The Importance Of Police Body Cameras

In recent years there has been more accounts of police brutality on citizens who haven’t done anything wrong. In which some of the actions done by some police officers have led to some major consequences. Imagine a person named Tim is just minding his own business buying things or just walking around, next thing you know a police officer comes out of nowhere and starts beating Tim for no reason. No one would like that to happen to them but this is a scenario that has been popping up more recently with some having deadlier consequences. Since of this issue police officers need to wear body cameras to record when they interact with citizens. This way when police officers are on duty the body cameras can help create safety for both the officers

Plus, the cameras can help in training for the officers when they are learning. Imagine there is a new officer joining and he has never had experience. How is he going to be able to do things that other police officers do, in which they have many years of experience. It’s almost impossible for the new police officers to learn what took other police officers many years. The article “Considering Police Body Cameras” talks about how in training the instructor can easily pull different types of recording of interactions, that way new police officers can get a feel for how they should do things (1802). They can also review them in order to see what the police officer in the video did correct or wrong. In “Considering Police Body Cameras” again it talks about another study that has been done the “Rialto Study” in it showed “the results shift without cameras experienced twice as many incidents of use of force as shift with cameras” (1800) This shows that when the cameras weren’t rolling it was twice as likely that there would have been use of force on a citizen. Showing that if we had body cameras they can help ensure safety since the officer will have experience in what they should be doing. It also shows that body cameras do provide safety since when cameras where off twice as many incidents happened.

Such as, people might say that there are only a small amount of deaths that have happen. It is true that it only shows that there are a few cases but these statistics where given to them by police who might not have shown all the results. There might be much more deaths that have happened like this but where not released or given. What also other people would argue is that the police officers who shot these citizens surely went to jail for what they did this is partially true. The article “Lawsuit Settlement Funding” states “of those deaths, only three have led to an indictment and only one on-duty officer who killed someone was convicted.” Which is ridicules that so few of the killers where not convicted of killing people who were unarmed. The people of the U.S needs something to help ensure them that they won’t get falsely killed and the person who killed does get punished. Which is a reason on why police officers need to wear body cameras. Others might say that this will only help the slightest well that might be true but the evidence does not lie it has been researched and has been found that body cameras do work. As shown in paragraph two in which the studies found that the body cameras reduced incidents. Some will claim that police officers can easily not use the camera and not even have to use