I am a police commander in an agency where over 1000 hours of body camera footage is archived every single day of the year.  With most cops wearing cameras across America, it is likely that millions of hours of police activity are being recorded and saved each week.  Body cameras have become just as much a part of the police uniform as handcuffs, and a recent study shows that 92% of the public supports their use. 

With the rapid growth in this technology, it’s hard to believe that before August 9, 2014, body cameras were rare, with just a few agencies, mostly small, using them.  But everything changed that Saturday afternoon.  All the world became aware of a small suburb, Ferguson, Missouri, just outside of St. Louis.

Consider that the politicians, activists, the media (and even failed presidential candidate Hillary Clinton) based their demands that every cop wear a body camera after a legal and justified police shooting in Ferguson.  The investigation conducted by the Department of Justice under President Obama, revealed that the “Hands up… don’t shoot” scenario was one of the biggest lies ever told to the public, but law enforcement largely agreed to the use of body cameras.

Photo credit: Ryan Johnson

But has the adoption of body cameras solved the problems of law enforcement in regards to police brutality and was that allegation even based on evidence?

Research

It’s never a good idea to make decisions in times of emotion, and that is what has been happening within law enforcement.  There wasn’t much research on the issue of body cameras before most agencies started to purchase them.  In the first study of its kind, the Rialto, CA Police Department placed body cameras on 54 police officers working the streets in 2012 for 12 months.  While use of force and citizen complaints were reduced in that year, the jump by some to label body cameras as reducing police misconduct was inappropriate and even inflammatory.

This study, of just 54 police officers, was the precipitous reason used for widespread adoption of body cameras and a justified shooting in Ferguson poured fuel on the demands.  The result: 95% of law enforcement officers either wear body cameras or are in the process of adopting them.

There is no stopping the demand for body cameras, even though, as a law enforcement executive, I know that they will not do what those outside of law enforcement think they will do.  No one has even suggested that any reduction seen in police use of force or complaints against them may have been because the criminal element knew they were being filmed and changed their behavior, rather than the police changing their behavior.  Yet this is my exact experience and every cop I have ever talked to will say the same thing.  Body cameras routinely expose those that lie against law enforcement.

Law enforcement in America is not only the best in the world, but policing in 2018 is more professional, more trained and more educated than anytime in our history. I don’t say this in an uninformed manner.  Unlike many that are quick to critique the men and women in uniform, I have done the job for close to 30 years and trained law enforcement across the globe.  It is comedy to suggest that a profession that has raised their hand and agreed to wear body cameras and protect the First Amendment rights of others to film them in public has the institutional failings that so many have suggested.   The last time I checked, those that scream the loudest against the profession aren’t filming their own days, and I would expect that they never would.

A few years after Ferguson, the demand to record every single police contact has revealed that law enforcement in America is really good at what they do. But whether or not it has changed police behavior is another question.

In 2015, the Washington D.C. Metropolitan Police Department placed body cameras on 1000 police officers and tracked them for 18 months.  They also tracked 1000 police officers in the agency that were not wearing body cameras over the same period.  Keep in mind, the politicians and activists went “all in” after the Rialto Study of 54 police officers.  Well, the D.C. Study showed that cameras made no difference whatsoever.  In the comparison of both groups, doing similar work, there was “no detectable difference” on complaints, use of force or discretion used in arrests.

How could this be? It’s simple.  While law enforcement is no different than any other profession in that we have a few bad employees, overall, the profession is good and honorable and body cameras change none of that.

What Now

I love body cameras because they protect law enforcement from the liars that complain, sue, and try to get good cops fired. But law enforcement must change how they release the video -- and that footage can play to that lie if they don’t change.

If we are going to continue to use body cameras (and I believe that we should), then there is a responsibility that must come from not only police leaders but the public. Agencies rarely release video footage until they are asked to do so under an Open Record Request.  It probably won’t shock you that the videos that the media demands typically are those where force is used. Police use of force is an extremely rare event.  A recent study over a two-year period, at multiple agencies responding to over 1 million calls for service, showed that police used force .0086% of the time.  Despite the facts, the public continues to be told about violent police behavior, and practically every video you will find online is one where force is used.

Law enforcement should release video on a regular basis that covers a variety of police activities.  The public should be exposed to the reality of policing, and that reality is rarely an event where force is used.  Law enforcement should also give context to the video that is released.  Most body camera videos today are legal, justified, and appropriate, but they are made controversial through the media and social media experts that know very little about the profession.  Because of this, law enforcement can no longer simply release a video without telling the audience the complete context of what they are viewing.  The Los Angeles Police Department does an excellent job of this in what they call “Community Briefing” Videos.

Body Cameras are here to stay, and I think that is good for law enforcement.  But what other profession would dare record everything they do?  Just imagine if some of the politicians and felons that demand body cameras for cops wore them.  In a sense, the years since Ferguson has proven just how good law enforcement is. 

Consider the millions if not billions of hours of video that have been taken of law enforcement doing their job and tell me what the evidence shows.  Sure, there have been some bad incidents.  There have even been some cops that have committed a crime, but the mere fact that we know their names in the midst of 18,000 police departments, 900,000 police officers,  over 10 million arrests a year -- and many more contacts -- should tell anyone with common sense that law enforcement is highly professional and nothing like some would want you to think.

Travis Yates is a Police Commander and Director of Training at Law Officer where he has trained thousands of police officers across the world.  He is the founder of the Courageous Leadership Institute.