Pros And Cons Of Wearing Body Cameras

Superior Essays
Law enforcement using the response to resistance technique incidents has dropped fifty-three percent, and citizen complains about officers has also declined approximately sixty-five percent (Wing 2015). Statistics show that officers wearing body camera had been increasingly attentive than ever; this also reduces the number of civilians injured by officers wearing the body camera, and the injuries to themselves. Police officers should be required to wear body cameras while on duty because it formed trust between police and civilians, creates better performance by the officers and community, and provides proof against fabricated claims.
Critics imply that wearing body cameras would invade police confidentiality because the cameras would have
…show more content…
As studies have shown the cameras worn on during duty have been twenty-five percent more helpful throughout the officer’s interactions with the public (Kelsh 2015). This indicates that the police officers are extra cautious and careful when in contact with a member of the public because they have wisely thought thoroughly about the criminal policy and procedures. For example, Police Body Cameras claimed the incident that happened in July of 2014; Officer Pantaleo had put Eric Garner, an unarmed African American who had been illegally selling cigarettes, in a chokehold position after Garner resisted arrest. However, Garner was asthmatic and had died from asphyxiation right at the moment, and a civilian taped the event and started a public uproar (2015). “These forceful incidents are called response to resistance, and by wearing body cameras these have dropped remarkably fifty-three percent,” Ariel mentioned (2012). In addition, when there is trust between officers and the community it increases effectiveness and safety for the officers and the public. Wing explained that cameras have changed the community’s actions and helped decrease confrontations between officers and the public (2015). It is clear the number of citizen injuries made by police and injuries towards officers themselves are reduced because of worn …show more content…
InfoBase Learning, 26 Aug. 2015. Web. 02 Nov. 2016. http://icof.infobaselearning.com/recordurl.aspx?ID=14993
Ready, Justin; Young, Jacob. "The Impact of On-officer Video Cameras on Police–citizen Contacts: Findings from a Controlled Experiment 
in Mesa, AZ." Journal of Experimental Criminology, June 2015. Doi: 10.1007/s11292-015-9237-8. - See more at: http://journalistsresource.org/studies/government/criminal-justice/body-cameras-police-interact-with-public#sthash.umFutbMf.dpuf Web. 02 Nov. 2016.
Wing, N. (Ed.). (2015, October 13). Study Shows Less Violence, Fewer Complaints When Cops Wear Body Cameras. Huffington Post Politics. Retrieved November 02, 2016 from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/police-body-camera-study_us_561d2ea1e4b028dd7ea53a56
White, Michael D. "Police officer body-worn cameras: Assessing the evidence." Washington, DC: Office of Community Oriented Policing Services (2014). https://www.ncjrs.gov/App/Publications/abstract.aspx?ID=270041 Web. 02 Nov. 2016.
Ariel B., Farrar W. A., Sutherland A. (2014). The effect of police body-worn cameras on use of force and citizens’ complaints against the police: A randomized controlled trial. Journal of Quantitative Criminology, 1–27. Advance online publication 19 November 2014. DOI: 10.1007/s10940-014-9236-3 http://icj.sagepub.com/content/25/1/80.full.pdf+html Web. 02 Nov.

Related Documents

  • Improved Essays

    Some stories say that just because the police officer has a camera on does not mean they are actually turned on and filming. Cases of police brutality have been reported and the cameras were not turned on. Evidence throughout this article proves that this site is valid and that this site has the credentials to publicize this essay.…

    • 861 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Being in law enforcement isn 't a easy job. The goal of a police officer is to protect and serve the civilians. Lately, police brutality has been a hot topic of discussion due to some police officers taking their power to extreme measures when dealing with the public. Many unarmed minorities were being killed at the hands of officers all over the United States. According to the website www.mappingpoliceviolence.org, "37% of unarmed minorities were killed by police in 2015 and on 10 out of the 102 cases, the police were actually charged with the crime" (Mapping Violence, 2015). This raised a red flag in the eye of the public and they started asking questions and demanding answers. To solve this issue, police officers should be required to wear body cameras on duty when interacting with the public because it will show the behaviors of the police officers, collect any evidence that is needed to solve a case and it will protect the public against police brutality.…

    • 982 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    With all the police brutality claims now there is so much controversy over police officers wearing body cameras. Some people feel that the officers should wear the cameras so that there will be a video of everything happening and there will be proof of what is going on between the officers and the civilians. Other people do not want the cameras because it violates people’s privacy. This has been an ongoing debate for a while now. In this essay I want to show some of the benefits for the body cameras. The cameras have many positive features to them a few of them would be that the videos give solid evidence to hold people accountable for their actions, people are more aware of their actions when the cameras are present so there have been fewer complaints made, also, the use of force has also decreased since police have started using the cameras.…

    • 1037 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    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…

    • 1641 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Body-worn cameras are becoming increasingly popular among law enforcement agencies today. With the increased concerns of racial bias, excessive use of force claims, and lack of trust in law enforcement within the community, it has become an essential tool in rebuilding this broken relationship. As we will see body-worn cameras protect not only citizens from excessive use of force by police officers it also protects the officer from false claims, and attacks from citizens. There is still very little research on the effectiveness of body-worn cameras by law enforcement but as this technology becomes increasingly popular we begin to see how important this cameras can be in establishing a healthy police-citizen relationship.…

    • 913 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Researchers from the University of Wyoming College of Criminal Justice, Associate Professors Scott Culhane John Boman, and Psychology Department Associate Professor Kimberly Schweitzer published their 2016 study in the journal Police Quarterly regarding the role body worn cameras play in public perceptions of whether police use of force is justifiable. Professor Culhane completed his post-graduate degree at the University of Texas El Paso in Legal Psychology from the University of Texas at El Paso. He is credited with co-authoring twenty-seven published peer-reviewed articles for a variety of criminal justice related topics (University of Wyoming, n.d.). Professor Boman received his post-graduate degree from University of Florida and Professor…

    • 1345 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    While many when they think of body cameras they immediately think of how they can help the community and do not think of how they are able to help out the police officers wearing them as well. Many of the same benefits that the community has for police body cameras exist for the actual police officers such as recording an interaction with someone in the community. This can help police officers by proving their innocence when a false accusation or charge is brought upon them. Another way body cameras can help police officers is when they are making incident reports, which are for police officers to record what happened during an altercation with someone, they can be used to help police remember what had happened accurately and are able to justify their actions. While many say that police should not be able to view their footage when making an incident report i also do agree but in some cases they may be able to view the footage. Many concerns come with the suggestion of police using the footage to create their incident reports such as swaying their memory to make untruthful accusations of what happened and to also give them time to make excuses to try to justify their wrongful…

    • 1102 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Wear Body Cameras

    • 1160 Words
    • 5 Pages

    The accountability of police wearing body cameras is a positive benefit. A woman commenting on the issue claims that, “innocent people are dying and police need to be held accountable for what they are doing, bad or good.” (Stanley). This statement is another benefit of the body camera. In a 2015 police violence report “Mapping Police Violence,” the author states” Unarmed black people were killed at 5x the rate of unarmed whites in 2015.(MappingPoliceViolence). Many people feel that in court the police are not being convicted of killing unarmed people. The cameras require justice in court, because currently without cameras “Only 9 of 102 cases resulted in officers being charged with a crime.”…

    • 1160 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    After reading “Should law enforcement agents wear body cameras”, it targets people that have experienced police brutality. Body cameras shows an officers’ point of view of how they react in difficult situations and carry out duties. Whether or not law enforcement carry out the law justly, body cameras will be used as evidence to understand both sides.…

    • 1026 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The department does not currently use in car video or body worn cameras (Deputy Chief, David Grover, personal communication, March 16, 2018). Consequently, supervisors do not have the capability of using any video as evidence in investigations of citizen’s complaints or other reported officer misconduct. Sergeants of the Scarborough Police Department are often not at most calls for service so they do not witness a majority of the officers’ behavior. Sergeants also are unable to fully evaluate the actions of their officers to give constructive feedback or discipline for actions they have not witnessed causing a lack of accountability by officers. Body worn cameras will also contribute many other benefits such as improved evidence documentation for court and better behavior of those encountered. The positives of a body worn camera program also come with several negative elements such as the initial and yearly cost of equipment, digital storage, labor to redact and analyze video as well as the necessary planning and research to produce a well-rounded sustainable…

    • 639 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    This number has increased greatly since 2013 as one-third of police departments are now outfitting policemen with wearable cameras (Delong, 2015). This can be attributed to increasing calls for police to wear body cameras to provide more accountability of police officers after accusations of police brutality in numerous high-profile cases (Vega, 2015). Although it has been shown that wearing body cameras greatly lessens incidents of officer use of force, as well as decreases the number of citizen complaints against police officers, there are privacy issues involved (Delong, 2015). There are also legal questions regarding who would have access to the video recordings, how to prevent selective editing, and how to ensure that…

    • 1418 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Throughout the past 10 years there has been many talks on whether the police should be required to wear body cameras. Throughout all the research and studies regarding these cameras, these have been many pros to body cams but there have also been cons and many challenges to implementing this system in police forces throughout the country. Many different police stations have done experiments with these cameras and have all shown very positive feedback. Regardless of the amount of work necessary to implement these cameras, it should be necessary for officers to wear these body cameras because they have the potential to save lives. To go along with that, police should be forced to wear these body cameras because they have the potential to save lives, give better representation than hearing a testimony, and make suspects less likely to run or attack an officer because everything they do is caught on camera.…

    • 1172 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Third and even more importantly, police should wear body cameras because it prevents violence. Researchers at the University of South Florida released a report about a year long study of police wearing cameras. From March 2014 to February 2015, 46 officers wore cameras while 43 did not. Use-of-force incidents dropped 53 percent among the officers with cameras (Wing 2015). This study is trying to prove that the cameras have had a great outcome when used. The way the study compared two sides shows that not only do police officers change their behavior but the community as well. Cameras act as “someone” watching what officers do every second so when there is a time where use-of-force comes into their thinking, they have to double check to see…

    • 373 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    With no privacy or use guidelines yet in place, some are weary of the use of these cameras, “Without strong policies …departments could lose the public 's trust. The public needs to know cameras aren 't only being turned on when it 'll help officers.” ("Police Body Cameras Raise Privacy Concerns"). Not only is the general public weary, but officers themselves are afraid of getting caught saying or doing something that would risk their job--so much so that they started breaking off antennas of the cameras at one police department, “but mysteriously the recorders stopped working...officers were purposefully breaking off the antennas on their recorders to disable them” (Hu, Elise). With this kind of activity going on, certain privacy and use guidelines need to be put in place to protect both the officer and the suspect(s) from any possibly embarrassing video footage, as well as ensuring the proper documentation of each…

    • 828 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Body Cameras are the most recent and seem to be the most challenging form of police equipment to date. All the way from its decision to make its way into police departments in America to the way it should be handled and used. They are the newest extension to police departments that allow police task force to become tech-savvy in the 21st century or what sociologist and communications theorist Manuel Castells would say the “digital information age”. The police executive research Forum (PERF) states that body cameras are a mechanism to improve evidence collection, to strengthen officer performance and accountability, to enhance agency transparency, to document encounters between police and the public, and to investigate and resolve complaints…

    • 401 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays

Related Topics