The Influence Of Body Cameras

Four hundred. This is the number of police brutality cases reported in the U.S. this past year. USA Today estimated that there were roughly two victims that were either killed or severely injured through police brutality on a bi-weekly basis. The number of police brutality events occurring each year have been steadily rising and culminated in the highly disputed killing of Michael Brown last year. Brown was an unarmed black teenager who was shot and killed on August 9th 2015 by police officer Darren Wilson in Ferguson, Missouri. While Wilson claims that brown charged at him in a threatening manner, several witnesses insist that Wilson shot Brown while his hands were still in the air, a sign of surrender. Many people throughout America began …show more content…
In a recent NYPD case over the use of body cameras on police, the ruling judge stated that “If, in fact, the police do, on occasion, use offensive language—including racial slurs—or act with more force than necessary, the use of body-worn cameras will inevitably reduce such behavior.” This claim over an improvement in the police officers behavior was put to the test by researches at Arizona State University. The researches took a sample of 100 police officers from across the nation and had them wear body cameras for three months. The researches noted that at the beginning of the experiment most of the officers had negative attitudes toward civilians with whom they interacted on a daily basis. However, after the conclusion of the experiment the researchers saw a drastic improvement in officer behaviors and attitudes. The researchers recorded that 77% of the police officers believed that the introduction of the body camera caused them to behave more professionally. This significant change in behavior is caused primarily from the presence of body cameras. Since every action the police officer commits will be recorded through these body cameras, the police will be more consistently conscious to their actions and behaviors. When a police officer encounters a situation where their first plan of action is to commit a questionable act, these body cameras will force them to reconsider their course of action to a more suitable response. This constant reminder to always perform their duties with a moral conscious will help prevent further police abuse. This study proves that the implementation of body cameras on police will increase the overall professional behavior of the police