Research focused on the Orlando Police Department, where 100 officers were monitored with body cameras.
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Police wearing body cameras in South Florida are finding that they greatly reduce the need to use force. In San Francisco, where Mayor Ed Lee has earmarked $6.6 million to pay for police body cameras, debate over who gets to review footage, and when, is stalled.
It’s not just the behavior of police officers that body cameras can change, it can also affect how someone who’s being stopped or interacting with police behaves.
Before the body cameras officers used force about of 3.5 percent of the time. Complaints from the public also dropped, from.
Both the Springfield and Northampton police department’s have considered using body cameras.
“As a society, we can certainly advocate for agencies- law enforcement agencies- to adopt these body-worn cameras”, said Jennings.
According to chief of police, Kevin Spencer, the cameras will see a lot more than the officer’s point of view.
“The BWC officers overwhelmingly reported that the BWCs would not reduce their willingness to respond to calls, nor would it reduce their self-initiated subject contacts when a crime had been committed”, Jennings said in a statement. “They wanted to keep the cameras beyond the study and they reported their behavior did change and citizen behavior improved as well as far as, they specifically reported the utility of the cameras in deescalating confrontations between them and the citizens in the community”. A working group of city agencies has yet to approve a draft body camera policy proposal.
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The number of response-to-resistance incidents among officers wearing the cameras declined 53% compared to the year before the study and that the number of complaints filed against the officers dropped 65%.
