Chief’s Counsel: The Future Is Here: How Police Officers’ Videos Protect Officers and Departments

The old adage that “seeing is believing” is truer now than ever before given the ability to record law enforcement encounters. Cameras are everywhere; the proliferation of smartphones, iPhones, mounts in stores, ATMs, and the many videos of law enforcement arrests and interactions with the public that are uploaded to YouTube on a daily basis underscore how important video evidence is to law enforcement. We live in a world of digital media, and cameras have become commonplace. Unfortunately, many of these videos are taken by the public at the point where force is being used on a resisting suspect with law enforcement being portrayed in an unfavorable light. They rarely record the incident that led up to and justified the use of force. This often leads to community and media outrage over legitimate and justified uses of force that are being negatively shown in partial video recordings and do not tell the whole story from the officers’ perspective.