Americans massively back call for more police body camera tech

In the constantly divided United States, an unusual consensus has arrived in the form of police body cameras.

According to a survey out this week, an extraordinary 92 per cent of the population support a requirement for police to wear body cameras to record actions and interactions.

This being America, of course, some of the reasons for this support are almost diametrically opposed: some feel they will protect citizens more and some feel they will protect police officers more. The divide falls along depressingly obvious racial lines.

What's even more surprising is that a majority of the 2,000 citizens interviewed – a statistically relevant number – are willing to pay additional taxes to fund the cameras (and their upkeep and data storage).

Those willing and unwilling to increase taxes also breaks fairly predictably along party political lines, with 65 per cent of Democrats willing to pay more, as opposed to 46 per cent of Republicans. But even so, the number is significant.

What is important from the police perspective is that although they largely view approval of body cams as a sign of distrust in the broader public, many of those in favor of the cameras see it differently and feel cameras would help highlight the difficult job that police officers carry out professionally every day. On the other side, many view body cameras as a way to combat police misbehavior – something that has been highlighted in the past year to dramatic effect in a large number of controversial shootings of mostly young, black men.

Although the survey digs a little into the actual policy considerations of body cameras by asking a critical question over whether police officers should be allowed to review any video before being asked to give an official statement, it does not touch on what will likely be the most critical component of the entire approach: the technology itself.

Digging deeper

As we reported last month, the Chicago police department – which has been under fire for a number of incidents of alleged police misconduct – has an astonishingly high rate of bodycam and dashcam failure.

An investigation in the department revealed that at any given time, one in ten dashboard cameras and 80 per cent of microphones don't work. The reasons why vary from poor maintenance, poor quality of materials, operator error and "in some cases intentional destruction."

Just as importantly, the actual policies and rules around when police should wear and turn on their recording equipment is unclear, with many serving officers having been trained to turn on recording equipment only during vehicle stops, while revised guidelines have expanded scenarios to include a wide range of events from arrests to transports to "any situation that the member, through training and experience, believes to serve a proper police purpose."

So while it is clear from this poll at least that the American public are in favor of police body cameras, what it doesn't tell us is what people believe that cameras will be recording and when.

In a sign that the issue is likely to prove much more divisive than the 92 per cent headline figure suggests, the Cato/YouGov survey also asked whether there was a "war on police." Sixty five per cent said yes there was a war on police; 35 per cent said no there wasn't.

But of course the very term "war on police" means almost nothing, imbued as it is with media over-exaggeration and hyperventilation. Not only perception, but wording – especially of use policies – will be critical in reaching agreement on how to better facilitate safe policing. We can expect that to be in much shorter supply than surveys. ®