Police Body Cameras: Pros For Officers And Citizens

Police Surveillance

With crime filling the streets layer after layer like snow, there is question on how to deal with this pestilence. That is when the world of surveillance steps in, whether adored or despised, it still holds its place as our eyes and ears to ensure safety and justice. In truth, surveillance is necessary-even critical to the prevention of crime and the act of solving crimes to ensure righteous justice will be passed. Do not think that a camera’s only service is to secure important locations like banks, police stations, etc. They are very effective in more public environments as well.

Surveillance cameras are not just to keep a catalog of people when concerning an investigation, they can assist with public safety in many ways

According to the article “Police Body Cameras: Pros and Cons for Officers and Citizens” it states “Videos protected by body cams protect any false accusations, misconduct, or abuse against officers…Increases transparency and accountability of officers”(source 3). Having body cameras attached to officers would be beneficial to both officers and citizens. These cameras give officers peace at mind that they will not be wrongfully accused, as there is video evidence of most encounters; also, citizens can rest easy knowing that they as well will not be wrongfully accused, taking comfort in the constant recording from the body camera. It was also stated that “Use of the cameras while on-duty provides hard video evidence of decisions made by officers in high intensity situations”(source 3). Now the police can observe the actions of the officers and how they react to high pressure situations, which can help in developing a better program for training new officers and giving extra training to the current officers as well. With current events it is not hard to imagine looking for ways to improve the combat effectiveness of police officers to be better prepared to keep the peace. Take Baltimore for instance, the riots that took place were sudden and unexpected, we can imagine how shocked and uncertain of their actions the police were. But if we were able to observe how each officer handled the situation it could have given the force valuable information on what to train and prepare for if a similar situation were to happen again in the future; however, crowd control has always had a sensitive