The Justice Department on Friday released a new set of recommendations — and warnings — for the use of body-worn cameras designed to record interactions between police officers and the people they encounter.
The DOJ report was initiated long before last month’s fatal police shooting of an unarmed teen in Ferguson, Mo. But its release comes amid increasingly loud calls for use of the devices in light of 18-year-old Michael Brown’s death.
The report examines the experiences of agencies that have employed the cameras, and found instances where their use correlated with marked reductions in excessive use of force complaints.
{mosads}A 2012 program in Rialto, Calif., for instance, linked a 60 percent drop in “use of force incidents” over the course of a year, along with an 88 percent drop in citizen complaints from the previous year.
The department attributed the dramatic shift to a combination of better practices by officers and better behavior by the citizenry.
“When implemented correctly, body-worn cameras can help strengthen the policing profession,” the Justice Department concluded in its report.
Still, the agency is urging agencies to proceed carefully, and only after departments conduct exhaustive training and enact rigid policies for how and when the cameras are used.
“Police agencies that are considering implementing body-worn cameras should not enter into this decision lightly,” DOJ said. “Once an agency travels down the road of deploying body-worn cameras, it will be difficult to reverse course because the public will come to expect the availability of video records.”
Among the recommendations laid out in the report are policies for who will be assigned to wear the cameras and where on the body they should be placed. Agencies should adopt clear protocols for when the devices should be turned on, and when recording is prohibited.
Also of importance are standards for how long the recordings will be kept as records, and under what circumstances they should be mande available to the public.
“Law enforcement agencies across the nation are contemplating how best to use body-worn cameras and these guidelines will help them weight the costs and benefits,” said COPS Office Director Ronald L. Davis.
In the aftermath of the Brown shooting, a petition was filed on the White House’s website calling for legislation requiring body-worn cameras for police. The proposal, dubbed the Michael Brown law, now has backing from more than 150,000 people.