User:Micalh/sandbox

United States

In the aftermath of the shooting of Michael Brown and the death of Eric Garner, police use of body camera technology has become a topic of national debate. In 2014, there was a Whitehouse.gov petition asking for, what they called, the Mike Brown law. The language of the petition states:

“Create a bill, sign into law, and set aside funds to require all state,county, and local police, to wear a camera. Due to the latest accounts of deadly encounters with police, We the People, petition for the Mike Brown Law. Create a bill, sign into law, and set aside funds to require all state,county, and local police, to wear a camera.The law shall be made in an effort to not only detour police misconduct(i.e. brutality, profiling, abuse of power), but to ensure that all police are following procedure, and to remove all question, from normally questionable police encounters. As well, as help to hold all parties within a police investigation, accountable for their actions.”

In fact, on December 1, 2014, President Barack Obama "proposed reimbursing communities half the cost of buying cameras and storing video—a plan that would require Congress to authorize $75 million over three years to help purchase 50,000 recording devices". He also asked Congress for a $263 million package overall to deal with community policing initiatives that would provide a 50 percent federal match for local police departments to purchase body cameras and to store them. A National Institute of Justice report found this in regards to responding police agencies: "In a sample of police departments surveyed in 2013, approximately 75 percent of them reported that they did not use body-worn cameras".A November 2014 survey of police departments serving the 100 most populous . cities, Vocativ found that "41 cities use body cams on some of their officers, 25 have plans to implement body cams and 30 cities do not use or plan to use cams at this time". The following cities have body cam technology in place: Oakland and San Diego, California; Denver and Colorado Springs, Colorado; Mesa, Arizona; Albuquerque, New Mexico; Omaha, Nebraska; Dallas, Ft. Worth, San Antonio, Houston, Texas; Indianapolis, Indiana; Detroit, Michigan; Columbus, Ohio; Washington, D.C.; Atlanta, Georgia; Hickory, North Carolina, and Miami, Florida.

Following The Law Enforcement Officer-Worn Body Camera Act, the state of Illinois became one of the first states to have a comprehensive set of rules for Police departments in regards to body camera usage. The Chicago Police Department as well as Mayor of the city, Rahm Emanuel, have been vocal about their plan to enact a body-worn camera expansion that would equip police officers by the end of 2017. The goal of this plan as well as the hiring of more officers is to improve public trust in the law, expand transparency, and halt the climbing number of homicides. Springfield Police Department (Illinois) has also been among the local departments that have expanded the use of body worn cameras despite the  Springfield Police Chief Kenny Winslow stating that " there are still problems with the state body camera law, and many departments in Illinois aren’t adopting the cameras as a result". One of those departments is the Minooka Police Department that discontinued the use of body cameras because they felt overburdened by administrative responsibilities.

There has been research behind the use of body worn cameras and the effect that these cameras have on police behavior. In Rialto, California, for example, police officers were to wear small Body Cameras at all times and record all working hours. According to the data, "The cameras cost about $900 dollars each. They can hold up to 12 hours of full color footage and upload their footage via a cloud system. After one year researchers found that after requiring the Rialto police to wear the cameras complaints against officers from citizens dropped by 88% and “use of force” dropped by 59%". The findings of this research has lead to debates concerning costs, rights, and the accuracy of the study. In New York City, for example, body worn cameras could cost up to $31 million. However, cities such as Washington, D.C. report that body worn cameras would save money by reducing lawsuits targeted towards the police force and by aiding in the dismissal of court cases with digital evidence provided by the recorded footage of the body worn cameras.The University of South Florida released a report that studied the effects of body-worn cameras for the Orlando Police Department that lasted an entire year. The research found that for officers wearing the body cameras, use-of-force incidents dropped by 53%, civilian complaints dropped by 65%, two in three officers who wore the cameras said they’d want to continue wearing them in the future and that it made them "better officers".

Police unions in several U.S. cities, such as New York City (the Patrolmen's Benevolent Association, which represents the NYPD), Las Vegas, and Jersey City, New Jersey. St. Louis, Missouri, expressed doubts and/or opposition to BMVs. Specifically, union officials expressed concerns about possible distraction and safety issues, and questioned "whether all the footage filmed by body cameras will be accessible via public-records requests, whether victims of domestic violence will be hesitant to call police if they know they will be filmed and whether paying for the cameras and maintenance will lead to cuts elsewhere in the police budget". Others have worried about a "gotcha discipline". Some unions have argued that it was "mandatory" for police departments to include provisions about BMVs cameras in union contracts because it would be a "clear change in working conditions" as well as something that could "impact an officer’s safety".

The American Civil Liberties Union is an organization that has been a major proponent of body cameras on officers. The ACLU has advocated body camera use for both police departments and U.S. Customs and Border Protection, granted that safeguards are in place to protect the privacy of both officers and civilians. However, they have opposed the use of such systems for parking enforcement officers, fire marshals, building inspectors, or other code enforcement officers. Some police departments in the United States, such as the Albuquerque Police Department and Rialto Police Department, have experimented with or deployed body-worn camera systems.

In 2012, the National Institute of Justice at the United States Department of Justice issued a primer regarding laws, policies, practices, and technology for local police departments to consider.

The debate on body worn videos for police rages on. Some believe similarly to Fox News resident psychiatrist, Keith Ablow, who stated that it was an "insult to police officers" to provide them body cameras and additional De-escalation training. Others, such as Black Lives Matter, has released specific policy solutions to tackle the issue of police violence and escalation that include body cameras for police, limited use of force, and demilitarization of the police are a few of the ten crucial policies listed in Campaign Zero. The debates on body worn cameras for police officers indirectly touches on the effects of the War on Drugs and violence where former President Bill Clinton links the war on drugs to fueling more cycles of violence, Senator Rand Paul "compared the war on drugs to the racist policies of the Jim Crow era", and the American Civil Liberties Union released a report that states that "while marijuana use rates between blacks and whites are comparable, blacks are nearly four times more likely to be arrested for marijuana possession".