Should Cops Wear Body Cameras? One Ex-Cop Says Yes.

“Everyone behaves better when they’re on video,” says former
Seattle Police officer Steve Ward, “I realized that dash cams only
capture about five percent of what a cop does. And I wanted to
catch 100 percent of what a cop does.” Ward left the force to start
Vievu, a company that makes body cameras for police officers.

Orginally aired on March 25, 2014. Initial text below:

Civilians shoot and upload police encounters to the
Internet everyday using tiny cameras on their cell phones and other
mobile devices. In fact it may be easier than ever to keep the
police accountable with the technology we all carry around in our
pockets. But police are looking to keep civilians accountable too
by wearing cameras of their own. Reason TV sat down with former
Seattle Police officer Steve Ward, who left the force to start
Vievu, a company that makes body cameras for police
officers.

“Everyone behaves better when they’re on video,” says Ward. “I
realized that dash cams only capture about five percent of what a
cop does. And I wanted to catch 100 percent of what a cop
does.”

The cameras are small, light, and clip to the clothing of a police
officer’s uniform. They turn on with a large switch on the front of
the camera and have a green circle that surrounds the lens so that
civilians know that the camera is recording.

But once the data is recorded, what stops an officer from editing
or manipulating the video? Ward says his cameras contain software
that stops officers from doing anything nefarious with it, “Our
software platform stops officers from altering, deleting, copying,
editing, uploading to YouTube, any of the videos that the cops
take.”

While body cameras present the strong benefit of keeping police
accountable, they also present a risk of invading civilians’
privacy. But in a
policy brief from October 2013, the American Civil Liberties
Union argued that depending on how the body cameras were
implemented, the privacy concerns could be dealt with.

Although we generally take a dim view of the proliferation of
surveillance cameras in American life, police on-body cameras are
different because of their potential to serve as a check against
the abuse of power by police officers. Historically, there was no
documentary evidence of most encounters between police officers and
the public, and due to the volatile nature of those encounters,
this often resulted in radically divergent accounts of incidents.
Cameras have the potential to be a win-win, helping protect the
public against police misconduct, and at the same time helping
protect police against false accusations of abuse.

In 2013, The
New York Times reported that the city of Rialto,
Calif., was able to cut down on complaints against officers by 88
percent over the previous year when it gave its officers body
cameras.  Use of force by officers fell by almost 60
percent.

Approximately 5:42.

Produced by Paul Detrick. Edited by Detrick and William Neff. Shot
by Alex Manning.

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