There has recently been some suspicious killings of unarmed black men that has brought up the question of whether or not our police force should be wearing body cameras. Regardless of whether or not police were at fault in these killings I think that body cameras would benefit both our citizens and police force. The main reason that we are having so many protests and riots is because there is a large part of our population that does not trust our police force. If officer interactions were recorded and made available to the public it could go a long way towards rebuilding that trust. It could also make an officers job much easier. They will have to let people know that they are being recorded which could alter the behavior of the people the police interact with. They know that they are on camera so interactions with officers could be more cordial or even prevent assaults on officers. The videos can also be used to train new officers. While there are many benefits to using cameras there are many questions about how they will be used. For instance, there is some concern about some of the more sensitive aspects of an officers jobs such as: informing family members of a death or rape victim testimonies. It may be required for officers to turn off their cameras or at least have the footage erased. There is also a concern about which video’s would be allowed to be released to the public. This ones easy because there are already precedents set for what information is considered public knowledge. There is software available to censor any material that can’t be released. Another question is how long the video is kept before it is deleted. All of these questions are important but can easily be taken care of by legislators. There doesn't seem to be any downside to having our police wear body cameras.
