- Position‹2 of 2
- Police cameras are not beneficial
Police cameras are only as effective as they are managed. If footage is capable of being reviewed and edited, or withheld from relevant parties, this may be counterproductive to the aims of their provision.
The argument
The power of a police camera can be misused, and the argument holds that the device settles nothing by itself. Whether a police camera is there to promote transparency and accountability, or whether it serves to impinge upon privacy or be used for other abusive means, depends on who it is managed by, and how it is governed. A camera worn by an officer, recording to a system controlled by the force, produces evidence whose release is decided by the party it might incriminate, which is the structural problem the rest of the argument illustrates. The pattern proponents point to is one of withheld material rather than absent material. Investigations have revealed that police are unwilling to disclose material that has been recorded on police cameras showing that an officer engaged in excess use of force, or was involved in a shooting, often citing that the investigation is ongoing, a legal exemption. The exemption is the significant part: the refusal is lawful, so it cannot be answered by pointing out that it is improper, and it applies precisely to the cases the cameras were introduced to illuminate. The Met in the UK has been criticised for not releasing police camera footage. In an internal memo it is established that some of the behaviour in the footage would not put the Met Police in a pleasant light, and it cited its reasons as data protection, trial by social media, and exacerbation of tensions. Proponents read the memo as showing the interest at work, since an assessment of how the footage would reflect on the organisation was recorded alongside the reasons given publicly. The refusal to release the footage has been criticised for witholding information that would convey the concerns raised by minorities for years, and for causing further public mistrust in the policing system, which is the opposite of what the cameras were meant to achieve.
Premises
Counter-arguments
Although there has been varying degrees of discretion employed in the use of police cameras and the footage that has been disclosed since 2014, in the wake of the George Floyd and Breonna Taylor murders in 2020, the Justice in Policing Act 2020 would make it necessary for federal uniformed police officers to wear a camera promoting some uniformity. After the killing of Michael Brown in 2014, 47% of police departments were wearing cameras. There have been discrepancies on the disclosure of footage from police cameras varying from state to state, leading to inconsistencies in achieving transparency. Despite the discrepancies in disclosure, and the current concerns regarding how much discretion ought to be given to police to control the body cameras, the cameras are significant, and are one element of many in pushing towards overall transparency.
Rejecting the premises
[Rejecting P1] The premise identifies a fault in governance rather than in the camera: a recording that exists can be compelled, subpoenaed or released later, none of which is true of an encounter that was never recorded. [Rejecting P2] Withheld footage still constrains, because the officer knows a record exists, and disclosure rules are the kind of thing legislation can change — the counter points to proposals that would set uniform requirements for federal officers. [Rejecting P3] The Met example shows the harm of a disclosure policy, so it argues for rules about who controls the footage rather than against the cameras, which is the conclusion the argument actually draws.