Law Enforcement Being Reshaped By Digital Technology
By Christine Kern, contributing writer
From body cams to smartphone apps, law enforcement is being retooled for the new era.
Law enforcement is being reshaped by digital technology, as police departments turn to new capabilities to help reduce crime. From police wearables to smartphone apps that allow anyone to record encounters and even transmit them live, technology is a transformative force in today’s law enforcement world.
As incidents of alleged police brutality are making headlines across the nation, many cities — including smaller communities — are re-examining the issue of adopting body cameras for their local police forces. Recently, The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights and Upturn released a scorecard evaluating the civil rights safeguards of policy body camera programs in 50 U.S. cities, as Business Solutions Magazine reported.
“Body cameras carry the promise of officer accountability, but accountability is far from automatic,” said Harlan Yu, principal at Upturn. “Our goal is to help departments improve their policies by bringing attention to areas where policy improvements can be made and highlighting promising policy language from around the country.”
But police departments are not the only ones turning to cameras to record interactions between officers and civilians. A new app, called Safecaster, now available for Apple iOS devices, allows civilians to record video, transmit it live, and display it on an Internet server. The app developers wanted to increase transparency in confrontations between the law and the public.
Mark Slater, co-creator of Safecaster, wrote in a blog post, “Like so many of you, we are watching current events with a mixture of utter disbelief and sadness. We feel completely helpless and frankly question the ability of our governmental frameworks to do anything meaningful about these events.”
The demand for transparency is understandable in light of widely publicized shootings of unarmed black men, the Justice Department’s scathing evaluation of the Baltimore Police’s use of discriminatory practices, and mixed reviews of various police department’s body camera policies. The desire for transparency also highlights the shortcomings of recording encounters: perspective does matter, and not every detail of an encounter may be caught on a single recording, whether it is from a police body cam or a civilian phone.
Technology is changing law enforcement in other tangible ways as well, such as the implementation of drones for unmanned patrols or to capture video or images of crimes as they occur, or to perform surveillance of a situation before sending in armed officers, according to The Balance.
Google Glass also allows officers on the beat to easily access databases and apps when BOLOs or other alerts are issued. And police are turning increasingly to social media to solve crimes and to engage the public in their efforts. Posting alerts and asking for help identifying potential suspects on Facebook, twitter, Instagram, and other social media outlets has become a common tactic among police departments nationwide not only to solve crimes but also to build important levels of trust with members of the local community.