Police Body Cameras: Digging Through the Data
In the past two years, body-worn cameras have gone from a rare technology to a booming demand among U.S. law enforcement agencies. How did we get here, what does that market look like and where is it headed?
In 2014, a white police officer shot and killed unarmed 18-year-old black man Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., outside St. Louis.
What followed were nationwide protests, the Black Lives Matter movement — spurred on by other police killings of African Americans as well — and a call for cops to wear body cameras.
The technology was not new. But the events that unfolded in Ferguson took what used to be a relatively rare piece of hardware and turn it into what is now a booming market and one of the most important trends in law enforcement and surveillance technology today.
Here we will dig into the data at our disposal to illustrate how we got here, what the market currently looks like and where it might go in the future.
The Past
Data Pinpoints the Moment When Police Body Cameras Took Off
The Present
Just How Common Are Body Cameras in Police Departments?
What Body Cams Do: Behavior, Accountability and Trust
What Body Cams Do: Resolving Complaints Against Officers
What Body Cams Do: Policy, Discretion and Deeper Problems
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