Muhammad Rao
Police Body Cameras
Last year in Fresno California, teenager Dylan Noble was enjoying his summer
afternoon, driving around, as he was pulled over by two police officers into a gas station (the
reason why he was pulled over was not said). Soon after, Dylan came out of his car upset. He
started to walk away and back to his car as the police officers yelled at him to stay still and put
his hand up. As Dylan began walking towards the officers, one of them shot Dylan twice making
him fall to the ground since they believed he was going to attack them. The same officer then
shot Dylan once more when he was laying on the ground (Levin, 2016). Darren Noble, who is
Dylan’s father, will never be able to see his son again. Dylan is just one of the 963 people that
“have been shot and killed by police in 2016.” (Police Shootings, 2016) Although some may say
that police used body cameras are a violation of their privacy, they should be used by all officers
as they reduce the use of force from officers to citizens while also providing large amounts of
evidence to aid cases.
Imagine you are at school in class and the principal walks inside, the whole class gets on
their best behavior including the teacher since they are all being watched. This exact same
reaction takes place when police worn body cameras are in use. Police officers become very
cautious of everything that they do since the camera would be recording them (Levin, 2016).
According to a study done by Cambridge University, after officers began wearing the cameras,
citizens filed very few complaints against officers. They ran their studies on a total of seven
police departments in the U.S. and U.K. and said that “complaints dropped from 1,539 in the
year before to just 113 for all seven departments” (Use of, 2016). The use of body cameras
resulted in a 93% reduction in complaints which shows how effective they can be. Implementing
body cameras in all police departments throughout the U.S. could significantly reduce the
number of conflicts that take place so often. The cameras also allow intense supervision of the
Muhammad Rao
officers, which would help the police department to find unlawful officers and either give them
proper training or have them removed from the force. Whenever officer’s use extreme force like
they did with Dylan, the police department would have a video that they could evaluate to see
what really happened. At times, some officers may manipulate information in order to make an
arrest. In August of 2017 an officer pulled over a young woman named Shamere Collins and
said that he had smelled marijuana from her car, he then arrested her, searched her and the
car, placed a bag of drugs in her car and then after pretends to find the bag and picks it up. The
officer that had done this had turned on his body camera after placing the drugs in the car, but
the body camera recorded video 30 seconds before being turned on without audio, showing him
do the unlawful act (Maccausla...
