There are many thing’s wrong with today’s modern day society but to me the corruption in our police force is the worst.  There have been many incidents where a white cop shot and killed a black teen such as the Trayvon Martin and Michael brown cases.  These cases could not be proven by raw evidence, they were just proven by the simple fact that a cop shot and killed an “innocent” teenager.  In cases like those nobody knows what happened leading up to the shooting because there was no witness.  They happened late at night while nobody was around to see all the events leading up to the shootings. That is why I strongly believe that the use of body cameras would strongly improve all aspects of our modern day police department.

In some states the body cameras are already in place and have been proven to work, not only with proving innocence or guilt but also with the simple fact crimes rates are going down. “Studies have shown that while using body cams the rate at which incidents occur went down by 50% but citizen complaints went up over 12 months” (Ariel). Although the cameras may not be popular in the minds of citizens they can serve as a life saving device. They are not popular to the citizens because they are an invasion of privacy, but as they may invade privacy nobody is looking at this footage unless you did something wrong or evidence of another crime may have been caught on one of the cameras. These cameras can also catch clues that may lead up to a future crime.

One of the main reasons body cameras and dash cameras haven’t been implemented in the police force throughout the country is because of the cost.  They are extremely expensive and might be out of budget to have a high quality camera strapped to every police officer and police car.  It would be an average cost of $2.6 million dollars just to store the footage the cameras would record and then another $6.4 million dollars for the cost of the cameras.  That would be the cost per city to have cameras on every police officer and ever police car plus the cost of storage plans for the footage.  Not every city would have to spend that much, it all depends on the crime rates and the size of the city.

Another reason why I believe that our country should spend the money to buy these cameras is because of the accusations made against innocent Americans each year. “On average there are more than 10,000 Americans wrongly accused when there is a police officer involved or on the scene” (Springs). I think that at least 75% of those cases could be reversed if there was raw evidence of what actually happened.  Just think it is almost impossible to wrongly accuse someone when there are cameras involved providing exactly what happened.  Sure there are witnesses that claim to have “seen” the incident but you still can’t go back and watch it from their perspective. The cameras wouldn’t be able to lie or be altered with in any way.   That is the biggest reason why I believe the cameras should be implemented in the police force around the country.

Those are a few reasons why I believe that America as a country should spend the time and money to implement these cameras.  I mean besides the cost and the invasion of privacy there are not to many things that can go wrong with these cameras.  There are more pros than cons and it provides a win win situation for America.  So let’s put an end to our corrupt police and justice systems and spend the time and money to implement body cameras on our police officers.
Work Cited
Ariel, Barak. "New Publication Available: The Effect of Body-Worn Cameras on Police Use-of-Force." Police Foundation. N.p., n.d. Web. 21 May 2015.
Springs, Tom. "10,000 Innocent People Convicted Each Year." N.p., n.d. Web. 21 May 2015.
Bakst, Brian. "For Police Body Cameras, Big Costs Loom in Storing Footage." Yahoo! News. Yahoo!, n.d. Web. 21 May 2015.