When Body Camera Footage Should Be Made Public, Police And Civilians Disagree
Many police chiefs and regular American civilians agree that officers’ body camera footage should be released to the public after police shoot someone dead.
They differ, though, on when the images should be made public. This complicates achieving accountability, which is often the reason officers wear cameras.
That’s the finding of our new research, published by Cambridge University Press. We surveyed 4,000 U.S. residents – 1,000 across the nation as a whole and 1,000 in each of three cities – Los Angeles, Seattle and Charlotte – which are often cited as having different policies for releasing body camera footage. We asked participants whether they identified themselves as white, Black, Hispanic or Asian. We also surveyed 1,000 police chiefs across the country.
In June 2020, weeks after...