floor for police body cameras, Pinckney and eight other people were gunned down in a Bible study class at Emanuel AME Church in Charleston.

Police body cameras will not solve every dispute or conclusively answer every question about what happened during a police-involved shooting. They will help significantly, however, and in ways far beyond allowing the public to see what took place and how the person stopped by law enforcement had been treated.

As Scott said earlier this year, one study shows complaints against officers fell by almost 90 percent when they were wearing body cameras and that officers’ use of force decreased by 60 percent.

This new technology protects law enforcement officers from false allegations and perhaps in many cases from their own impulsive actions. The cameras also provide critically needed information for a public often torn by a high-profile shooting, with some people automatically supporting law enforcement and others instantly taking the side of the victim.

Other areas need to be explored when it comes to a criminal justice system that needs to be reviewed and possibly overhauled. Top on that list is sentencing reform aimed at creating more fairness in the nation that locks up too many people. The need for a comprehensive examination should not block the urgency of funding police body cameras. This technology is available, it is needed in the field, and the federal government is right to focus on helping to provide needed funding.