Body-worn Cameras Should be the Norm for All Police Officers

Research Paper – Body-Worn Cameras
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Understanding the relationship between the socio-political issues in the conduct of law enforcement is essential for anyone. It allows him to have a more critical approach regarding the advantages and disadvantages of using specific methods and helps contribute to the overall development of policies for the same. Accordingly, this article would focus on one of the most debated issues in law enforcement today, the use of body-worn cameras. For the most part, body-worn cameras are used by various law enforcement agencies today because this could reduce the chances of abuse to authority and improve the process of determining suspects of a crime, among others. On the other hand, however, some believe that the use of body-worn cameras could worsen the conduct of law enforcement for the possible violations of the individual's right to privacy and the possibility of these footages being tampered with. This article would focus on each of these sides of the debate and provide a recommendation for improving its use.
Historical Background
Body-worn cameras were introduced to the United States law enforcement back in 2009 CITATION Mugnd \l 1033 (Muggah, n.d.). It was initially tested in Washington D.C. and was allocated with a budget of around One million USD for a total of 165 officers during its initial run. Accordingly, it took quite a while before States finally adopted their police regulations regarding the use of body-worn cameras. The first one among them was the State of Illinois, whose Congress passed the Law Enforcement Officer-Worn Body Camera Act back in the year 2012 CITATION Sta17 \l 1033 (State of Illinois, 2017).
In 2014, however, President Obama proposed to Congress to allocate various funding rounds to distribute body-worn cameras for every state in the United States. One example of this was his proposal to provide a $263 million package for various law enforcement authorities that would stimulate state agencies to fund their purchases of body-worn cameras CITATION Per14 \l 1033 (Peralta, 2014). Finally, due to the consistent funding of both the federal agencies and state governments, almost every police officer is now armed with body-worn cameras.
Events Dealing with the Issue
Although there are a lot of supporters for the use of body-worn cameras, the majority of those who oppose its purchase and use are those who believe that this is mainly a band-aid solution to the problem in law enforcement. Some base their oppositions on the varying studies done about the subject matter.
In 2014, for example, certain studies were done regarding the effect of body-worn cameras in the deterrence of the excessive use of force among law enforcement officers CITATION Her17 \l 1033 (Hermann, 2017). During those days, one of the main problems in law enforcement was those related to the excessive use of force, especially against racial minorities, which led to various issues such as racial discrimination CITATION Ger20 \l 1033 (German, 2020). In fact, there were multiple reports and incidents of 'hate crimes' committed by police officers, which garnered the whole nation's attention. Thus, the rationale and hypothesis for the study were that the presence of body cameras would make the police officers use more proportionate force to merely subdue and capture a criminal, rather than using an excessive amount of force that could be fatal for everyone. Nonetheless, the study results done in Washington D.C. show that even the use of body-worn cameras is ineffective in reducing the use of force, which then raised various questions about its effectiveness.
Another issue that was raised with the mass adoption of body-worn cameras for police officers is the "selective use" of these devices, which could prejudice civilians and lead to more abusive officers. For example, authorities found that for some of the most controversial cases of fatal shooting between a police officer and civilians from the year 2015 to 2017, there were many instances when the police officer failed to turn on their body cameras, thereby leaving some of the essential scenes unrecorded CITATION Mat17 \l 1033 (Mather, 2017). For instance, reports of law enforcement officers who beat individuals in 2015 were not captured by cameras even though some eyewitnesses pointed to authorities like the one who committed the crime. In other words, these sets of issues in the past few years create the idea of civilians that the use of body-worn cameras further endangers the general public since the officer can selectively use the same.
Disadvantages
Cost and Efficacy
One of the main disadvantages of the use of body-worn cameras is the cost and cost-efficiency of the same. These days, the costs for the acquisition and use of body-worn cameras have ballooned due to the number of law enforcement officers that need to be armed with the same. Thus, even medium-sized police stations would have their costs reaching up to millions of dollars considering other pertinent expenses like maintenance, storage, and even replacement of old parts regularly CITATION Pro21 \l 1033 (ProCon.Org, 2021). Additionally, most units these days also require the consistent replacement of batteries every few months, which drains away from some of the necessary funds that could be...