Persuasive Essay On Police Body Cameras

Words: 808
Pages: 4

“In the first year after the camera's introduction, the use of force by officers’ decline 60%, and citizens’ complaints against police fell 88%”. (Christopher Mims) But, police body cameras should be delayed because of the numerous of concerns it has raised since its introduction. Equipping police with body cameras have raised new and unsettled issues over privacy of civilians. The huge question that still remains is when police officer should turn off the cameras “especially in cases involving domestic violence or rape victims — and the extent to which video could be made public”. (Los Angeles Times) Because police body cameras have great potential to invade people’s privacy in many cases such as domestic violence. In which police officers …show more content…
and to al police departments. However, police departments have a lack of regulation and policy’s over police body cameras. A recent federal survey concluded that “63 law enforcement agencies using body cameras said nearly a third of the agencies had no written policy on the devices”. (Los Angeles Times) Unfortunately, many police departments are just giving their officers body cameras without going over the policy or having any guide lines in using it. Which could lead to officers corrupting the video or even going over the video to adapt their reports to reflect what was in the video rather then what they actually saw. I myself have encountered this problem of police departments not having any uniform policy over body cameras from my fathers own department. My father works for precinct 5 in Harries county as a constable and, when his department issued their officers to wear police body cameras they weren’t presented with any guidelines or policy. Also no officers were even issued any body cameras they were made to go buy themselves their own without any clue of which model of camera to buy. Then afterwards when my father bought his camera he had no instruction on how to use it I myself had to help him install it and, show him how it works. Police officers also had full control of video evidence which could be tampered with or even erased without any one noticing. Without any guidelines or regulation over police body cameras it isn’t safe for them to be used and should be delayed until things could be worked