By Jesse Blackhill

When I think about jobs that a society needs in order to function, one in particular rises to the surface — the police. Without them, our city and many countries for that matter, would probably be a less than enjoyable place to for us to live. Seriously, what would life look like without the police? Our police have got a rough job, and to be honest, I wouldn’t want to perform the vital job of upholding the laws we deem fit for our communities. It’s is a dangerous job.

The harsh reality of the job is that sometimes people get hurt, and unfortunately, sometimes people die. The police have a lot of power given to them with the expected responsibility to manage it appropriately; however, we do not live in a perfect world and that power can create just as much fear as it creates comfort.

There have been several incidents over the last couple of years where some law enforcement officer’s inappropriate actions were captured on someone’s smartphone camera. In fact, today’s society has generated a plethora of amateur camera operators and a major target of these cameras are law enforcement officers. I see more and more people recording the police in social media venues; submitting their captured video to websites like YouTube and broadcast news channels.

Some videos that I’ve seen legitimately show a need for alarm regarding some officers’ behavior. In my opinion, there is no justification for the level of force used. For many other videos, however, I see a big problem that I am unsure the rest of the public sees — those videos are coming from a heavily biased perspective. They show what the person wants to show and not the whole story. It’s only one side of the story. This has cast a dirty light on our protectors and seems to have become an unhealthy trend in our society.

Luckily, our police have adopted a policy that helps to capture their perspectives as well, the use of body-worn cameras, also known as “body-cams.” Now police have a way to show the work they do while countering biased perspectives.

I had the opportunity to talk to an officer about his experiences and he reported that the cameras tend to be great when they need to prove that someone else was not being honest. Before the cameras, truth was found somewhere between the officer’s report of an incident and the citizen’s, which could be drawn out in a court case. It’s hard to be dishonest when video data displays a person’s behavior quite plainly.

One interesting perk that comes from the cameras is an increased productivity of the officers wearing them, and amazingly, according to the Journal of Criminal Justice, a decrease in complaints of officers’ use of force despite more incidents of force being reported.

Even with complaints being reduced, I don’t think America would be America unless there was someone vocalizing their dislike of the cameras.

One such vocalization is the worry that privacy rights were being violated by the data collected. When I consider this, I have to wonder what they are trying to hide if they are concerned about what is captured on camera. I’m certain there are cultures out there that think a picture taken of them is about as evil as stealing their souls, but that isn’t a typical belief I come across in my day-to-day dealings. My interactions with others lead me to believe that people see the police as convenient when they need them, but want nothing to do with the police when they are on the wrong end of the law.

Bottom line: Body-cams are an engine that generates faith in our protectors by making their actions, and the actions of others, a matter of record.

—Jesse Blackhill is a San Diego resident and a current MSW candidate for 2016 from the University of Southern California’s School of Social Work.