Body Cams and Tasers Are Not Making Policing Better

Amid hysterical, and often misrepresented,
claims of rising urban crime, there are some genuine efforts to break the logic
and cycle of incarceration. Some cities have entertained small alternative
programs, such as a recent New York City effort that sent social workers as
first responders to some mental health emergencies, rather than cops—an
initiative that reportedly showed great success. Pandemic
conditions also led to the release of some prisoners to home confinement, but
the Biden administration may soon make them return to their cells.

These were exceptions in a year that, for many
observers, revealed a startling capacity for police violence against people
peacefully marching in the streets. Essential to that violent suppression of
protest was the deployment of advanced technologies and weaponry—surveillance
platforms, cell tower simulators, drones, facial recognition, sound cannons.
The militarization and digitization of policing seem to go hand-in-hand, fueled
by a growing field of law enforcement contractors who increasingly resemble
their counterparts in the defense industry.

Scholars,
activists, and journalists who worried that expensive technological tools would
exacerbate the inherent problems of American policing should feel vindicated in
their criticisms.  New policing
technologies have proved about as inimical to the cause of justice as the sort
of blinkered anti-bias training that’s supposed to teach away racism. Instead
of granting police new tools or authorities, consider a basic proposal that should
appeal to reformers from across the spectrum: decrease contact between
civilians and armed agents of the state. That means disarming police and taking
a scalpel to their budgets—instead sending other kinds of professionals to
respond to many emergencies. And it means reframing how policymakers look at
police tech. Spending millions on officer-controlled cameras or new weapons or
inscrutable algorithms is not a solution to any crisis, or even a way to
conserve resources or promote efficiency. Instead these tools prove themselves,
time and again, to be a means by which oppressive police forces consolidate
their power, abuse innocent people, and commit violence. If we want to make
U.S. policing safer and more accountable, it’s time to take cops’ toys away.