Police Body Camera Research Paper

Words: 1288
Pages: 6

The Use of Police Body Cameras to Sooth The American People For year police have have a relatively good reputation for upholding the law and doing what is right. It seems to have been of recent that police have gotten a particularly bad reputation from the american people. The largest contributor to this has been the shooting of Michael Brown. Unfortunately this ended in the untimely death of one of america's young people. This shooting has cost the state of missouri “$11.7 million on the National Guard and Highway Patrol” (Missouri), not to mention the cost of the attempted indictment of Darren Brown. The biggest issue with this case is that no one really knows what happened but the two people involved in the situation, one of whom is deceased. …show more content…
The simple answer to this is police body cameras, if civilians know that police will be held accountable for their actions then clearly they will trust the police more. An experiment in Rialto, CA proved just that. The experiment showed “the year before the camera project started, officers were the subject of 30 complaints; at the officers’ current pace, they were estimated to generate 12 complaints during the camera project study”, thats a 40% decline in just a year. Not to mention that once civilians are used to the body cameras there may be even a further decline. Also, as the agencies weed out the bad cops, complaint numbers will continue to plummet. The study also concluded that “Citizens may be less likely to file “frivolous” or untruthful complaints against officers wearing cameras because citizens know that the video evidence can instantly refute their claims.” (USA) Further strengthening the thought that body cameras will save the taxpayers money by decreasing the numbers of faulty cases the lawyers have to fight, and even decreasing the number of times a police agency has to pay for damages to an individual it did not …show more content…
Cameras are recording all of the time, so say the police are doing a drug bust and someone runs. While the suspect is running he throws a baggie. The camera may see where the baggie went where the pursuing officer may not have seen quite where it went. The police can then look at the recording and see exactly where the baggie went and collect it as evidence. Also, in instances where the police respond to a crime scene that may be deteriorating quickly, like outside while its pouring rain, the footage from the body cameras may be critical to gathering as much evidence as possible, such as blood spatter and things of that sort. Even in use of force cases police and attorneys could quickly draw the body camera footage and show weather there is any wrong doing or not. Again, saving the taxpayers a ton of money and protecting the citizens of this