Body cameras lead to 93% fewer complaints against police

[True Dough]

Police equipped with body-worn cameras receive 93% fewer complaints from the public, according to a new study that suggests the technology helps to cool down potentially volatile encounters.

Academics at Cambridge University, whose research looked at nearly 1.5m beat hours across more than 4,000 shifts by officers in the UK and California, claim their findings suggest the cameras herald a “profound sea change in modern policing”.

Lead author Dr Barak Ariel, from Cambridge’s Institute of Criminology, said: “The cameras create an equilibrium between the account of the officer and the account of the suspect about the same event – increasing accountability on both sides.”

A report last year called for London’s Metropolitan police to use cameras during all stop and searches, amid persistent complaints that the force disproportionately targets young black men. In the US, the epidemic of police shootings of black people has raised similar concerns.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/sep/29/police-with-body-cameras-receive-93-fewer-complaints-study


No surprise at all. When police are being recorded they are accountable all of a sudden. Gotta behave. We just need for body cameras to become mandatory and turning them off voluntarily to be eliminated.

[irisblue]

1. "privileged glimpse of the bleedin' obvious"

From Benny Hill, English comedian.

[pipoman]

2. If I'm on a jury?

If there isn't body cam footage, it didn't happen...or did happen...what ever the opposite of the cop's position..

[Warpy]

3. I was on a jury last month

and we went through parts of it image by image.

[uponit7771]

4. Similar numbers in the California city that tried it long ago. I also lowers the complaints LEOs hav

... have of citizens seeing people stop acting like assholes when they're being recorded