Body-Worn Cameras are not only for Police Officers

Body-worn cameras are known to create a real-time, permanent record of what happens when in
use. Currently, Body-worn cameras are used majorly by Police officers and it has been
established that body-worn cameras cause better behaviour among police officers and citizens.
This is simply because people behave better when they know they are being recorded.

There's growing evidence that body-worn cameras benefit both police and the people they deal
with in part, because research suggests that sides tend to behave with more restraint when they
know they're being recorded.  There is a study in the Journal of Quantitative Criminology that
found that after police officers in the city of Rialto, California, started using body-worn cameras,
incidents in which officers used force dropped by around 60 percentage, and the number of
citizen complaints against them dropped by 88 percentage. Another study, though, suggests that
the cams reduce the use of force by both sides only when a police officer can't turn them on and
off at their discretion.

However, the real question is, would civilians themselves benefit from wearing cams; capturing
whatever happens from their perspective as well? Can a body-worn camera be seen as a way for
people to record and live stream the best moments of his or her life such as exciting mountain-
biking or snowboarding adventures and, at the same time, the same technology also could
capture an encounter with a police officer.

Body-worn camera is a means of ensuring an accurate memory of an incident and this is the
primary reason for the increased clamor for Police to have them worn. The video footage from
the camera will serve as a backup, if not a substitute, for the human brain (which isn’t perfect). If
accepted by the general public, not only would we be able to look back on our days but we also
would have a better understanding of how we spend our time.

Mobile phones are common today and used to record their daily interactions. These interactions
are, then, posted on Social media sites like Instagram, Twitter, Facebook YouTube, and a few
others. The mobile phone is dangerous to use for recording during arrest, as we’ve come to learn
a Police officer might mistake a mobile phone for a weapon. However, a body-worn camera a
feature like the anti-video deactivation which prevents the camera from being turned off
accidentally if the device is bumped during a physical altercation will encourage body-worn
cameras during at all times and particularly during protest or physical altercation.

There have been improvement since the use of body-worn cameras by Police officers began.
There can be greater improvement in the reduction of crime and wrongful conviction through
human eyewitness if body-worn cameras are introduced for use to the general public.
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