Implementing Body-worn Cameras

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Implementing Body-worn Cameras

Introduction

People can only co-exist in a highly regulated environment, mainly at a national and international level. As a result, the law has to be designed, implemented, monitored, and regulated to ensure one person's conduct does not infringe another's rights. Law is a broad field entailing business, civil, environment, criminal, administrative, constitutional, among other types of law. All these regulations are implemented for particular objectives; for example, business law aims to promote fair practices in business transactions. Similarly, environmental law is aimed at promoting environmental stewardship and punishing environmental polluters, among others. However, once a law is designed, follow-up practices entail targeting affected populations, implementation practice, and, most importantly, enforcement. According to Cracknell (2017), law enforcement entails ensuring existing regulations are effectively implemented at a local, national, and international level. Despite the good intentions of having law governing human beings' interaction, law enforcement can bring about advanced problems, mainly when law enforcers do not follow legal, ethical, and human practices when monitoring the compliance by the general public. For this reason, this report examines the "Implementation of Body-worn Cameras" as a current issue facing law enforcement leaders. 

Previous Incidences Justifying the Use of Body Cameras by Law Enforcers

The challenge of law enforcement has continually affected different policing sector, with an increased outcry on how police units handle suspects, perpetrators, and civilians in the process of law enforcement. Apparently, law enforcers' misconduct culminates in police brutality, normally meted to minority and disadvantaged groups in the United States. Oliver (2020) published an article in The Guardian and portrayed his concern about whether police violence against black people will ever stop. Oliver's article gives several examples of extreme police brutality; among them is a chilling story of how a 12-year-old Tamir Rice was shot dead by a white cop, Timothy Loehman when the kid was playing on snow along Cleveland streets. 

Another incidence occurred in March 2015 when Tony Robinson was shot dead by a police officer along Williamson streets of Wisconsin. In the same year, Oliver (2020) tabulates several young people of color who met their death at the hands of people who ought to have protected them, police officers. In this list of young black people who died innocently, Oliver (2020) indicates Eric Harris, Walter Scott, Freddie Gray, and Samuel Dubose, among many others. All these incidences are associated with increased outcry by the general public seeking justice for citizens killed unjustifiably in the process of law enforcement. However, despite caries for justice, citizens' rights efforts in pursuit of justice always turn futile because of their lack of evidence of placing different events into perspective to prosecute a police officer effectively. 

The United States history also recorded a chilling moment of a police officer strangling an unarmed suspect. Barbot recounts the circumstances under which George Floyd died and indicated that "we've been here before, with countless Black men and women whose lives were taken by those who wielded unearned power over them" (Barbot, 2020, p. 1253). This depicts a long history of brutality meted on citizens by law enforcers. In the case of George Floyd, for example, claims were raised that George had refused to cooperate with police, but police could be seen strangling an unarmed man who had already submitted to the arrest at the face of the public. Social media sensation led to a country-wide demonstration for people of different races seeking justice for Floyd. While the story behind excessive use of force by Derek Chauvin and his male counterparts in the Minneapolis Police Department could not be explained by the video that went viral, body cameras would have depicted a clear picture of what had happened before by-standers started filming the scene. This is one of the most isolated cases that led to increased participation and sensitizing of people's rights by humanitarian agencies, shaping the reality of mistreatment that black people experience in the United States every day (Dreyer, 2020).

Statistics Necessitating Implementation of Body-worn Cameras

Research shows that the white population in the United States constitutes...