Responses to Emery

I endorse Richard Emery's proposal that police stations be equipped with fixed video cameras, though I think we should frame the issue in more general terms and articulate more clearly the costs and benefits of such a proposal. Although the brutality of several New York police officers in the Louima case is deplorable, any endorsement of videotaping must rest on a stronger foundation than our visceral reaction to any one case of justice gone wrong, no matter how egregious the case may be. Any policy proposal to mandate videotaping inside police stations is likely to be framed in cost-benefit terms and to succeed only if the immediate benefits to law enforcement, and to the police's crime control agenda more generally, can be shown to exceed its costs. If I am right, then the audience to which any discussion of videotaping should be oriented is the police themselves, and the object of any such discussion should be to convince them that it is in their best interest to implement mandatory videotaping. Perhaps the most obvious reason why police should support in-house videotaping is that it will protect them against false and/or malicious allegations. By creating an objective and reviewable record to which police and prosecutors can turn to resolve factual disputes, in-house videotaping would dispense with the need for "swearing contests" about what actually occurred inside the station house. Factual disputes implicating the integrity or legality of police actions would be resolved by a neutral videotape recording--that does not suffer from memory decay, position bias, or selective recall--rather than by guessing which of the self-interested partisan witnesses is more likely telling the truth. Herein lay the genius of videotaping as a tool of criminal justice reform in an adversary system: Unlike other reform measures, videotaping is inherently impartial. It neither favors nor disfavors the police or criminal defendants; it does not alter the balance of advantage between the state and the accused; and it does not undermine the crime control agenda of police or the due process rights of suspects. Rather, the videotape contributes solely to the truthfinding function of the criminal process. Moreover, in-house videotaping would neither restrain the discretion of police nor seek to impose tighter controls on police behavior. If ever there were a reform measure advocated by a civil right's attorney that is in the police's best interest, it is in-house videotaping. Another reason police should support videotaping is that it promotes the appearance of police professionalism and integrity. Routine videotaping would thus lend credibility to police work, especially in urban communities such as New York and Los Angeles where police are likely to be distrusted by large segments of the community. In an age of community policing--in which both the police and the community seem more inclined to make reciprocal intrusions on one another--there is simply no excuse for police not to videotape. Some may say that in-house videotaping is not feasible. The argument is that videotaping is either too costly or too time consuming or simply too difficult to implement. This argument, however, does not wash. First, videotaping would likely save police money, considering the inexpensiveness of video technology compared to the cost of police litigation, such as the suit Abner Louima has brought against the City of New York. Second, since at least the early 1980s, the use of video technology has become increasingly common in American law enforcement. Today's police routinely employ video recording in a variety of contexts, including the documentation of crime scenes, the recording of suspect behavior during sobriety tests, and in the conduct of surveillance and undercover operations. Even in the most secretive of police practices--interrogation and confession--videotaping is becoming increasingly common and, in some places, standard policy. …