Rasmussen Body Worn Cameras Should Not Expand Beyond Law Enforcement Essay

Justice Studies

Video evidence gathered from a police body camera, and dash-cams should not be released to the public.

The police department has been under continuous scrutiny for its many failures, including the inability to eliminate poor performance. Among the stated issues were corruption, police brutality, and racism, which called for an action to look for a way to eliminate these issues among police officers (Lum et al., 2019). Body cameras and dash-cams were implemented to ensure that every police officer is responsible for recording what the person using them is doing immediately they are put on. Body camera sand dash-cams were adopted to ensure efficiency and accountability. The purpose of this paper is to explain why the gathered evidence from these technologies should not be released to the public.

The first reason against releasing the collected evidence to the public is because it will subject the police department to extreme exposure. The primary purpose of adopting body cameras and dash-cams was to improve the police force’s accountability and transparency (Find law, 2019). However, this will not be attained by exposing police activities to the public. The only way the public should be engaged is through actions where they feel that the introduced measures are working. There should be reduced cases of vices from the police, including corruption, brutality, racism, and sexual misconduct (Stinson et al., 2014). Improved and efficient service delivery is enough to appease the public instead of giving them information that might jeopardize police operations.

Secondly, the evidence should not be released because it will attract different responses, criticism, and interference from external parties. The public lacks the expertise of how to interpret the specific activities conducted by the officers. Even a simple handcuffing exercise might appear as a violent act to the public. Evidence collected should be used by the administration to seal the loopholes in police performance. Releasing it to the public will interfere with these processes because third parties will develop different ideas on what they think should be done in other circumstances (Stanley, 2016). Also, released evidence might expose the officers perceived as wrongdoers hence subjecting them to staged experiences or violence.

Thirdly, the evidence should not be released because the public is not trained on interpreting interactions between the police and suspects or victims. While the public is aware of constitutional rights and police regulations, they are clueless about how these regulations work. It is also not possible to teach all citizens how the aspects of police operations work. The difference between the police and the public is that the officers undertake training and education on how they should do their work. These training stake a lot of them and practice to perfect them. The public often deals with speculations and what they think is right hence prone to wrong judgment. It is significantly worse when the public is expected to give opinions about the police because of their tension.

Conclusively, it would be a bad idea to expose the evidence collected from the cameras to the public because understanding the information needs expertise. The primary purpose of adopting body cameras and dash-cams was to improve the police force’s accountability and transparency. The first reason against releasing the collected evidence to the public is because it will subject the police department to extreme exposure. Improved and efficient service delivery is enough for people. Secondly, the evidence should not be released because it will attract different responses, criticism, and interference from external parties. Interference will bring more harm than good to police operations hence introducing more chaos. Thirdly, the evidence should not be released because the public is not trained on interpreting interactions between the police and suspects or victims. What the public needs are good services and not information on how the services will be provided.

Reference

Find law. (2019). Section 1983 and Civil Rights Lawsuits. Retrieved fromhttps://criminal.findlaw.com/criminal-rights/42-u-…

Lum, Cynthia; Stoltz, Megan; Koper, Christopher S.; Scherer, J. Amber (2019). Research on body-worn cameras.Criminology & Public Policy . 18 (1): 93–118. doi:10.1111/1745-9133.12412

National Police Foundation. (2019). Body Cameras Work – Just Not in the Way You ThinkRetrieved from https://www.policefoundation.org/body-cameras-work…

Stinson, P. Liederbach, J. Brewer, L. Mathna, E. (2014). “Police Sexual Misconduct A NationalScale Study of Arrested Officers.” Criminal Justice Policy Review. 26 (7):665–690. CiteSeerX 10.1.1.671.6143 . DOI :10.1177/0887403414526231. ISSN 0887-4034 .

Stanley, J. (2016). “Body-Worn Cameras Should Not Expand Beyond Law Enforcement”. American Civil Liberties Union.Retrieved from https://www.aclu.org/blog/body-worn-cameras-should…