Nationwide, just about every police department uses body cameras, including the five Black Memphis officers who recently wore them. Yet, all irresponsibly killed a Black man 80 yards from his mother’s house for a minor traffic violation. Historically, had the officers been White, there probably would have been overly-heated protests – instead of the peaceful ones – thankfully, requested by the dead man’s mother.
Seems to me a simple common sense solution, where outrageous situations like this don’t happen again, is once the body camera is turned on by an officer, have the footage seen simultaneously inside the local police station. This may require an extra employee inside the police station to watch the body camera screens, but think how much could be saved – including lives – and curb multimillion dollar lawsuits.
Sally Florence
Durango
