One evening in early December , thousands of people gathered on the historic Boston Common, not to view the annual Christmas-tree lighting, but to add their voices to a growing movement. This widespread galvanization over body cameras 15 exemplifies the human tendency, in times of tragedy, to latch on to the most readily available solution to a complex problem. Their proliferation over the next decade will inevitably change the nature of policing in unexpected ways, quite possibly to the detriment of the citizens the cameras are intended to protect.
To that end, this Chapter explores the contours of the body-camera debate. Section B lays out the purported benefits of body cameras, particularly their potential for increasing public trust and police accountability. Section C catalogs several downsides of the cameras, all of which should be critically explored prior to their widespread adoption. Section D then discusses recommendations for other legal reforms necessary to ensure that body cameras do in fact increase transparency and improve relations between police and the communities they are supposed to serve.
Section E briefly concludes. At first glance, then, body cameras may appear to be a panacea for police departments struggling to provide transparency to their communities and resolve civilian complaints efficiently. These motivations spurred the adoption of body cameras by police departments in the United Kingdom several years ago, 40 and seem to be the driving force behind the current expansion of their use in the United States. This section will thus lay out the anticipated benefits of body cameras while also questioning whether these advantages are, in fact, likely to be realized.
But a reduction in citizen complaints cannot necessarily be attributed to fewer instances of officer misconduct the purported benefit discussed in section a above. Because this reduction in complaints could be due to individuals consciously choosing not to bring frivolous claims, as opposed to an actual reduction in misconduct by officers, it will be important to avoid conflating these two benefits when evaluating the efficacy of the cameras.
But this benefit does not necessarily require that all officers be outfitted with cameras, as videos taken on certain patrols could be used for training both within and between departments. Especially if citizens are able to request footage of their encounters with the police, or if departments willingly release footage of disputed incidents, the current climate of distrust may improve.
