Police Body Cameras Can Invade People’s Privacy But Help Monitor Police
In the course of their work, police officers encounter people who are intoxicated, distressed, injured or abused. The officers routinely ask for key identifying information like addresses, dates of birth and driver’s license numbers, and they frequently enter people’s homes and other private spaces.
Police see some difficult scenes; body cameras can record those and make them public. Tony Webster via Flickr, CC BY-SA
With the advent of police body cameras, this information is often captured in police video recordings – which some states’ open-records laws make available to the public.
Starting in the summer of 2014, as part of research on police adoption of body-worn cameras within two agencies in Washington state, I spent hours riding in patrol vehicles, hanging out at police stations, ...