April 15, 2015

By Jim Nowlan
Outside Columnist

Recent high-profile police shootings have put local law enforcement across the country under scrutiny. Will body cameras on police provide, as some experts think, a high-tech tool to improve behavior by both police and suspects, and thus de-escalate tensions over time?
The Economist, a highly respected United Kingdom weekly, offers trenchant analysis of American society by thoughtful outsiders. In December, the magazine excoriated U.S. policing for excessive use of force.
The publication noted that police in the U.S. shot and killed at least 458 people last year. In contrast, English “bobbies” felled no one in the period.
The Economist admitted that many American police operate in a violent world. Forty-six policemen were shot dead in the past year, and 52,000 were assaulted.
Policing has changed dramatically since I was a youngster in the 1950s.
In my rural county of Stark, for example, we then had simply a sheriff and his deputy; the deputy lived in the jail, and his wife cooked for the inmates.     Login or Subscribe to read the rest of this story.