The body cam revolution: What it has, and hasn’t, accomplished
When former Baltimore cop Peter Moskos returned to his old beat during a ride-along recently, the banter was lighthearted until his partner turned to him and said, “Body camera on.”
The mood in the squad car darkened. “You instantly thought, ‘God, what might I say?’” says Mr. Moskos, now a criminologist at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York.
In that moment Mr. Moskos understood some of the fundamental changes to policing and society brought on by the police shooting of a young black man, Michael Brown, in Ferguson, Missouri, five years ago.
Body cameras are one of those changes. In law enforcement, they’ve gone from rare to ubiquitous. Roughly two-thirds of all U.S. police departments now film regularly via silent eyes clipped to a shoulder strap or shirt pocket.
The cameras have put a lens on a job that’s already fraught, difficult, and often thankless. And some say it is all for naught.
The revolution happened in a flashAn unexpected resultA sharper perspective