Video Surveillance and Law Enforcement
"The body camera is not to actually punish cops, its to find out what actually happened."- Cenk Uygur, The Young Turks
In certain communities and groups of people, there seems to be a fear associated with police in the United States of America. It is a fear of maltreatment from law enforcement agents on a basis of race, nationality, gender, or any other discerning factor that would be considered a hate crime. On the aspect of racial identity, it should be duly noted that desegregation only occurred less than 60 years ago - with many African Americans who have lived through mistreatment of police before the Civil Rights Act of 1964 still alive today.
As for body cameras, most law enforcement agencies did not require officers to wear video surveillance equipment until after the August 9, 2014 incident in which the 18-year-old Michael Brown, a resident of Ferguson, Missouri, was killed by office Darren Wilson. On December 2nd of 2014, President Barack Obama proposed that the federal government would reimburse half the cost of body camera programs for localities that participated.
There are multiple occasions where body camera footage has protected an officer that hasn't been disclosed to the media - often in times where an action performed by the officer was lawful but either caused injury to an individual attempting to harm the officer or in cases where edited footage from bystanders is displayed on social media in an attempt to proclaim police brutality. Incidents like this will be addressed to the officer's department and will stop at that level once the body camera footage proves their innocence. Body camera footage is released as a result of legal action or in times when public opinion on an incident is profoundly negative.
There are opponents to police body cameras, but most arguments are on a rational aspect of its usage. These sentiments are towards cameras that are required to record during the officers' entire shift and are all privacy-related concerns.
- Private conversations with family and friends over the phone.
- Footage of people in private or semi-private areas that officers must walk past.
- Conversations with individuals reporting criminals in the area.
- Privileged conversations with attorneys.
- Identities of child-crime victims and people in compromised states of dignity.
The defining argument against police body cameras is towards the "always-on" policy that some departments require. No other profession requires an individual to record every aspect of their day. This can also have an effect on morale: assume an incident where an officer gets hurt by someone they are arresting. After processing the individual, the officer speaks to a fellow officer in a private conversation to say, "That idiot bit the mess out of me! I hope they get the max punishment!" What happens to the police officer if his day's footage is under review? Will, the officer be reprimanded for what they said in a private conversation? Could anything said about the incident in a private conversation cause for the case to be dismissed?
I believe law enforcement officers have a right to privacy as much as any citizen does. However, this right should not be extended to the moments where the officer is performing their duties, due to the nature of past incidents concerning police brutality and wrongly accused officers.
Long story short: body cameras keep everyone safe.
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