More than 3,000 police departments around the country are equipping officers with body-worn cameras

More than 3,000 police departments around the country, including Dallas, Cincinnati, Houston, Oakland, Phoenix, and San Jose have supplied officers with uniform, or body-worn, cameras to document their encounters with citizens.

According to some authorities, the cameras have already led to a decrease in lawsuits and egregious citizen complaints against police, but key law enforcement groups have so far withheld a formal endorsement—setting the stage for what may soon become a wider public debate over the expanding application of new technologies to policing.

“(The uniform camera) will likely be a standard piece of equipment,” predicts Greg Steckler, president of the International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP). “But it will only be as effective as the policies set forth by (individual) police departments.”

The IACP expects to release formal policy recommendations for use of the cameras within the next six months—updating a 2002 study—and the Police Executive Research Forum (PERF), the country’s leading think tank on policing issues, plans to come out with its own study in the Fall.

Many chiefs are already convinced that the cameras will improve community-police relations.

“This technology can help reduce mistrust in the government,” Art Acevedo, chief of the Austin TX police department, was quoted as saying in a 2012 PERF report assessing the impact of innovative technologies on policing.

According to Steckler, the cameras are a critical tool for increasing the transparency of police work, enabling the public to understand the context of a police-citizen contact and assess the reasons for whatever level of force is used by the officers.

“Already departments that use the body cameras are seeing a decrease in citizen complaints and lawsuits,” Steckler told The Crime Report. “The side benefit is that it helps officers stay within the framework of the Constitution during suspect content.”

It may not be a coincidence that many departments which have chosen to adopt the new technology have been under pressure from the federal government and civil liberties groups over abuse allegations.
http://policeforum.org/library/critical-issues-in-policing-series/Technology_web2.pdf