The Importance Of Body Cameras In Law Enforcement

In the United States a person cannot go through their day without being under some form of surveillance. The US has been on edge lately with law enforcement, due to crimes that have occurred over the years especially with those of minority race. The American Civil Liberties Union, commonly known as the ACLU, strives to defend and preserve the rights and liberties that are granted under the constitution. The ACLU has been crafting their vision for how the criminal justice system should handle police integrity. The ACLU advocates cameras for all uniformed officers, while many other criminologist believe that they are not the long term solution to the issue. Advocates believe that body cameras can protect the people from law enforcement. Advocates

According to Journalistresource.org, officers were more cautious with how situations were handled one statistic said that the cops worked 23.1% more productively by issued more citations for ordinance violations than officers who did not wear them. This follows up with what the ACLU is wanting, in regards to keeping an eye on officers at all times, which shows that they tend to act different when they are on camera. “In San Diego, for example, a 2015 report based on preliminary statistics showed that body cameras helped reduce “personal body” force by officers by 46.5%” (journal). However, CATO Institute’s Police Reporting Project argues that, “ it is difficult to determine how much of the decline in use-of-force incidents and complaints can be directly attributed to the police body cameras.” It is hard to place what the statistic for use-of-force is, because there is a lot that goes into the statistic that could show many inaccuracies.It is also based on how one person is acting at the given moment under a set of various factors that a statistic just cannot show. Location is important as well, because each city is different which results in different cultures and crimes that go one in those areas. An example is comparing Chicago and East Peoria police, Chicago see far more calls and violence than East Peoria, as a result Chicago would require more of an agressive backbone

Huffington Post shared a study that was created by University of South Florida, which surveyed the Orlando Police Department’s pilot program. This survey was done at random, it picked 46 officers who were to wear the device and then the survey looked at 43 officers who did not wear the body cam.This is a common trend all across social media and news, that police “too often” abuse power. Though this isn’t a true statement because there are no statistics conclusive enough to prove this due to the government not collecting that data, which was said by the Free Thought Project (adweek). Police officers across the nation become sworn officers because they want to make a difference in their communities not break them apart and cause unrest. The disappointing part about all of these allegations against police are that the people see just a few crooked people who happen to be a police officer and the people are quick to judge the whole system and believe that all officers are bad even though the good officers far surpass the effects of the crooked ones. This describes how police are looked at and the statistic from Policeone.com offeres an insight into the protection offered by dashcams which would correlate to the body cams. “According to the responses of more than 3,000 officers completing the written survey,