The Impact of Body Worn Cameras on Public Safety Research Paper

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The impact of Body Worn Cameras on public safety

The police department across the US, and indeed across the globe has, over the decades, been seen as one of the central and most important departments or agencies in the maintenance of law and order internally in the respective nations. They are charged with the sole mandate of ensuring that the wide ranging laws, from laws on petty theft to traffic offence and to more serious crimes like murder and assault, are followed to the letter and tranquility, law and order is maintained. It is due to this enormous and central role of the police in every country that pushes all governments to continually improve the police force in terms of equipping them for their duty. In the USA, the police department in every state has been seen to undergo significant changes in all sectors of their operations as decades go along. These have been seen in terms of their protective gear, the weapons they use, the vehicles they deploy in their daily operations, the communication system that the departments use in ensuring effective coordination of their security, rescue and recovery operation, the artificial intelligence employed in solving crimes and more so the process of evidence collection in crime scenes or scenes of crime.

One of those areas that have been considered as a positive step in many ways is the employment of the Body Worn Cameras (BWC) otherwise referred to as Officer Video Camera (OVC) by some quarters. These are specialized camera rigger devices that are worn on the front side of the police officer, attached to the uniform with a clear view same as that of the police officer. They are meant to be on throughout the time that a police officer steps out to go on duty in the field.

Purpose of the research

The BWC is meant to help the police officers in several ways in the process of executing their duties. This paper therefore looks at the various roles that the BWC plays, the advantages and efficiency that this device brings to the police force and the possible challenges that the BWC face as well as the solutions suggested towards ensuring the BWC becomes more efficient and acceptable among more police departments. There will be extensive literature review conducted with the aim of finding out the content concerning these aforementioned aspects surrounding the BWCs.

Perception of BWCs,

The BWCs have been receive in various parts of the country with varying perception and differing levels of acceptance. They have also been criticized and faulted in equal measure. However, the police departments that have fully employed this technology have always conducted a pilot test of them then rolled it out in full backed by data and facts. Most police departments and police officers therein have embraced the idea. Apart from ensuring that there is efficient public safety, the BWC have been proven to increase the safety of the police officers too since the possible violent or ill intentioned member of the public will likely think twice before attacking a police officer wearing a BWC knowing that the evidence was being recorded.

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There are the proponents of the BWCs who opine that there are various benefits of the devices including increased transparency and accountability, reductions in officer use of force, citizen complaints, and crime, officer and citizen compliance, enhanced police legitimacy, better evidence collection and documentation, training benefits, and assistance in court processes (Halac Y, 2016). On the other hand, there are that who have counterclaims to the effect that the devices intrude into privacy, has issues to do with health, excessive costs, and the possibility of police occupational culture thwarting implementation benefits. These shall be explored herein as follows;

Uses and importance of the body worn cameras

In the process of their work, the police face various challenges and stress that can be made more manageable through the use of the BWCs. These include and are not limited to the following;

Evidence gathering

The video footage has over the years become an admissible form of evidence in many states and this has been seen from the use of various dash camera footages to conclusively solve several traffic and even serious criminal offences. According to Headley A.M, Guerette R.T & Shariati A., (2017: Pp 103) the quality of evidence that the BWC collect is way higher and more reliable in executing proceedings that from personal cameras. Further, the police can use the footages collected to see where there are training gaps, use them for complain follow-ups.the police can also use the footages for report writing, preparing for court, in disciplinary matters as well as training purposes. Indeed, in the Mesa and Rialto case studies as reported by Young J.T & Ready J.T (2015) the accessibility of video evidence helped in the quick and conclusive resolution of several cases, there was more scrutiny of the criminal procedure and policy violations as compared to instances where there was no video evidence. Once the data is captured through the video mode, it needs to be tagged, indexed and stored and managed in a manner that it is readily available for any possible court use. The video should not be edited, not tampered with and not illegally copied.

Police job performance

The BWC have long considered a companion of the police officer whenever they are on patrol. The human psychology is such that on supervision they tend to have higher levels of accountability than when they are not supervised. The continuous collection of video footage acts as a supervision to the quality of work that the police officer does, particularly how they handle suspects and evidence from scenes of crime. In a….....

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