To the editor:

As an experienced business person I know, intuitively, that managing police officers is a nightmare.

Any chief (who doesn’t buy into the old culture of the “blue line retaliation”) is smart enough to know that mandatory body cameras force the culture of silence to change. They eliminate the threats that an officer who tells the truth faces. Body cameras provide officers with a “safe space” to tell the truth and bad officers are quickly weeded out.

I support mandatory police body cams now for Bainbridge police.

I certainly had the feeling that the chief was quietly asking for “help” when he casually said, during a Public Safety Committee meeting in 2017, that if it were up to him, body cameras would be mandatory.

GARY TRIPP

Bainbridge Island