Whack-a-Mole Jihadist Style

*Editors note: Today's blog was written before the devastating truck attack in Manhattan.

As we board our next flight to anywhere, enter a large sports stadium or performance venue, or just plain wonder who is listening to our telephone calls, reading our emails and texts and tracking our movements through social media and through our measurable spending habits, on an off-line, just think of what life used to be like… when you could just “be,” meet airport arrivals at the gate, enter a sporting event or concert without the slightest trepidation and when you didn’t even have to think about whether or not some government agency or private commercial surveillance trackers were able to look at everything you did. The only place you noticed surveillance camera was in casinos, and nobody had a video camera small enough that you wouldn’t notice if they turned it on you. Now? We are defending against a very angry body of people in a harsh post-9/11/01 world. But if our lives are so deeply disrupted, who is the winner here?

Maybe you even remember when there weren’t increasingly frequent record-breaking temperature extremes, mostly heat waves, seemingly never-ending flows of super-storms and fires that inflict growing levels of mass destruction and when droughts eventually came and went? Perhaps you might even recall traveling to international historic, architectural and artistic sites and were able to spend some serious alone time taking it all in… no tour guides with little flags followed by long lines of tourists shoving and pushing to get a better view. Not worrying about getting blasted from a well-placed bomb, shot with automatic weapons fire from a strategically placed shooter or mowed down by a truck while walking along a sidewalk. Perhaps you even remember a time when extremists perpetrating ultra-violent mass killings just happened “over there,” and were the stuff of the evening news program.

Malthusian population growth? Meet accelerating climate change and the displaced people who are angry and just do not know what to do. Some turn to God. Some turn to blame and revenge. Some do both.

Forget about the old economic times, when adults could pretty much expect a job for life with a single employer, where bankruptcies were rare, corporate mergers and acquisitions relegated to the biggest companies “once in a great while,” where globalization was simply referred to a “trade” and automation didn’t really replace workers… they just made them more productive. Just think of the displacement and disenfranchisement of human beings, who have lived in a predictable patterns for generations, being told that, for one reason or another, theirs would be the last of their kind to live that pattern ever again. Farms withering into permanent desert from global climate change. Jobs replaced by robots.

Too many people facing the same crisis, seeking a new direction but simply craving for a return to the life they have always known, running scared from brutality, increasing poverty… too many mouths seeking the narrowing resources, military and political leaders who care little if anything for their misery. Old industries fading. Obsolescence ripping jobs from under folks with no other skills to offer. Erosion and climate changes tearing at agricultural productivity, literally reducing coastal land mass, as pollution and over-fishing, over-harvesting robs the planet, and the animals (including humans) who depended on those once-abundant resources for that sustenance.

I could be talking about a West Virginia coal miner, depressed and taking opioids to escape a world that will never return normalcy to his or her life. Or a rust-belt assembly line worker permanently replaced by a vastly more efficient robot. Or an evangelical in Alabama worrying about all those people with differing faiths, skin tone and cultural values challenging the comfortable way things “used to be.” But today, I am simply looking at a persecuted majority (in Syria) or minority (in Iraq) whose farms are now fallow desert, whose cities often lie in shambles from the bombings and artillery shells unleashed in regional conflicts. Sunnis. They just may share some of the same feelings of hopelessness and persecution.

While the Sunnis (literal believers in the words of the Qur’an) represent approximately 80% of the 1.6 billion Muslims on earth, in Iraq and Syria they are governed by Shiites (who believe that only senior clerics can discern the meaning of that holy book), who represent most of the remaining 20% of Islam. In the case of Syria, there is a tiny 10% layer of Shiites (Assad’s Alawite sect) at the top, while in Iraq it is 60% Shiite majority that governs. But both share a disdain for Sunnis and their plight.

As often as not, both Syria and Iraq practice outright discrimination and even frequent violence against these displaced Sunnis… or even Sunnis in general. The same displaced Sunnis, running for their lives, caught between the Assad regime in Damascus bombing and gassing them and the Iraqi Shiite militia (with direct Iranian support) creating misery all around them, who have tried to start new lives as refugees in Europe, a land that clearly no longer welcomes them. They still remember that in 2003, it was the United States that ousted their Sunni protector, the much-reviled Saddam Hussein. And what the Americans left is a government dominated by Shiites with hatred for Sunnis dominating their focus.

It was this isolation and feeling of drifting abandonment that gave terrorists like al Qaeda, the al Nusra Front, Islamic State (ISIS) and the latest bad boy on the Sunni block - Hayy'at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) (Assembly for the Liberation of the Levant; get used to their flag, pictured above) – the message that “God has not abandoned you, we are your new defenders and we will punish the non-believers and your persecutors with merciless death and destruction… The Sunni faith will rise, and we will make that belief Great Again.” For lots of impoverished and hopeless farmers and bombed out city-dwellers, the message resonated. But as ISIS won territory, its reign of suppression and ultra-violence terrified those same abandoned Sunnis.

ISIS has been decimated, its coffers pretty much empty and its territorial holdings recaptured by… er… the Syrian and Iraqi governments. The end? Not even of ISIS that will coordinate with other Islamist terrorist groups around the world to return to the strategy of random attacks and covert recruiting of angry locals living in more open societies. What’s worse are displaced Sunnis who still live under unsympathetic regimes that perpetrate daily persecution and violence against them. Still, these displaced Sunnis remain without a voice or a champion to fight for their rights. It is a festering sore that cannot do anything but redirect that violence somewhere else with another group that will claim to represent these voiceless, impoverished, hopeless and unrepresented masses of Iraqi and Syrian Sunnis. Who exactly, other than these violent extremists, is lifting finger to rebuild their cities and find new fertile farmland for them to till?

“Fourteen years after the American invasion ended decades of Sunni dominance in Iraq, Iraq’s Sunni Arabs are struggling to reclaim relevance and influence. After they were ousted from government jobs and from the military by the post-Saddam Hussein government, their powerlessness and rage gave rise to Sunni militant movements like Al Qaeda in Iraq and the Islamic State.

“Now that those militants are being driven from the Sunni heartland, how the government responds to Sunnis trying to rebuild their lives is likely to have long-term consequences for the country’s stability and security…

“There were high expectations when Haider al-Abadi became [Iraqi] prime minister in 2014 that he could turn the page after the divisive sectarian rule of his predecessor, [vehement Shiite] Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, and win the confidence of the Sunnis.

“Instead, Sunni leaders say, he has forsaken them as he forged closer ties with Iran, the hard-line Shiite theocracy next door. Iran now wields tremendous influence over Iraq’s economy, military and government.” New York Times, October 26^th. Effectively, Iraq has become a clear puppet of Iran (where over 90% of the population are Shiite). And most of the displaced Sunnis believe passionately that Iran is their mortal enemy. The policies of the George W Bush administration destabilized the region with the Iraq War back in 2003, and since then the region has spiraled into one of the most dangerous areas on earth…

“The power of Sunni politicians was greatly diminished by the power-sharing agreement adopted after the American invasion. Under its formula, the prime minister’s post, along with the interior and foreign ministries, are reserved for Shiites. Kurds get the presidency and finance ministry. Sunni Arabs get Parliament speaker and defense minister, but the prime minister is commander in chief, and Shiite army commanders and militia leaders wield significant influence.

“Iranian-trained Shiite militias are part of Iraq’s armed forces and have battled Islamic State militants since they seized nearly a third of Iraq in 2014. The militias have been accused of atrocities against Sunni civilians, and their presence near Sunni areas has alarmed many residents… Some Sunni politicians have advocated an autonomous Sunni region, but those proposals have gone nowhere amid partisan bickering.

“‘Sunnis have no unified leadership,’ said Wathiq al-Hashimi, the head of the Iraqi Group for Strategic Studies, an independent research group in Baghdad. ‘And Sunni politicians seem to care only about narrow personal interests.’” NY Times.

If recent history is any guide, and it certainly should be, that power vacuum among Syrian and Iraqi Sunnis will soon be filled, mostly likely by one or more extremist groups, an explosive threat not just to the region but to the world. And while we are distracted by domestic issues and the existential threats from North Korea, as our rather obviously under-thought global strategy (if there is one) fails to deliver, we just may wake up one day and get slammed in the teeth by the next whack-a-mole jihadist terrorist building their power on the backs of these disenfranchised Sunnis.

I’m Peter Dekom, and absent the most focused and complete understanding of all the serious threats around us, we are likely to be consumed once again by the unthinking seeds we planted in Iraq 14 years ago.

Power and Danger – The Urban Crush

I've blogged numerous times on the great urban-political divide that has fueled our seemingly irreconcilable differences here in the United States. Our Founding Fathers were deeply suspicious of urbanites, making sure that concentrations of city-folk could never supplant (out-vote) the great farm owners, often vast tracts of land heavily dependent on slave labor. Voting districts, how U.S. Senate seats are determined (Montana with a million residents has the same two Senators accorded to California with thirty-eight million people)… all favor rural population dispersions over urban. Unlike Europe, where political power is concentrated in the large cities, the United States gives all that power to states. It’s how Donald Trump defeated Hillary Clinton even though he lost the popular vote by a whopping three million votes.

Subsistence farming is too rapidly succumbing to climate-change disasters. Where mechanization is possible, as food sources are being locked up by global powers (especially China), modern farming techniques are doing to farm labor what automation (now driven by artificial intelligence) is doing to blue collar resource extraction and manufacturing here in the United States. These forces are pushing increasing populations into cities, already overloaded with too many people and too few economic opportunities to support that influx of unskilled labor. Insurgencies also push decimated people into cities. Even for those with specialized training and high education, the future lies in cities and not in rural districts. Kids in Iowa go to college there but have to leave to apply their new skills.

This trend toward increasing urbanization – everywhere – is also posing some pretty stiff challenges to militaries all over the world. Kim Jong-Un knows that one nuclear/hydrogen bomb in any number of US cities can produce well over a million fatalities. The mere existence of big cities offers terrorists and rogue states opportune targets. That leverage is at the core of their ability to wreak havoc and maximize their kill zone. Even a lone wolf, with no ties to a larger organization, can choose from any of many people-rich targets.

The pervasiveness of guns, based on rural values, has made big cities particularly target-rich environments for those “good guys with a gun” who become “bad guys with a gun” with no clear advanced warning. And for pure “bad guys,” it’s nothing more than an inviting shooting gallery. Folks on farms and hunters in forests are amazingly different than an angry city-dweller with hate on his mind and long guns with tons of freely available ammunition at his beck and call.

But as cities become the focal point of political power and wealth, they are also the hot military targets that define victory or failure. As ISIS fades into the shadows to ply their more traditional terrorist trade, the shambles of the cities they once held loom large. (Raqqa is pictured above) Who will pay for reconstruction in such war-torn sites? And more importantly, how do modern armies deal with this new phase of urban warfare? Formal military assaults. Insurgencies. Organized crime. Terrorist attacks. Deranged killers looking for targets. Cops? Soldiers? Cops with military assault weapons and vehicles? Robots and drones?

And in today’s world, the increasing proliferation of ultra-violence has made too many of us unmoved by reports of genocide and the deaths of innocents. We’re jaded and calloused. What’s worse, too many of these violent players, particularly insurgents (even often the armies sent to defeat them) and organized crime are rather totally indifferent to “collateral damage.” Many of these “bad hombres” perfectly willing to use innocent civilians as human shields, each side blaming the other for the carnage. Old police and military tactics are changing to deal with this urban challenge. Precision and selectivity become increasingly critical in this new battlefield.

The October 22^nd The Cipher Brief explains: “Waning are the days of the Maoist blueprint of rural insurgents pillaging small peripheral villages and seeking refuge in the hard terrain of mountainous caverns, dense forests, or expansive deserts. Soon terrorist and insurgent groups will mount operations from crowded slums and ritzy skyscrapers – not just in a dense urban landscape, but in coastal megacities that pose a unique challenge for which the U.S. military largely remains unprepared.

“The United Nations estimated in 2016 that some 55 percent of the world’s population lives in urban areas, which will grow to 60 percent by 2030. There are 512 cities of at least one million inhabitants around the world, and this too is expected to grow to 662 cities by 2030.

“Over the same time period, the number of megacities – or overlapping urban landscapes home to at least 10 million residents – is expected to grow from 31 to 41 – many of which are emerging in the developing world which will soon be economic, political, and cultural centers of gravity in the international political order…

“Urban warfare, however, is not just a future phenomenon – though the characteristics of it are changing. Entire armies have faced off in cities before – the Battle of Stalingrad in 1942, for example. Similarly, civil wars have involved devastating aerial and artillery sieges of entire cities housing those fighting in opposition to their governments, including battles such as Russian and Syrian 2016 air campaigns over Aleppo, Russian operations against Chechen separatists in Grozny in 1995, or Serbian bombardment of Sarajevo in 1992.

“But simply leveling a city to the ground does little to actually address the rumblings of insurgency – it could even reinvigorate discontent and insurgent efforts. Such operations require a close combat presence on the ground – a necessity the Israeli army continues to encounter in their operations in the densely crowded Gaza Strip. Perhaps a harbinger of the challenges to come with urban counterinsurgency is the French campaign in Algiers in the 1950s – leading to an estimated 350,000 Algerian civilian deaths and the cascade of decolonization.

“Furthermore, megacities such as Lagos, Cairo, Karachi, Dhaka, Johannesburg, Luanda, Dar-es-Salaam, Kinshasa, and Mumbai will be global economic hubs, with some being home to major ports, financial centers, or critical industries on which the rest of the world relies. Merely laying siege to neighborhoods within these megacities in order to route [sic] out insurgents is not a strategically sound option and evacuating millions of innocent civilians prior to fighting is a logistical nightmare. Battles in these hubs will have significant economic and political ripple effects, as the Syrian migrant crisis currently facing Europe shows.

“Wars of the future will not be fighting for cities, but rather fighting within them. Counterinsurgency of the future will take place in peripheral slums, along narrow backstreets, and among a metropolis of civilians going about their days.

“U.S. military operations in Mogadishu, Sadr City, Fallujah, and more recently Sirte provide insight into the challenges of operating in these environments, but on a much smaller scale. Importantly, megacities are not just big cities, but a unique and constantly adapting system of systems, where the casual link between destabilizing neighborhoods rippling across the city and into the region and the world is difficult to determine.

“Perhaps the defining characteristic of the future of counterinsurgency in megacities is the omnipresence of innocent civilians. This creates a number of implications – most notably the risk of collateral damage that could undermine the counterinsurgency efforts…

“While ‘danger close’ tactical drone strikes and aerial reconnaissance may have enabled the street-to-street fighting in Sirte, such operations will be severely limited over expansive megacities. The threat of civilian casualties is often too high, even for many precision-guided munitions with limited blast radius, and buildings and layers of infrastructure often obscure a clear overhead view… Furthermore, the danger of inadvertently causing harm to a city’s bystanders ‘limits not only the choice of weapons, but also the choice of allies,’ said [Vanda Felbab-Brown, a Senior Fellow in the Center for 21^st Century Security and Intelligence at the Brookings Institution].

“‘If local militias or warlords are recruited for counterinsurgency operations, the formal counterinsurgent forces need to be ready and willing to disarm them after the campaign’s completion and promote accountable, equitable, and non-discriminatory governance,’ she added.

“Insurgent groups will also be able to establish mutually beneficial relationships with local groups, such as organized criminal networks. As they are already operating out of global economic centers with the necessary infrastructure, these criminal networks will provide access to established illicit trafficking routes for weapons and other vital supplies – such as perhaps commercial drones, explosives, or even biological or chemical agents – as well as a consistent means to fund their operations locally.

“While the advantage of heavy weaponry a counterinsurgent force has enjoyed in the past will become limited in megacities, ground forces, such as tactical counterterrorism units or special operations forces, will encounter related challenges as a result of the physical terrain within a burgeoning metropolis. Urban canyons between skyscrapers with vantage points from windows and rooftops along bustling narrow networks of streets and alleys increase avenues of approach for insurgents to ambush troops, all while hindering the counterinsurgent’s line of sight. Subterranean layers such as subways and sewers only further this problem, allowing militants to attack and disappear at will…

“While urban insurgents are now able to leverage commercial technologies such as Google Earth satellite imagery and small hobby drones capable of aerial reconnaissance for maneuver, targeting, and explosives delivery, there are new technologies being developed for counterinsurgents as well. What is particularly necessary, are tools to differentiate insurgents hiding among millions of residents in order to detect and preempt their operations.

“New technologies at the disposal of counterinsurgents “include sophisticated biometric, facial recognition, and biochemical sensing systems to detect explosive residues or track individuals in crowded spaces, as well as big-data techniques to monitor and respond rapidly to subtle but detectable changes in an urban environment,” said [David Kilcullen, the former Special Advisor for Counterinsurgency to the U.S. Secretary of State].

“‘They include new counter-sniper, counter-IED, and counter-drone technologies, techniques for emplacing and employing mesh-networks of ground-based and airborne sensors, and new organizational structures – smaller, more modular but better protected units that can more effectively operate in urban areas,’ he added.” We are unprepared, and our generals know that. As much as they cry for large and expensive weapon systems, from rapidly-becoming-obsolete large target naval ships (like aircraft carriers) to aircraft designed for large-nation-to-nation warfare, there does need to be a new emphasis on the true wars of the future. Now!

I’m Peter Dekom, and I so wonder if our Commander in Chief has the slightest understanding of the world he has to deal with.

Car Wreck, 21st Century Style

Aside from the climate-change induced challenges here in the U.S. – searing temperatures/ droughts/fires out west, hurricanes in the Gulf and Atlantic, flooding and great storm activity in the Mid-West and the Polar Vortex in the Northeast – there’s this further additional economic storm surge brewing out there. This is hardly just an American problem: No political system in the world has addressed the massive unemployment displacement issues that will inevitably rip and rage across the planet as artificial intelligence (AI) driven automation and robotics replace human labor at an accelerating pace.

What we see in growing income inequality, now rearing its ugly head in the developed world (especially in the United States), as the owners of these glorious machines now enjoy the income that used to be generated by their former employees. So much for reshoring manufacturing to create jobs. We’ve moved from the industrial revolution, through the information/knowledge age and are roaring toward a rather robust AI-automation era.

As employers, from the manufacturers and blue collar companies of today to the high-end service providers (doctors, lawyers, investment advisors, etc.) going forward, make microeconomic decisions to improve their individual competitive advantage and fire workers, the macroeconomic consequences will bring down entire nations and economic structures. As you may have guessed, the bugaboo is no longer “globalization,” an issue from an earlier era that too many old politicians believe still relevant, the backbone of increasing nationalism and populism. They kind of miss the point, missing the much, much bigger picture: automation will redefine social realities everywhere… made that much worse by the massive cost to take care of Malthusian population growth against that climate change backdrop. “Globalization” is rapidly becoming yesterday’s news.

We still have no scheme to replace the income tax that was/is currently being paid by individuals who work for a living who will lose their jobs and become social burdens rather than taxpayers. Do we tax the machines that replace them, change ownership rules or impose some other “make-up” economic system? How does this money, if we can figure that out, get back “to the people”? With all this job displacement, where will the consumers needed to buy these more efficiently provided products and services come from?

So in summary, there are three massive threats to mankind, issues that have given rise to increasing desperation, incalculable fear and hopelessness, conflicts and isolationism, that define the greatest challenges to the modern world: unsustainable population growth, out-of-control climate change and tsunamic shifts in technology. While the impact on borders, trade agreements and international relations will be radically changed because of these variables, “globalization” per se is no longer the driving force behind that change.

To illustrate my point today, I have picked an industry that is threatened with severe contraction based on these variables: car-making. And this is not about pollution controls or better and more efficient engines. This is about the social role of cars themselves in “future-world.”

While there are many experts who tell you that electric cars are not as green as the automotive industry may suggest – after all the charging electricity as often as not comes from power generation from a polluting source – consumers have not embraced electric cars in the droves predicted for two other major reasons: not enough range and it takes too long to recharge a car running out of electrical power. But every car manufacture of note, and more than a few information technology companies (e.g., Google and Apple), are focused on a new age of driverless vehicles… almost exclusively powered by electricity or hydrogen fuel cells. Their assumptions rest squarely on this vision of the future.

Younger generations are not as enamored of car-ownership as were their parents. The notion of car ownership is rapidly being replaced with car “access.” Lyft and Uber are the early manifestations of this phenomenon. Urban planners envision fleets of autonomous vehicles responding to on-demand consumer requests, returning to base stations only to recharge. What happens to the parking structures, garages, under this view? What happens to car ownership itself? And most importantly, what happens to the mass of “old world” cars that lack the technology to participate in this new automotive world? The transition could get downright ugly.

Ford Motors’ new CEO, Jim Hackett, thinks there is wake-up call for all car-makers to realize that consumers just might avoid purchasing new cars – already a U.S. consumer trend that moved from buying a new car every two years, when I was a boy, to once every eleven years today – because they sense that seminal new technology will trash aftermarket values. Hackett has proposed a "restructuring roadmap" to address these issues, particularly the expected contraction in consumer purchases of new cars.

“[Hackett’s] goal is to generate $12 billion in cost savings by 2022. [Morgan Stanley analyst Adam] Jonas scrutinizes a range of options, from layoffs to financial write-downs, but buried in the note is this: ‘We believe many of Ford's restructuring actions are meant to ensure the fitness of the company's operations during a highly uncertain time which may include a reduced value of its products in the second-hand market, particularly as Ford and its peers introduce superior technologies in critical areas such as connectivity, propulsion and automation.’" AOL.com, October 16^th. Huh? Simply, what will all these changes mean for the second hand car market, that “resale value” number that most consumers think about when they buy a new car? And how exactly will old-world cars be allowed to interface with new-world driverless cars (note, I asked this question backwards!)? When will old-world cars simply be banned entirely?

What is the value of a gasoline or diesel-powered vehicle in the coming after-market? How many filling stations will be required to service a dwindling number of fossil-fueled cars and trucks?  “It might not happen, of course. Electric cars were supposed to be on their way to 15%-20% of the global market by now; they currently make up about 1%. Self-driving vehicles are still largely in the experimental phase, and it's unclear whether consumers will be willing to shell out the thousands of dollars needed to equip existing vehicles with even just advanced cruise control, of the type that Tesla and Cadillac have rolled out. 

“But the markets want Ford to be ready for a used-car apocalypse regardless. And in fact that preparation might be valuable, as the used-car market is becoming flooded with vehicles that were sold during the record years of 2015 and 2016, when over 34 million new vehicles rolled off dealer lots in the US alone.” AOL.com. For the “smarties” who think this issue is solved by leasing instead of buying, remember that the cost of a lease is deeply impacted by the expected value of the vehicle at the end of the lease!

You also have to believe that range-driving distance issues will vaporize as improved battery technology or alternative fuel systems are deployed. The replacement of fossil fuel-burning electrical power plants – sorry King Coal and fracking advocates – with green alternatives is taking place as fast as these systems can be put online.

Sure there will be short-term surge in new car sales based on the losses of vehicles from recent natural disasters… but counting on natural disasters is hardly a sustainable business plan, and rising insurance costs may drive even more consumers from buying new cars. In the end, all of these variables require deep thinking, preplanning and a veering away from politics than is primarily reactive and not proactive. Think that is happening anytime soon? 

I’m Peter Dekom, and the mantra of “Make America Great Again” is a meaningless cry to push back the hands of time, one that simply is destined to fail in the face of changes that just will not go away by reason of statute or executive order.

Camera Obscura

Juries remain unconvinced. Police behavior has not changed. And they’re expensive. Huh? Oh, I’m talking about those police body cameras that were intended to increase sensitivity and reduce instances of excess use of force by cops that use them. And while we probably need more time, for cops and people to get used to them and begin to understand their yet-unrealized value, the impact-to-date of these body cams on improving police behavior has been disappointing.

“[Jurors] watching [police body cam] images playing on projection screens in courtrooms, have not come away with simple answers. In some trials, a single piece of body-camera footage has been used to illustrate competing viewpoints: In [a] Milwaukee case, slowed-down, frame-by-frame video was used to show that the suspect had no weapon when he was shot a second time. The same video, played at regular speed, revealed a scene that was swift, confusing and chaotic, a boost to the defense.

“Some jurors in these cases have said that, videos aside, they had been swayed most of all by officers’ assertions that they feared for their lives. And in some cases, the videos themselves do not fully show operative moments, leaving jurors to fill in the blanks…

“Some people had presumed that more videos would hand juries clear-cut answers to accusations of police misconduct… The videos ‘have changed things,’ said David A. Harris, a law professor at the University of Pittsburgh who studies police behavior, police regulation and racial profiling. ‘But it was a little naïve to think they’d solve the problem, or get us all the way home on the question of guilt or innocence.’” New York Times, June 25th.

“By 2015, 95 percent of large police departments reported they were using body cameras or had committed to doing so in the near future, according to a national survey. The federal government has given police departments more than $40 million to invest in body cameras, and state and local authorities have spent many millions more…

“After a series of high-profile police shootings, police departments across the nation turned to body cameras, hoping they would curb abuses. But a rigorous study released Friday [10/20] shows that they have almost no effect on officer behavior.

“The 18-month study of more than 2,000 police officers in Washington [D.C.] found that officers equipped with cameras used force and prompted civilian complaints at about the same rate as those who did not have them…

“Chief Peter Newsham of the Metropolitan Police Department in Washington said the results were surprising. ‘I thought it would have a difference on police and civilian behavior,’ he said. ‘Particularly for officers — and this is the exception — who might be more inclined to misbehave.’

“But Chief Newsham said the cameras had a number of benefits that could not be easily measured: more accurate investigations, better training and at least one case in which the footage exonerated an officer accused of shooting an unarmed suspect (who was indeed armed). Most important, he said, they bolstered the trust of the community… ‘You have to be legitimate and trusted,’ he said. ‘You can’t underestimate the value these cameras bring to that.’

“Behavior modification has never been the sole argument for body cameras. Their most important function may be to create an independent record of police shootings and other encounters with the public…

“Though body cameras are now in greater use, their purpose is often left undefined, raising thorny questions about surveillance, privacy and other issues. ‘Police departments have been rushing to body cameras without sufficiently deciding what the goal is,’ said Seth Stoughton, a former officer and a law professor at the University of South Carolina, who has studied the devices extensively. ‘When no one is sure what it is supposed to do, no one knows if it is working.’…

“Monica Hopkins-Maxwell, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of the District of Columbia, said cameras were ‘not a panacea’ and that only more emphasis on initiatives like community policing, data collection and better training would help build good will.

‘I don’t think body cameras in any way, shape or form by themselves increase trust,’ she said. ‘The way you increase trust is through relationships and how communities are treated by police officers.’” New York Times, October 20^th.

So do we save money and decommission this technology? Should money be deployed in more productive areas like community relations and training? Or are body cams part of a greater learning experience that we have yet to harness and understand, something that just might save lives, redesign training programs and ultimately build that under-performing level of trust among too many communities who still view cops as enemy intruders?

I’m Peter Dekom, and in this over-connected world of instant responses and easy solutions, sometimes it just might make sense to invoke patience and seek better uses of the information we are generating by the ton.