DAVID BROOKS:

Yes.

Well, you know, I suspect — my theory would be that these things have always been happening, and we just haven't known about it and talked about it, or without the cop cam in this case, we probably wouldn't know about this at all. It would just be an invisible case for most of us.

And so I'm ambivalent about cop cams, because I think a lot of what police is, they go into homes of people at their most vulnerable moments. I'm a little nervous about the cameras in those circumstances. I'm also a little nervous about the way the camera may interfere with trust, a trusting relationship with a civilian and a police officer.

Nevertheless, in this case, it's a clear, obvious good thing that we have the cam. We can find out exactly what happened. And it's very clear. He shot the guy when he was in his car. And so I do think this is a case where finally we have the technology that gives us the information.

As to why the murder rates are rising, my reading of the research on this is that first there's a lot of gang activity and a lot of it is extremely localized. But if police — we have seen all these cases of police abuse. But the police are there for a reason and they generally do good and they generally prevent crime.

And if the police are being a little less aggressive, sometimes for good reason, it's not totally surprising you're going to see an uptick in crime.