Stop Child Abuse Now (SCAN) - 1416

"Community Matters" - SPECIAL EDITION - "Openness and Transparency: Building Trust" (see: current articles) ~~ A big part of building trust between community and police is to encourage a sense of openness and transparency that assures accoutability. Around the country, there's been a call to provide vehicle and body cameras to police officers, especially those on patrol. But an inconsistency in policies makes it a less than perfect tool, and one that causes the community member confusion. Add to this the various surveillance systems in common use as well as the ability to record video on cell phones and to live stream events on social media forums and its easy to see how there are growing pains associated with employing a technology that most assume guarantees we'll understand a situation with an unreasonable degree of speed. After all .. we instantly see things with our own eyes and, as the saying goes, "seeing is believing." But is it? How many angles and how many perspectives from officers, surveillance systems and community members does it take? And where's the consistency in policy? There's a false sense of security being promoted by the use of video, which must be accompanied by relatively slow-moving independent investigation to insure transparency and fairness. ~~ Bill Murray, our host, is the well-respected community voice of public safety and violence prevention. "Where is the UNITY in 'community' these days?," Bill asks. "Unless we can learn to set aside our differences and start paying attention to how shockingly similar our experiences, feelings and actions are we'll not make progress." CHECK OUT the new Facebook page: LACP - Community Policing at www.Facebook.com/LACP.org