Big Brother Just Might Really Start Watching

Smile, you’re on Candid Camera!

We live in a complex society, centered in an increasingly complex world. Anyone, politician or preacher, who offers a panacea, is a charlatan.

That being said, because it would cost over a million dollars upfront, with maybe another half-million annually, I don’t think we’re going to see body cameras become ubiquitous anytime soon on St. Louis police officers. St. Louis County may have a little more money, but I doubt that it has THAT much more. That says nothing about the larger cities, like my own Webster Groves or Kirkwood, Ladue, Clayton, etc. And then we have mini-fiefdoms scattered around the county. I can see it now: “Good news! Bella Villa police now have body cameras. They only had to triple the outrageous number of (trap) tickets they wrote to pay for them.”

Of course, even being able to spend that kind of money would virtually, if not actually, require approval from the local police union. I think you could get better odds on the Cubs winning a World Series than that happening.

Perhaps I’m wrong in that assessment. Perhaps police officers would recognize that there are protections built in for them as well as citizens when they wear the cameras. How many bogus complaints of police brutality and harassment are filed each year? I would think (almost) everyone would like to see the number of complaints filed be reduced, and it seems to me that body cameras might make a significant dent in that number. Given the fact that (so-called) Smart Phones have made almost everyone on the street a potential recorder, if not reporter, I’m not sure privacy claims have any relevance for any of us any more.

But I get their trepidation. As a teacher I’m pretty sure I would have resisted cameras recording every word, every lesson, every movement of mine in the classroom. It certainly would have changed the classroom dynamic, negatively impacted the establishment of relationships with students. I don’t think I ever used it, but when I moved into the guidance office at Hancock I had a recorder at the ready, just in case, because when you close the door to a small office, even one with a vertical window in it, you (ironically) open yourself up to specious accusations from a disgruntled student or parent.

I freely admit that, for better and worse, I had a less active filter than many teachers. Even when my lessons were sort of scripted, there was no telling what might come out of my mouth based on the background noise of either the class or my mind. That was my style; I like to pretend it made me more effective, more honest, more open, and, probably, at least on occasion, more annoying. Still, it was a style that served me well for over four decades; I don’t think I would have been as successful with Big Brother recording every move.

That’s another cost, incidentally, that no one is talking about, at least not yet. Someone (or, in the case of large departments, schools or school districts, or municipal co-operatives, several someones) is going to have to watch, or be available to watch, all this data (the vast majority of which will be mind-numbingly boring). The good news is that concerns about your every move being watched are overblown; no one has the time or resources to make that happen. The bad news is that one person, with skill and proper motivation, can gain a tremendous amount of power over law enforcement (or educational) personnel. The answer to the old question of Who will watch the watchers? will certainly add to the cost, as well.

While it may sound like I’ve almost talked myself out of supporting these body cameras, we cannot ignore the cost, both financial and social, of Ferguson’s current tribulation. However you see either Michael Brown or Officer Darren Wilson, how quickly might that tragedy have been resolved (or perhaps even prevented) had body cameras been in play and the information immediately available? I’m not sure it would thrill County Prosecutor McCullough, but I’d sure like to see something like that if I were on the Grand Jury. Won’t the overall, and continually rising, price tag of that misfortune be several multiples of $2 million? Wouldn’t ALL of us prefer that? And wouldn’t that expenditure be more worthwhile than an urban tank?

9-11: A Different Kind of Throwback Thursday

One of my formers, on this 13^th anniversary of 9-11, posted on Facebook, asking what we were doing that awful day. I was in my second year of my counseling gig at the high school. Obviously, not a topic covered in Counselor School. The news came in that a plane had crashed into one of the towers of the World Trade Center. To be honest, the thought of terrorism occurred only fleetingly to me (I tend to the naive when it comes to bad things), but I did wonder how such a terrible mistake could have happened. After calling Carolyn to tell her to turn on the TV, I gravitated to a television in Chris Ventimiglia's classroom, just in time to see the second plane hit the other tower, and then I knew that the inconceivable had happened, which was quickly confirmed by subsequent events.

For reasons I still don’t get, the district and/or middle school administration tried, more or less successfully I guess, to quarantine information from their building. Delaying information does not change the information itself and I, at least, was confident that the staff was more than competent to help kids make sense of it all. Postponing the bad news for 5 hours changed nothing and deprived students and staff of a chance to work together to share grief and knowledge.

But I had my own kids to worry about, so other than a shrug and shake, I moved on, from classroom to classroom. I don’t recall any kids being overtly traumatized, although my daughter was. (Then living in Ohio, she spent most the morning on the phone with Carolyn and didn’t fly for several years.) I do remember telling kids, “Your life has just changed forever, and in ways you can’t imagine. You may not see it right away, but your life now will be very different than it would have been yesterday.”

    As I watched President Bush address the nation, I remember thinking, “Maybe the right guy did get elected.” His speech made me calm, confident and comfortable; despite my misgivings about him politically, he seemed, well, presidential. Of course, I didn’t know he would move beyond a hunt for Osama Bin Laden in Afghanistan to a conquest of Iraq, a country which, as an enemy of Bin Laden, clearly had had nothing to do with the horror of 9-11. Despite my words of warning to our students, I could not envision how widespread the chaotic fall of dominoes would become. But on that day, all of that was as inconceivable as terrorists flying airliners into the WTC.

Truth in Labeling

Conservative? Liberal? Radical? Right-wing Reactionary? Socialist? Communist? Fascist?

From Primary Election Day a month ago here in Missouri, now heading into the election season, these words will continue to be bandied about more and more.

Here’s my problem with trying to label people, especially with the goal of either demonizing or lionizing them. You don’t get to provide both the label AND the definition, because there is no single definition. In the same way you can’t cherry pick your quotes from the Founders (and retain any claim to intellectual honesty), you can’t label me AND provide your own personalized (or, even worse, rehashed from some polarizing group) definition of me.

Want to call me a liberal? Okay, but I get to say what “liberal” means, because YOU don’t really know what I believe, in all its complexity.

Labeling is just one more attempt to reduce civil discourse to simple bumper sticker slogans. My dad used to quote a boss who said, “When you find the solution it will be simple.” I would add, “…and at least incomplete if not wrong.” Even going back to the Founders (with their diverse points of view), society and life was far too complex to be etched so simply.

Cases in point. Thomas Jefferson, occasional hero to the conservative political wing in the United States. Never mind that he was feared by the then conservatives as a dangerous radical, whose skepticism about Christianity made him a heathen in the eyes of most of the devout. Would it have been accurate to label him, “Thomas Jefferson, the rapist”? Offended? Could Sally Hemmings, his slave, have said, “No”? Simple, and simply biased, ignoring inconvenient evidence, like most of the memes you find on Facebook.

I’ve never understood why the Tea Party crowd has allied themselves with what today would be considered acts of terrorism. Tarring and feathering was not a harmless pastime. Burning the governor’s house, certainly an act of terror. Destroying private property in the form of tons of tea, criminal vandalism at its most generous appraisal. (Did you know the tea being shoveled into Boston Harbor, which remained polluted for all its citizens for a long time, piled up so high it actually starting spilling back into the ship from whence it came?) Remember, at this point the colonies had not declared independence, were not at war.

Had the British won the Revolution, certainly a realistic possibility, THEY certainly would not have celebrated such thuggery. 

Neither can you grab a label and make it a positive. Conservative? Lovely. You get Alexander Hamilton, the big government advocate and pet of George Washington, who sided with him against Jefferson on virtually every big issue. You were on the wrong side of history when it came to the American Revolution (Tories were, and are, conservative), the Constitution itself (Conservatives of the time feared the encroachment of a too powerful national government), abolition and slavery, women’s rights and suffrage, civil rights.... Proud of that are we? Liberal? Do you really want to be associated with the anarchists and Communists of the late 19th and early 20th century? Thought not.

I don’t have answers to the incredibly complex problems that face our increasingly complex society. However, I am certain that simplistic labels are not going to help us find those answers.

I would have sworn I had published this previously (I was looking for a different piece), but only the draft version exists on my "posts list." Apologies if this is a repeat.