Body-worn cameras were sold to the public with a simple promise: sunlight. Record the encounter, settle the dispute, protect the innocent, expose the guilty, and restore trust one clip at a time. In a nation hungry for certainty, the camera looked like an antidote to rumor and outrage.
But the longer cameras have been on the street, the clearer a harder truth becomes. Cameras can increase transparency, but they do not automatically create accountability. They generate evidence, but they do not automatically generate wisdom. And they record events, but they do not reliably capture the full reality of what happened, why it happened, and what should change next.
Transparency is necessary. It is just not sufficient.
The promise and the reality
Federal guidance and evidence reviews have consistently described body-worn cameras as tools with real potential benefits and equally real implementation risks. Policies about activation, access, retention, privacy protections, training, and supervision are not side issues; they determine whether cameras function as public accountability tools or drift into becoming just another surveillance system that mostly strengthens the state’s case while leaving the public with selective visibility (U.S. Department of Justice, 2014; National Institute of Justice, 2018). Civil liberties groups have made the same point from the other direction: without strict policies and meaningful public access rules, cameras can expand government recording of civilians in their most vulnerable moments while still failing to deliver transparency when the community demands it (American Civil Liberties Union, n.d.).
The research record is also sobering. Large-scale studies and systematic reviews do not support the idea that cameras reliably reduce force or complaints across the board. Outcomes vary by department, by policy design, by activation compliance, and by local culture (Lum et al., 2020; Yokum et al., 2019). That variability is not a technical glitch. It is the central lesson.
A camera is not a reform. It is a tool, and tools amplify the intentions and habits of the hands that use them.
Blind spot 1: the camera’s perspective is not the truth
Body camera footage feels definitive because it looks like reality. But it is reality from one angle, at one height, with one field of view, under one set of lighting conditions, shaped by motion, stress, and physics. A lens can miss what is outside the frame. A microphone can distort distance, tone, and timing. A sudden turn can blur the critical half-second the public cares about most.
Even when the video is clear, perspective is a trap. A body camera sits on the officer, not on the suspect, not on the bystander, not on the victim. It is closer to a first-person narrative than an objective map. That matters because policing is often about what an officer reasonably perceived in the moment, not what a viewer can calmly interpret later with the benefit of replay.
This is one reason research has not found consistent, universal behavioral change from cameras alone. Cameras do not eliminate ambiguity; they often relocate it into debates about angles, audio, and interpretation (Lum et al., 2020; Yokum et al., 2019).
Blind spot 2: activation is policy, but compliance is culture
One of the most consequential details in any camera program is also the least cinematic: when it turns on, and whether it stays on. Departments write rules; humans follow them unevenly. Footage can be missing at precisely the moment trust is most fragile: a use-of-force encounter, a search, a sudden escalation. Even with good policy, compliance depends on supervision, discipline, training, and a culture that treats cameras as accountability devices rather than personal threats.
This is why leading implementation guidance treats activation rules and auditing as core design requirements, not administrative afterthoughts (U.S. Department of Justice, 2014). The blind spot is not simply “the camera was off.” The blind spot is the organizational environment that made “off” possible without consequence.
Blind spot 3: transparency for whom?
A camera program always raises an uncomfortable question: who gets to see what, when, and why?
If the public can only view footage when the department decides it is appropriate, transparency becomes conditional. If victims and families must fight for access, transparency becomes a privilege. If footage is released only when it supports an official narrative, cameras become a public relations instrument. If footage is broadly released without privacy safeguards, transparency becomes exploitation.
This tension is not theoretical. Body cameras capture people on the worst day of their lives: domestic violence victims, mentally ill individuals in crisis, children at chaotic scenes, the deceased, the grieving. Policy has to balance public accountability with human dignity (American Civil Liberties Union, n.d.; U.S. Department of Justice, 2014). But the balance is often negotiated after the incident, under political pressure, and with uneven rules that vary by jurisdiction.
A transparent system cannot be one where the public only sees what it is allowed to see, and only when it is convenient.
Blind spot 4: cameras don’t capture the “before” and “after”
A use-of-force clip starts when the camera starts. But the outcome often depends on what came earlier: dispatch information, prior calls to that address, known history, the officer’s fatigue after a 16-hour shift, the suspect’s mental state, the tactical decisions made minutes before the first physical contact.
Cameras also struggle to capture what happens later: the quality of medical aid, the integrity of reporting, the consistency of internal review, the fairness of discipline, the learning extracted from the event, and whether the agency changes training or policy as a result. Transparency is not merely footage. Transparency is the full lifecycle of accountability: incident, documentation, investigation, outcome, and reform.
Studies that look broadly at outcomes like complaints and use of force suggest that cameras alone do not reliably transform that lifecycle. They may help in some contexts, do little in others, and sometimes produce mixed or null results (Lum et al., 2020; Yokum et al., 2019). That isn’t a failure of the camera. It is a warning about expecting technology to substitute for governance.
Blind spot 5: the story changes the officer, too
There is another dimension the public rarely sees: how cameras shape officer behavior psychologically, not just behaviorally. Constant recording can feel like constant judgment. In some agencies, officers report hesitation, second-guessing, or performance anxiety. In others, officers report feeling protected against false complaints. Both can be true.
The key point is that cameras add a new audience to every encounter: supervisors, prosecutors, defense attorneys, journalists, juries, and internet strangers. That audience can improve professionalism, but it can also intensify risk aversion or create incentive to narrate the encounter for the camera rather than engage the human in front of them. The lens changes the interaction.
Research findings that vary across settings are consistent with this: cameras interact with local norms, incentives, and enforcement practices in ways that differ dramatically from one department to another (Lum et al., 2020).
Two real-life situations, one lesson
Consider two common scenarios.
A late-night traffic stop escalates fast. The video shows a driver refusing commands and the officer raising their voice. Viewers argue over whether the officer “started it.” But the camera does not capture what the officer saw in the driver’s hands, what dispatch warned about, or what prior stops in that area taught that officer to fear. The footage becomes a national argument, yet the core questions remain unresolved: training, tactics, supervision, and whether the stop could have been handled differently in the first place.
Now consider a domestic violence call inside a small apartment. The camera captures a victim’s face, a child crying, a chaotic living room, and a suspect being handcuffed. The footage is powerful evidence in court—but it is also an intimate recording of someone’s trauma. If released broadly, it can shame the victim and discourage future calls for help. If withheld entirely, the public may suspect a cover-up. The camera creates evidence and new ethical dilemmas at the same time (American Civil Liberties Union, n.d.; U.S. Department of Justice, 2014).
These are not edge cases. They are everyday policing. And they show why “more video” is not the same as “more truth.”
What transparency still can’t capture, and what must come next
Body cameras are best understood as one instrument in a larger accountability system. They work when they are embedded in a framework that includes:
- Clear activation rules with real enforcement, plus routine auditing (U.S. Department of Justice, 2014).
- Balanced access policies that protect privacy while ensuring public accountability is not optional (American Civil Liberties Union, n.d.).
- Training and supervision that treat footage as a learning tool, not merely evidence or liability protection (National Institute of Justice, 2018).
- Independent, credible review processes that can interpret footage within a full evidentiary record, not as a standalone morality play (National Institute of Justice, 2018).
- A cultural commitment to integrity that outlives the newest device.
The deeper challenge is this: transparency is not a technological achievement. It is a civic agreement.
A camera can show you what happened. It cannot, by itself, explain why it happened, whether it was justified, whether it was wise, whether it was preventable, or what must change so it happens less often. Those answers still come from leadership, policy, training, oversight, and a public willing to demand more than a clip.
The blind spots remain. Not because cameras are useless—but because truth, in policing, has always been larger than what a lens can hold.
References (APA)
American Civil Liberties Union. (n.d.). Police body cameras. American Civil Liberties Union.
Lum, C., Koper, C. S., Wilson, D. B., Stoltz, M., Goodier, M., Eggins, E., Higginson, A., & Mazerolle, L. (2020). Body-worn cameras’ effects on police officers and citizen behavior: A systematic review. Campbell Systematic Reviews, 16(3), e1112.
National Institute of Justice. (2018, November 14). Body-worn cameras: What the evidence tells us. National Institute of Justice.
U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Community Oriented Policing Services. (2014). Implementing a body-worn camera program: Recommendations and lessons learned.
Yokum, D., Ravishankar, A., & Coppock, A. (2019). Evaluating the effects of police body-worn cameras: A randomized controlled trial. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 116(21), 10329–10332.
Posts
