It was probably a decade or more ago, back when I used to routinely watchdog my city council (”gadfly” would probably have been their critter comparison), that I shocked the city fathers and mothers by using my three-minute share of the Citizen Comment portion of the agenda to support our police chief’s request for funding to install dashboard cameras in all patrol vehicles.
The look on their faces said: “Okay, who are you, and what have you done with the real Tim O’Brien?”
The surprise was, I’m sure, simply because it was the first time I had ever spoken in favor of any expenditure. Which actually says more about my elected officials’ priorities than my own parsimony.
The city was at the the time embroiled in several lawsuits over alleged, police misconduct — something of a conundrum for those of us who are anxious about both our tax money and our civil liberties.
Libertarians are, more than most, acutely aware of Juvenal’s discomfiting query: “Who will guard the guards?” Of course, citizens making allegations in these circumstances do not generally come to the dispute with the shiniest example of what the courts call: “clean hands.” Having an objective record of such encounters, I noted, is a well-invested ounce of prevention for both sides.
Around the same time I also spoke at a legislative committee hearing in Lansing in favor of a bill that would have required all custodial interrogations of felony suspects by police to be videotaped.
As luck would have it, I was scheduled to testify right after then Macomb County prosecutor, Carl Marlinga.
Seeing that one of the state’s most important law enforcement officials was preceding me, I braced to rebut his opposition to the bill. So I was caught quite by surprise in finding myself left to mostly second everything the prosecutor had said in support of it.
In retrospect I should not have been taken aback.
It was the Macomb County Prosecutors office that had actually been the catalyst for the bill in having wrongly convicted two innocent teenagers of a pizza store robbery and murder. The convictions were based entirely on the youngsters’ misfortunate timing and the confessions they made to police interrogators. Although they subsequently repudiated their statements, they were not permitted to retract them. (A third companion resisted all trickery and intimidation, refused to make a statement, and was acquitted.)
When the real perpetrators were caught several years later in another armed robbery in another state the long-standing claims by the two that their confessions had been coerced by police became incontestable.
It’s hard to imagine even libertarians objecting to the idea of taxpayers investing in the creation of objective records of law enforcement in action. Having such documentation protects everyone. Indeed, in the vast majority of cases the “dashboard cams” exonerate the officers.
Although many patrol vehicles have since been equipped to automatically record police/citizen encounters, the bill to require videotaping of custodial interrogations ran aground in the legislature.
The good news is that it’s back on the table. A new HB 5763 has already passed the House and is awaiting action in the Senate.
As incongruous as these words may seem coming from a hardcore, dyed-in-the-wool libertarian, this is good legislation and a worthy expenditure of our tax dollars. Contact your state senator today and urge passage of HB 5763.
