March 3rd, 1991, Rodney King , led Los Angeles Police on a chase. At the end of the chase, he was tased and notoriously beaten by several Los Angeles Police officers. The incident was filmed by George Holliday using a video camera that he had grabbed from inside his apartment. The Rodney King film and subsequent acquittal of the officers sparked riots across Los Angeles that injured and killed numerous persons in Los Angeles. April 29th, 1992, during the Los Angeles riots, Reginald Denny was was brutally beaten by rioters and was robbed. It was filmed by media crews in a helicopter. In both instances, video media had a huge impact on Policing in America and it began an era of video media being introduced into Law Enforcement. …show more content…
That changed with the use of in-car police video is used to help document activities of a police officer while on a traffic stop. Those videos are being used to corroborate an officer's account of the stop and used in court for prosecution. Often these video incidents are released to the public in order to assist in locating and convicting offenders who have committed crimes. For instance, an officer gets shot and killed while on a stop, the only “witness” incident is the video …show more content…
First, Social Media “Live Streaming” can immediately broadcast a situation. This could jeopardize an officer on the scene of a high intensity situation. It could also assist police departments in getting messages communities faster. Second, the increasing use of dash cam videos in patrol cars allow for a silent witness for actions that occur during a traffic stop. Use of video media in other areas of Law Enforcement Video media is used in other aspects of law enforcement as well. There are Tasers that record the deployment and the moments prior to the deployment. An unlikely example of a video camera assisting Law Enforcement are License Plate Readers. These are license plate readers that use video cameras to capture license plates and place them into a database. Those databases can be searched and are used to solve crimes, detect wanted vehicles, and record data within areas of crimes. As is the case in Kansas City, when those license plate readers were placed in an area where highway shootings occurred. Through this database system they were able to catch the shooter, Mohammed Pedro Whitaker, by comparing captured data to known case information. Kansas City Police’s use of the camera system led to a quick arrest on a crime which would likely have gone unsolved for quite some