Body-worn video: LE use in the USA?

[davidbfpo]

A report from Cambridge University, based on data from four UK police forces and two in the USA:

Police body cameras can dramatically reduce the number of complaints against officers, research suggests. The Cambridge University study showed complaints by members of the public against officers fell by 93% over 12 months compared with the year before. Almost 2,000 officers across four UK forces and two US police departments were monitored for the project.

The author is cited:

I cannot think of any [other] single intervention in the history of policing that dramatically changed the way that officers behave, the way that suspects behave, and the way they interact with each other.

Once [the public] are aware they are being recorded, once they know that everything they do is caught on tape, they will undoubtedly change their behaviour because they don't want to get into trouble. Individual officers become more accountable, and modify their behaviour accordingly, while the more disingenuous complaints from the public fall by the wayside once footage is likely to reveal them as frivolous.

Link:http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-37502136

Taking a very different stance based on practice in the USA 'Atlantic' weighs in:

recent events subvert the idea that the devices help or increase the power of regular people—that is, the policed. Instead of making officers more accountable and transparent to the public, body cameras may be making officers and departments more powerful than they were before.

Link:http://www.theatlantic.com/technolog...werful/502421/