Policy Environment
Due to high-profile police incidents, law enforcement organizations around the country quickly adopted police body cameras. The cameras play a crucial role in the current and future policing. They are adopted to provide transparency and accountability into practices of law enforcement, through giving first-hand proof of police-community interactions.
Social Factors
Overall, the cameras would expose rogue police officers and promote police-public relations. The cameras were considered a solution to the issues of community trust and a means of increasing police accountability. The cameras were made to capture police abuses of power and hold them responsible for their misconduct ( Braga, Sousa, Coldren Jr, & Rodriguez, 2018) . Besides, it was expected that the cameras would increase the safety of the police and the public, and enhance the accountability of police, as well as protect them from false accusations of misconduct ( Piza, 2018) . There are various social issues which have been happening in the recently which triggered the rapid adoption of body cameras in the US. Particularly, this was driven by highly exposed events in this decade which often involve white police officers killing unarmed Black people ( Hyland, 2018) . Some noticeable events are the shooting of Michael Brown in 2014, by a white police officer in Ferguson, and the killing of Freddie Gray in Baltimore City Police Department custody in 2015 (Lum, Stoltz, Koper & Scherer, 2019). Therefore, cameras were viewed as a remedy to these forceful and fatal encounters between the community members and the community police officers.
Delegate your assignment to our experts and they will do the rest.
Economic Factors
Generally, the costs of deploying the cameras agency-wide are substantial, especially costs related to buying the cameras for bigger agencies with many officers, and the storage and maintenance of video data ( Piza, 2018). However, policymakers asserted that the cameras would help in reducing litigation costs associated with court cases and processes which take too long to determine ( McClure et al., 2017) . Therefore, videos from the cameras would be easily used as evidence of crimes, and facilitate rapid prosecutions, saving the country millions of dollars. The faster the cases are prosecuted, the more money is saved through litigation process for both the state and the public members who bring legal action against police departs for damages resulting from unreasonable usage of force or other police misconducts.
Political Factors
Experts point out that although the problems of police are far greater than a lack of video. The adoption of police cameras by law enforcement agencies could help in addressing the behavior and actions of officers. So, the videos from the police cameras could help in more convictions, especially high-profile police cases involving shootings ( McClure et al., 2017) . The evidence from the cameras is crucial in warrant convictions. Thus, the need for policy cameras was to monitor police conduct, and provide evidence when the public file cases against police misconduct.
References
Braga, A. A., Sousa, W. H., Coldren Jr, J. R., & Rodriguez, D. (2018). The effects of body-worn cameras on police activity and police-citizen encounters: A randomized controlled trial. J. Crim. L. & Criminology , 108 , 511.
Hyland, S. S. (2018). Body-worn cameras in law enforcement agencies, 2016. US Deperment of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics, Washington .
Lum, C., Stoltz, M., Koper, C. S., & Scherer, J. A. (2019). Research on body ‐ worn cameras: What we know, what we need to know. Criminology & public policy , 18 (1), 93-118.
McClure, D., La Vigne, N., Lynch, M., Golian, L., Lawrence, D., & Malm, A. (2017). How body cameras affect community members’ perceptions of police. Results from a randomized controlled trial of one agency’s pilot. Washington, DC: Urban Instititue .
Piza, E. L. (2018). The history, policy implications, and knowledge gaps of the CCTV literature: Insights for the development of body-worn video camera research. International Criminal Justice Review , 1057567718759583.
