The Future of Police Body Cameras

Police cameras are an important tool for the law enforcement community.
Police body cameras come in handy in a variety of situations: documenting the scene of an accident or crime, creating an important record of a volatile and confusing situation, police traffic stops, arrests, as well as eliminating "he-said, she-said" incidents with the press of a button.

Amazing advances in police camera technology are allowing police and law enforcement to benefit from high definition vehicle and police body cameras. Body cameras and car cameras are becoming increasingly ubiquitous with high tech models coming with a variety of useful designs and features. The usefulness of body-worn cameras for police officers is obvious.
For one, they can protect officers in the event of misconduct allegations and from costly litigation. Second, an officer can sometimes diffuse a situation by just letting a belligerent person know they are being recorded.

Third, they can provide valuable evidence and records of incidents, traffic stops, arrests and crime scenes.

"Reasons to use officer-worn cameras are to increase officer safety, reduce agency liability, reduce officer complaints and improve the public perception of police," Lafayette police Sgt. John Sellers told TechBeat.

It is really no wonder why there is such a growing demand for both police body cameras and police car cameras.
Most of the body cameras police use either clip on to the front of their uniform shirt or are disguised as a shirt button. Popular body cams include a small pager-sized model that clips on the shirt. Lawmate's button-type cameras are disguised as a shirt button and record to a small digital recorder that fits in a pocket. There are many other models including button cameras with built-in digital video recorders that record either to internal memory or to a MicroSD card. Most of these cameras record at between 640 x 480 resolution to 720 x 480 resolution. They also usually have a time/date stamp feature.
Some are also waterproof and some have password protection as well. Many of these same cameras are available to the public for personal use.

The most advanced police body camera on the market today is a model that replaces the lapel handset mic on an officer's uniform and connects to their radio. What it so advanced is the HD 1080p recording resolution, GPS geo tagging, the LCD screen and the supervisor password protection. It also can be used a police car dashboard camera.
Police watchdogs and citizens groups also support the use of police cameras and dashboard cameras as tools for accountability, but are concerned about citizen's privacy issues that could arise with their use.

Some legal experts encourage cameras saying the more video evidence, the better. A world where "all encounters can be recorded by everybody" is "not necessarily a bad state of affairs," Professor Howard Wasserman, a First Amendment scholar at Florida International University's law school, told the New York Times.
Police and law enforcement cameras come in all types: police body cameras, police car cameras, small and large, basic and state-of-the-art. In the new digital age, utilizing technologies that make life easier and people safer is a must.

Advancements are constantly being integrated in exciting, new ways to create important tools for all of us.