Body Cameras Cons

Police brutality has escalated in the United States these past few years from the death of Trayvon Martin all the way to Michael Brown from Ferguson, MO. (Some states are requiring police officers to wear body cameras, and now there is a push for federal law requiring every police officer in the United States to be equipped with a body camera). The reasoning behind this is because body cameras benefit both the police officer and the citizen in many different ways. Some examples of these benefits include, encouraging both parties to do the right thing by the law, help exonerate police officers from crimes, and also provide proof to hold someone accountable for a crime whether it’s the citizen or the officer. In order to make sure citizens …show more content…
This creates an issue between the general public and police officers since the public are starting to fear and lose trust in the ones that are supposed to protect them. Providing police officers with a body camera encourages the citizen and the police officer to follow the law because they know that someone is watching them. There has been numerous studies conducted that have figured out that people behave better when they think that they are being watched. In the article “Body Cameras Could Restore Trust in Police Officers” the author Neil Franklin, an ex commander in chief of the Maryland Police …show more content…
citizen problem and believe that body cameras are capable of doing so, as well. The University of Cambridge in the UK ran a study on the police department in Rialto, California using body cameras. After a year long study with 1,000 officers, the students were able to draw the conclusion that the rate of police officers having to use force got cut 50%. Along with that the number of complaints against police officers got cut down by 90% ("Evidence Shows Police Body” ). Body cameras are not only good for the protection of the citizen but also for the police officer. In Cleveland, Ohio police officers jobs were on the line but were saved by the release of a video shot by a body camera. A group of officers were climbing the stairs to a man’s apartment in which they were arresting him for having a firearm. When the man spotted an officer, he opened fire and shot him. In the video evidence, one can hear the officer explain to the man that even though he shot him, the police officer would not shoot him back and asked the man to lower his firearm (Gass). When the man began to raise the firearm in attempt to shoot the cop again, the other cops opened fire on the man after asking the gentleman to put the gun down and that they can help him. The police department got an abundant amount of backlash after shooting the citizen but, because of the video footage, they were able to prove they took