Photo Source: Wikimedia |
I confess: I think body cameras for police officers are a great idea. They protect the officer against erroneous claims of abuse or mistreatment, and they protect the public when there has been misconduct. They take away the "my word versus yours" of police altercations. Win-win-win!
There hasn't been much research on police body cameras yet, but one study has come out of Rialto, California where they implemented the cameras. They found that complaints against officers went down from .7 per 1,000 interactions (still very good if you ask me) to .07 per 1,000 interactions.
It looks from the research that not only did having cameras create more awareness on the part of the officers, but that the knowledge they were being filmed helped the public act in a more responsible, helpful way as well. Awesome!
Source.
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