Argumentative Essay On Body Worn Videos

All police officers should be equipped with body-worn videos. There are various kinds of attacks imposed on civilians that endanger their innocent lives. The tasks of the police officers, according to the principles of Sir Robert Peel, are to prioritize the safety of these non-combatant groups of people, prevent crime and maintain orderly peace within the community (Griffiths, 2014, p.67). The attacks range from stabbing, beating, shooting, raping, etc; and the concern to be addressed is whether the police officers are able to do their job effectively that reduces the wounded and fatality rate of patients.

Body-worn videos (BWVs) can be used to help police officers carry on their jobs in excellence due to their certain available features. For instance, BWVs consists of a wide and manoeuvrable range for public observation, has the ability to record videos and store them in memory, and is visibly displayed in front of a cop's uniform as a caution for people with malicious intent or evil thoughts. There is no such thing as an extra help being

unwanted. BWVs only strengthen and account for given evidences and add a sense of security for not only the public, but for the police officers as well.
Tension arises that discusses the authority of police officers and the possibility to misusing too much of their power (Griffiths, 2014, p.93). It is an inevitable concern especially when one is given the ability to arrest individuals, while the other group is not. Therefore, evidences are highly relied upon on to proving someone innocent or guilty. With the help of BWVs, this concern can be resolved through its better observational skills compared to stationed video cameras placed in high places or ordinary surveillance cameras in shopping malls or near stoplights as a few examples since police officers are able to bring the BWVs around and anywhere they go. This type of camera can essentially view areas that are usually missing or hidden in sight from the stationed camera ones to their own lenses, enabling them to widely capture more suspicious activities in action.
According to The Star,
In [a] poll done on Jan. 20, 78 per cent of respondents said they trusted Toronto police officers.
But, by Jan. 29, that number had fallen to 63 per cent, according to a second, more extensive poll. Thirty-seven per cent also said they trusted Toronto police officers less than they did a year ago (Hong, 2016, para.2-3).
The public's trust in police have decreased and stories like the death of Sammy Yatim and the Distillery District shooting where an officer fired at least 14 shots contribute to this sudden and immense distrust in the policing staff (Hong, 2016, para.4). They are called out for inappropriately using their authority as to shoot citizens irrationally. These situations can be pointed out to having the lack of tool and evidence to understanding the perspective of the police. It may have been an honest mistake to shooting a person dead or the lack of training that can be solved with BWVs since these cameras give a direct perspective that aligns a police officer's view as to why he or she may have reacted in such a way.
A news article from the Globe and Mail titled, "A short story about the value of police body cameras" reports that a police officer has provided a video from his BWV to show that Officer Muniz's discretion was indeed appropriate (since he was present at the scene), contrast to the public viewers' claim that Officer Muniz had abused his given authority after shooting a coloured-man dead. The recorded video shows that the now deceased man fired two shots at Officer Muniz who was thankfully wearing a bullet-proof vest and had begged the cop to shoot him. Officer Muniz had tried talking to the man calmly, which ended in failure as the man pointed his weapon at the other police officers again to shoot. The scene was described with "Officer Muniz and his colleagues show[ing] exceptional[] bravery in dealing with a man who was suicidal, but also armed and dangerous" (Dovarganes, 2015, para.5) in the end. "Bravery" and "dangerous" are two contrasting words used to display the value of body-worn videos where a police officer had stayed true to his job despite the life or death situation he was put in although the public doubted him. Altogether, the provided video became outstanding evidence to altering the perspectives of the public in favour of the police's actions that adds to the positive aspect of carrying BWVs around given that this officer was able to earn the trust of the civilians he deserved.
There is concern with BWVs regarding the privacy issue of an individual where one's face has to be caught on tape. However, this should not be a huge issue given that there are already many placed surveillance cameras in public places to ensure the citizens are safe and to spot for suspicious figures. Police officers also have the task to ask for a person's identification if he or she is found suspicious or are involved in a crime for an arrest (Griffiths, 2014, p.95). If there was anything to truly worry about with this kind of setting, it would be the need to act appropriately in public and for police officers to respect various kinds of normal activities.
Another concern that BWVs have is the cost needed to be able to equip many police officers with this kind of gear. However, as long as these BWVs carry successful and effective results, the cost should not be too problematic given that they greatly benefit the community, and keeping the civilians safe is majorly important and is a priority in the job of policing. Based on Politico New York, NYPD commissioner Bill Bratton said:
Some of the citywide crime statistics highlighted during the press conference were a 6.8- percent drop in the rate of homicides—290 as of Nov. 30, compared to 311 on the same date last year—and a 14.4 percent annual reduction in robberies, a record low since 1993, the year before the NYPD began the CompStat data tracking system. Rapes are down 2.9 percent since last year (Goldenberg, 2014, para.6).
This data is meant to present the decline in crime rates after the use of BWVs. Furthermore, this led to NYPD officers supporting BWVs and start preparing for body-camera training in hopes for executing a better policing job.
Body-worn videos help on maintaining public order and decreasing assaults against police (Palmer, 2016, para.22). Since the BWVs are positioned in a cop's uniform as the natural central-attention of the public, there is a rigid feel of intimidation passed on that offers caution to an individual with potential mischief. Civilians will feel the need to behave properly in public and not pursue their wrongful thoughts. Fear, after all, is a method that can be imposed on to prevent crimes from happening and save innocent lives.
Moreover, according to POLICE COMPLAINTS BD. from Harvard Law Review, "Police departments also perceive these cameras as helpful in the context of officer training, because 'recordings [can] be used for remedial training or correcting the behavior of individual officers against whom misconduct allegations have been filed" ("Considering police body cameras", 2015, para.16). It introduces the concept of using certain videos for visual learning purposes to be offered to new officers where they have access to watching and following the correct or appropriate discretions under specific, risky situations. For example, it can be a video to show how to tackle a suspicious person down right or a video of how to verbally communicate with a suspect and using only a certain amount of force (if truly necessary) with the code of conduct still in mind.
A few suggestions that may persuade citizens to accept BWVs are to make rules when equipping these gears and informing the public about it. The RCMP sufficiently outlines its use in a Globe and Mail article:
— Telling the public when officers are wearing the cameras;
— Informing RCMP members of video policy and best practices;
— Ensuring that recordings are uploaded for secure storage, retained and routinely purged;
— Providing citizens with copies of recordings through the Access to Information and Privacy acts (Bronskill, 2016, para.13-16).
The first rule would negate the privacy issue since citizens would know when they are being captured by a police camera or not.

There is a sense of understanding where an individual is informed that he or she is under an investigation by an authorized police and would know better than to act impulsively. Offering the citizen this kind of information also puts the two parties at an equal standing where one is aware of how a BWV may influence the current situation.

The second rule addresses the efficient way of using as BWV to avoid flawed results for the police officers. For example, there will be practices on knowing when to turn on the camera or not when a police is on duty as to not waste the device's battery. There should also be tests for seeing signs of suspicious activity like secret drug dealing or sensing tension that may lead to physical fights, which would be the appropriate circumstances to turning on a

BWV.
The third rule assesses the need for taking care of such a sensitive data where only videos needed for a case are stored and tapes of false alarmed decisions are disregarded for the innocent's private sake. It will be time consuming to record and save every recorded datas so only cases where a lawsuit or an arrest is needed should be documented and those with minor accidents should have their videos deleted after a certain amount of time when the video is likely to become irrelevant. On the other hand, those videos that are stored in memory will be used as great evidences because of its close perception and involvement with the police and suspect(s) through its lenses.
Lastly, the fourth rule is significant because the citizens are shown the same footage that the police, judge, lawyer, defendant and third party uses to come to a fair and effective verdict decision. The public will then be able to see what kind of evidence the decision was influenced by so rumoured claims are prevented saying that a police officer made up his or her own story. The whole scene will be open and viewed without any edited parts so the public may trust the criminal justice system more adequately.
Body-worn videos must be worn by police officers. They give a more direct perspective as reliable as it can get and prevents public false claims about what police officers had exactly saw. The shown result of decline in crimes and for police officers to carry concrete evidences in court cases are only some of its positive assets. Given that as much as there is pressure on citizens to behave appropriately in public, there is also pressure on police officers. They are influences to act in a less aggressive way and to follow the rules strongly in an acceptable manner that does not threaten the innocents until proven guilty. It is a test to see if these police officers are properly doing their jobs and if higher-ranking officers are required to train them more effectively so that the public are able to trust their discretions.