by Brian Mann on November 10th, 2014

A gun, a badge, and a camera? Should this be standard police issue?

This week, another video went viral showing a police officer allegedly physically assaulting a member of the public, this time in our backyard in Saratoga County.

An officer, since identified as Saratoga County Sheriff Sgt. Shawn R. Glans, age 48, was a 27-year veteran. He was suspended after the video surfaced.

In the tape, Glans is shown demanding permission to search a young man’s car without a search warrant. The young man declines — as is his right — and Glans, unaware that he is being videotaped, can be heard striking the member of the public.

He then seizes the keys and tells another officer to go forward with the search.

Glans, speaking to another civilian at the scene, can be heard threatening more violence: “I can get a lot more intense. Rip your $*%&$ head off and $*$& down your neck,” he warns.

This violent incident — read the details about the investigation here — is only the latest to raise the public’s suspicion about the training, ethics, and self-control of law enforcement agencies.

In August, a suburban community Missouri was shattered after an officer shot to death Michael Brown, an unarmed 18-year-old.

Conflicting accounts and lingering uncertainty about the facts surrounding that shooting have heightened a national sense of distrust of law enforcement, particularly among young people, libertarian activists, and minorities.

It seems that in the age of modern technology, there is a solution here worth considering, one that would protect the public and law enforcement equally. Why not equip officers with small, rugged, Go-Pro-style cameras that can be activated with a tap of the hand?

Make it standard, mandatory protocol that whenever an officer is interacting with the public in a significant way — anything from “stop and frisk” to a traffic stop — the officer toggles the camera into record mode. (Many of these cameras have storage that allows hours of recording-time, so the policy might basically be “when in doubt, hit record.”)

Obviously, the availability of recorded images wouldn’t answer all the questions that arise in these situations. But officers would hit the streets every day knowing that they will likely be held more accountable if they stray outside the rules of civility and decorum. That’s a strong deterrent to bad behavior.

Officers will also know that they have strong evidence to back them up in cases where they face false accusations.

It’s actually kind of remarkable that we haven’t already made this step with the public servants who hold such power over our lives — the power to stop us, restrain us, seize our property and curtail our liberty. We’re all used to seeing signs that tell us surveillance cameras are in operations or hearing a voice that tells us “this call is being recorded for quality control reasons.”

Why don’t we do the same with law enforcement?

My guess is that in the not too distant future, when police approach our cars or knock on our doors, it will be standard to hear them say, “Hello, sir. I’m with the police and this encounter is being video recorded. Now, can I please see your photo ID?”

Events like the one in Saratoga County suggest that this kind of technology may be needed sooner rather than later.

Update: Here’s another report that I found on-line today that suggests just how vital these recorded records can be. Though in this case, police allegedly tried to conceal the pertinent recording.