Television host Armstrong Williams tells Newsmax that outfitting police officers with body cameras, as proposed by President Barack Obama, benefits both police officers and citizens.
"It works, there's no question," Williams, host of The Armstrong Williams Show, told J.D. Hayworth on
Newsmax TV's "America's Forum" on Tuesday.
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Obama proposed Monday that Congress
approve a package to help police departments improve their standing in communities, which includes $74 million for body cameras for police officers.
"The results are in, 83 to 90 percent of the time when the cameras are on, the police are at their best behavior and often times the so-called victim is at their best behavior," he explained.
"People think that it's only for the people that are making the accusations against law enforcement, but it also protects law enforcement because sometimes what the media will report is a certain frame of what took place, and it looks as though law enforcement is at fault, but if you further look at the frames of the camera, you could see that this person just hit the police officer in the face and that was not shown in the beginning," he said.
"As you look at the fullness of it, you begin to realize that the officer was absolutely correct in the actions that he took in that situation, so it protects both," he added.
Whatever is done, the issue must be addressed in some way, Williams contends.
"There is an aspect of this country that feels maligned, disrespected, devalued and whether that's real or not . . . we are our brother's keeper," he explained.
"Whether we disagree with the president's approach and the attorney general, it is something that needs to be addressed, whether that is placing cameras, whether it's how we train police officers," he said.
"Something has to be done," he added.
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However, Williams says that "you're not going to ever end racial profiling, especially in the majority of these cities, in inner cities where the majority of killing is done by young men who happen to be black.
"How else are you going to make a determination and how else are you going to come to some conclusion that somebody else is committing these crimes when the majority look a certain way," he argued.
He says that the ultimate goal is "to get to the point where in those communities they must feel their self-worth, they must feel their value, they must feel that there's opportunity for them in America instead of laying in some wasteland in these things that we call projects."
"Something has gone terribly wrong in America and it's going to take all of us to try to find some resolution to this problem," he added.
However, Williams says that he is concerned about the protests in Ferguson, following the grand jury's decision not to indict police officer Darren Wilson for shooting black teenager Michael Brown, adding that the lack of enforcement of the rioters the night of the decision must have come from the White House.
"That could have only come from the White House and the Justice Department," he contends.
"No other place could you override a governor, state law enforcement — where they sit down and are useless," he explained.
"It had to come from the White House. That is not even something someone has to think about it. It's just common sense," he added.
"These protestors are organized. They're encouraged to protest and riot because they have a greater agenda that we're not able to see yet and as more and more of this is unveiled and the media backs down and decides to report the fullness of the story, much of this we'll find out," Williams said.