Crimbrary

What Good is a Video You Can't See?
"Police body cameras are meant to be a tool of public accountability.  But even experts can't agree on how to make sure that happens.

Body cameras were introduced as a tool of public accountability, but making their videos available to the public might be too fraught, too complex, and too expensive to actually put into practice.

Much of the ambiguity around body cameras comes down to this: Despite their general popularity, despite being the only policy change called for by the family of Michael Brown, body cameras are a little weird. They are both a way for the public to see what police officers are doing and a way for people to be surveilled. If a body-cam program, scaled across an entire department, were to release its footage willy-nilly, it would be a privacy catastrophe for untold people. Police-worn cameras don't just capture footage from city streets or other public places. Officers enter people's homes, often when those people are at their most vulnerable"