Body cameras were supposed to curb police violence. Why haven't they?
“The 360” shows you diverse perspectives on the day’s top stories and debates.
What’s happening
Body cameras have become a staple of police reform efforts over the past decade, under the belief that officers who know they’re being watched would be hesitant to abuse their power, and that footage the cameras capture could help hold them accountable when they do.
The footage of Memphis Police officers brutally beating Tyre Nichols, a 29-year-old Black man who later died from his injuries, provides a stark example of how that promise hasn’t fully been realized.
The use of body cameras exploded after a series of high-profile police killings in the early 2010s — most notably the 2014 fatal shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo. By 2016, nearly half of all law enforcement agencies in the country used them. Today, seven states have laws requiring officers to wear body cameras.
But for all the hope and money invested in body cameras as a violence prevention tool, police killings of civilians have continued to rise. Nearly 1,200 Americans were killed by law enforcement in 2022, making it the deadliest year on record since experts began tracking nationwide police killings a decade ago.
Why there’s debate
Skeptics argue that Nichols’s killing is a perfect encapsulation of why body cameras aren’t the solution to police violence. They point out that the officers involved in the incident knew they were being recorded, but that didn’t appear to affect them in any way. Research into the effects of body cameras bolsters this view. The best studies over the past few years have found that they either have no effect or, at best, a marginal effect on rates of police violence.
A major reason for that, many argue, is the fact that police departments typically have an enormous amount of discretion to decide what footage is released and when. There are also examples of officers being accused of misusing their cameras — by strategically turning them off or even staging scenes to cover up misconduct. Even when police shootings are captured on video, the vast majority are deemed justified because of laws that create substantial leeway for law enforcement to use deadly force. Some research also suggests that many Americans are so trusting of police that they will believe an officer's account of an incident even when there’s footage clearly showing it’s not true. Activists argue that dismantling this system of impunity, rather than simply documenting it, is the only way to truly fix policing in the U.S.
But optimists argue that body cameras are a critical piece of any true police reform agenda.
They point out that in the rare situations when officers are charged or convicted — like in Memphis, where five officers face second-degree murder charges — footage from the scene almost always plays a major role in the case against them. Others say the potential of body cameras can be fully realized if lawmakers are willing to pass legislation that gives the public more control over footage and imposes serious penalties on officers who misuse them to cover up their actions.
What’s next
Nichols’s death has reinvigorated calls in Washington to pass national policing reform. On Feb. 1, Vice President Kamala Harris urged Congress to pass the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, which includes a provision that would require all police officers nationwide to wear body cameras. Prospects of that bill or any other reform legislation becoming law may be slim, however, with power in Congress divided between the two parties.
Perspectives
OPTIMISTS
Body cameras take the guesswork out of both sides of police interactions
“Body cams record officer interactions with the public and make police less likely to fib about what they did or why, because they know there will be a reviewable recording. … The cameras can have a similar effect on members of the public, because the recordings can verify or undermine any allegations they make against officers. They drive down the number of false or petty complaints.” — Editorial, Los Angeles Times
Pressure on police to release footage after killings has made the cameras much more valuable
“Police departments have historically fought to keep damning footage private, and in cases where they have released videos, it’s often begrudgingly after months or years of legal wrangling. … But more elected officials now say police chiefs are recognizing that this kind of secrecy will only undermine their agency’s credibility and effectiveness. In other cases, local governments are stepping up to craft clearer rules around disclosure.” — Rachel M. Cohen, Vox
Body cameras make it less likely that police can literally get away with murder
“I do think [the Nichols killing] underlines how significant a development the existence of these body cameras is because you would imagine in decades past, there'd be situations like this and it all kind of gets swept under the rug. But now we have a situation where we end up with video evidence of what the police did and that is, no doubt, going to be picked over in the trials of these police officers to come.” — Kyle Peterson, Wall Street Journal
The cameras don’t prevent abuse, but better laws would mean they can truly hold police accountable
“Right now, the policy infrastructure around police cameras is largely built on the assumption that their main use is deterrence. Since that model has failed, it's time to reimagine the cameras as tools to maximize transparency and accountability. To do this, public access to footage should be radically expanded.” — Alec Ward, Reason
Body cameras were never going to end police violence , but they’re a key element of any reforms that could
“[Body cameras] will not and cannot be a panacea for solving the deeply entrenched problems in policing and criminal justice more broadly. They may not prevent all police use-of-force incidents or officer misconduct; they may not automatically improve public trust in communities of color, either. They can, however, allow for police actions to be publicly scrutinized and provide additional evidence detailing the circumstances of police encounters.” — Andrea M. Headley, Bloomberg Law
PESSIMISTS
The cameras haven’t shown us anything we already didn’t know
“Body cameras are not going to save Americans or give us a deeper truth about the world of violence that police inhabit and produce. The truth is already out there in the long history of policing. We merely refuse to look at it. We hide behind empty hopes that a little training, oversight and accountability will somehow transform an institution rooted in the use of violence to maintain systems of inequality.” — Alex S. Vitale, MSNBC
Body cameras won’t fix policing, but it’s still better to have them
“No reasonable person ever said they'd be a panacea. And the data on whether they even reduce police abuse are mixed. But it's good that we had body cameras — in this case, and in lots of others. It seems safe to say that these cops would not have been held accountable otherwise.” — Radley Balko, investigative journalist
Body camera footage is most frequently used as evidence against citizens, not the police
“New technological tools — whether body cams or next-generation artificial intelligence programs that monitor and analyze neighborhoods — are supposed to make policing less biased, more efficient, and somehow more just. … But rather than increasing personal liberty or reducing police violence, police tech is — perhaps predictably — granting more power and authority to law enforcement agencies.” — Jacob Silverman, New Republic
Police officers assume they can get away with killing even when they’re being recorded
“One nagging question we must ask: If the police officers knew their body cameras were recording, why would they engage in such conduct? … It's possible they knew the limits of their own body cameras to capture conclusive views. It's possible they intentionally yelled commands that they knew would be recorded clearly even if their actions were not. Or it's possible they just didn't care.” — Deborah Fisher, Chattanooga Times Free Press
Body cameras often highlight how much room the law gives police to kill with impunity
“Cops are charged only when the full measure of their violence is unmistakably captured on video. Even with clear and convincing video, cops are only convicted when their Black victim dies face down begging for their life. Any attempt to fight back, to live, results in acquittal for the cop.” — Elie Mystal, The Nation
No tool that is controlled by the police can ever truly hold them accountable
“Body cams did not create police accountability for the same reason that many previous attempts of reform have failed: The rank and file in the departments resist change. … It turns out, they’re only as useful as police allow them to be.” — Nathalie Baptiste, Mother Jones
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