Communications Research Essay

Anthony Collins
St. Lawrence College
 With the upgrades in technology and surveillance, police agencies are turning to body

cameras for the security and accountability of their officers. The problem with this, is that body

cameras can have a more harmful than helpful effect. Police body cameras are costly and would

put a massive strain on police funding, they can invade citizens privacy rights by making it

incredibly hard for police to do their jobs, and also put the officer at risk for wearing it either

physically or mentally.

With police agencies looking into the purchasing body cameras, the costs of them are becoming

prevalent. The Toronto police are looking into equipping their officers with body cameras to

“protect” and to increase accountability, but for what cost? The Toronto police agency “currently

has a budget of $500,000 that is intended to cover the annual costs” (T.Bud, 2016) this budget

only covers 100 cameras for only one year. Also, to bring into consideration the technical side of

the cameras, with technology comes the opportunity for breaks and malfunctions. Police body

cameras have been reported to be sometimes unreliable, with unreliability comes the increase of

costs for “IT” support and new cameras. With Toronto being the largest city in Canada only 100

cameras does not seem to cover the huge demand of the majority of the Toronto police service

“Toronto Police service is the largest municipal police force in Canada with 5,200 sworn officers

and equipping the majority of their patrol officers would require significant resources” (T.Bud,

2016). With these cameras costing so much, where is the police service going to go for the

budgeting? These cameras would put a huge strain on provincial governments as they would

need to pay millions of dollars to service and maintain all of these cameras. With the cameras

cost being so high funding would be almost imaginary “This would be very difficult considering

the rising pressure to decrease budgets” (T.Bud, 2016) With pressure of budget cuts asking the
government for assistance in millions of dollars for something that could be seen as “non-

essential” would be almost impossible. Not only is the cost a big issue, but the fact of citizens

privacy rights.

Police body cameras in Canadian society could become a major issue as they could break many

rights of the citizens “Legislation is clearly lagging far behind the rapid pace at which

surveillance technology, like body-worn cameras, are developing. The absence of appropriate

legislation creates the danger that the privacy of individuals may become jeopardized as a result

of the adoption of new surveillance technology” (T.Bud, 2016). Without proper legislation being

developed and laws being passed for the use of the body cameras, they could infringe on the

citizens right to, The Privacy Act which deals with the personal information handling by the

federal government and departments connected with the government. Another right that could be

infringed upon would be the Freedom of information and privacy protection act, this act was put

in place to protect the privacy of an individual with respect to personal information about

themselves held by an institution in this case would be the police service. With the police

walking around with cameras, citizens don’t have a choice if they are recorded or not and this is

where the issues come into play. A police officers job is to ask a citizen absolutely everything

about themselves, this citizen has no choice weather they can have that information protected as

these police cameras are put into a massive data storage that can be accessed by anyone in the

service. This puts a massive strain on the citizen as they might fear their information and the

crimes they have committed or was a victim of being released. “Potential witnesses were

reluctant to talk in the presence of a body-worn camera, even when the device was switched off”

(Edmonton Police service, 2015) With cameras recording 24/7, it is going to damage the

openness of the citizen and create barriers between police and society as no one wants to
incriminate themselves as the police officer can go back and pull out exactly what the person

being interviewed said. Not only do body cameras infringe on citizens’ rights they also increase

harm on the police officer.

Police officers are putting themselves in more danger than they already are when wearing body

cameras. This is due to the fact that studies have shown that there is an increase in violence and

assault with the officer after the citizen is told about the camera “The pilot participants identified

the “altered mental state” of a citizen (due to alcohol, drugs or mental illness) as the variable

most often causing a non- or unpredictable response when they informed that person about

BWV” (Edmonton Police service, 2015). People often feel uncomfortable when ever being filed,

especially when you don’t have the decision to tell the officer to stop recording. When you throw

the fact that you are under the influence or in an altered state of mind, things can get dangerous

as the people might make irrational decisions “Second, cameras increased the likelihood of an

officer being assaulted during a shift compared to not wearing the cameras” ( European Journal

of Criminology, 2016) Further damage that can be done to a police officer wearing a body

camera might be the psychological damage that could occur. Some police officers under constant

surveillance might feel the need to act a certain way instead of acting the way they did before the

camera, and doing their job correctly. Leading them down a bad path of questioning every move

they make so it doesn’t incriminate and slander their image.

As society pushes police body cameras further and further down the publics throats, police

officers will feel the negative effect down the road with no way of going back. The costs of the

body cameras will cripple the wallets of police agencies, Police agencies will have to deal with
complaint upon complaint on consent of recordings. Finally, Police officers would be increasing

the risk of being harmed at work, Is a camera really worth the negatives?
Sources
Ariel, B., Sutherland, A., Henstock, D., Young, J., Drover, P., Sykes, J., . . . Henderson, R.
(2016). Wearing body cameras increases assaults against officers and does not reduce police use
of force: Results from a global multi-site experiment. European Journal of Criminology,13(6),
744-755. doi:10.1177/1477370816643734

Bud, T. K. (2016). The Rise and Risks of Police Body-Worn Cameras in Canada. Surveillance &
Society,14(1), 117-121. doi:10.24908/ss.v14i1.6280

Edmonton Police Service. (2015). Body worn video: Considering the evidence. Final Report of
the Edmonton Police Service Body Worn Video Pilot Project. Retrieved November 20, 2018,
from http://www.bwvsg.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/Edmonton-Police-BWV-Final-
Report.pdf

Swire, P., & Woo, J. (2018). Privacy and Cybersecurity Lessons at the Intersection of the Internet of
Things and Police Body-Worn Cameras. North Carolina Law Review, (5), 1475. Retrieved from
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