Tuesday, January 23, 2018

The Elusive Promise of Police Body Cams


By Errol Louis 

The public support and exuberance with which the NYPD has joined other big-city departments in equipping patrol officers with body-worn video cameras — a rollout still very much in progress — may soon give way to buyer’s remorse. We currently run the risk of seeing a potentially useful strategy to enhance police-community relations fail to resolve controversial cases.

Earlier this month, the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association, the largest officers’ union, sued the de Blasio administration for releasing body-camera footage of an encounter between officers and a Bronx man named Miguel Richards last September that ended with him being shot to death by cops.

The PBA argues that the footage amounts to part of the cops’ personnel record, which by law, it says, must be kept private. The NYPD says the department’s leaders have the power to release videos that have been edited to protect the privacy of officers, defendants, victims, witnesses and bystanders.

The fact that such a fundamental question as who controls the release of body-worn camera footage is still up in the air underscores how little we really know about how best to use the technology to enhance policing and public accountability.

Click here for the full article. 

Source: The New York Daily News (via Empire Report New York) 

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