Page 22 - March 2018 FOP Newsletter

Dash cam and cell phone videos need context
Police work has always been a popular subject for television and movies. There have literally been
h
hundreds, if not thousands, of productions
based upon the daily workings of Police Of- ficers. Most Police Officers I know usually have difficulty watching these creations be- cause they are so loosely based on reality... except for “Barney Miller,” which is without question the most realistic portrayal of police work ever produced.
into bad guys as an off-duty police officer. If these actions were captured on a dash cam video, widescale protests would erupt.
FOP
Legal Report
Anewstudyshedssomelightonthisparadox.
The research paper, “Citizen Journalism and Public Cynicism Toward Police in the United States,” which is currently under peer review for publication in an aca- demic journal, describes how watching cell phone foot- age of a use-of-force incident on social media is more likely to generate negative feelings toward the police than watching the same encounter on a conventional TV broad-
DANIEL HERBERT
I found out the hard way that police generally do not like being compared to their television coun- terparts. Back in my teenage years, my friends and I were ap- proached by two female Police Officers who were investigating complaints about a group of teens drinking at the beach. As the officers approached, I made a comment about Cagney and Lac- ey, which prompted a well-deserved kick in my ass. For the mil- lennials who probably have never heard of the ’80s classic “Cag-
ney and Lacey,” consider yourself lucky.
I have often wondered why police films and shows remain
popular with the public, especially considering the current anti-police sentiment which appears to exist nationwide. The same people who cry about the violence captured on dash cam video in real life were cheering for Detective Sipowicz when he slapped a suspect during an interrogation back on “NYPD Blue.” They trade high-fives when Bruce Willis empties clip after clip
cast.
In the study, the volunteer participants were 93 college stu-
dents, most (92 percent) younger than 25, most (71 percent) fe- male, and most (63 percent) African-American. They first were given an 18-question “cynicism survey” to measure their base- line of “mistrust and lack of confidence” in four occupational groups: physicians, professors, attorneys and Police Officers. Even at the outset, the results of this “paper-and-pencil” ques- tionnaire showed that the participants on the whole “felt more negatively toward police than toward the other groups.”
Then the participants were randomly assigned to watch one of two versions of a real-life videoed encounter in Kansas in which two municipal officers are down on the grass beside a thorough- fare, struggling with a male subject.
Version #1 consists of raw footage taken with a cell phone by a “Citizen Video Journalist” and posted on YouTube. The action is
22 CHICAGO LODGE 7 ■ FEBRUARY 2018