By Megan Sayles
AFRO Staff Writer
msayles@afro.com
On Aug. 9, 2014, 18-year-old Michael Brown, an unarmed Black man, was shot and killed by Ferguson, Mo. police officer Darren Wilson. The incident spurred massive protests and social unrest that left a nationwide impact.
There was significant public confusion over what truly transpired during the confrontation between Brown and Wilson, who ultimately was not indicted for the shooting. Some claimed Brown had his hands up in surrender and told Wilson not to shoot, but forensic evidence did not fully support this assertion.
The national debate over Brown’s death created a pivotal moment for police accountability and transparency and, as a result, sparked a call for the large-scale adoption of body-worn cameras across law enforcement agencies in the U.S. Though the devices have been effective in post-hoc investigations and court cases involving police officers at times, they haven’t necessarily prevented use of force from happening in the first place.
“Post the death of Michael Brown in 2014, one of the big pushes was for body cameras to reform policing. However, the amount of people killed by police has not declined,” said Chloe White, senior policy counsel for justice at The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights. “I think 2024 was one of the bloodiest for people killed by police, and certainly, there is a racial disparity in who is injured or killed by police.”
In fact, according to the Mapping Police Violence project, since 2014, the number of civilians killed by police has increased nearly every year up to 2024. A record 1,252 people were killed by law enforcement in 2024. Twenty-five percent of them were African American, though they represent about 13 percent of the U.S. population.
Over time, varying policies around body-worn cameras have emerged across U.S. communities.
In Chicago, early guidelines allowed officers to use discretion when activating and de-activating cameras. In 2021, Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker enacted the Safety, Accountability, Fairness and Equity-Today (SAFE-T) Act, making it mandatory for cameras to be turned on at all times when an officer is in uniform and responding to calls or engaged in a law-enforcement-related encounter or activity. There are certain privacy exceptions, like when a victim of a crime requests a camera to be turned off or when an officer is speaking with a confidential informant.
In Baltimore, officers involved in a Level 3 use of force, such as an in-custody death, are allowed to view body camera footage before submitting reports and being interviewed if a prosecutor decides not to press charges or they are legally required to make a statement. This raises questions about officers manipulating accounts of what happened based on what the video showed.
There are also differing policies around public access to body camera footage.
In North Carolina and South Carolina, body camera footage is not considered a public record and many times requires a court order to be accessed.
In Ohio, Gov. Mike DeWine signed a bill into law in January 2025 allowing law enforcement agencies to bill people who request body camera footage. The legislation, House Bill 315, authorizes police departments to charge $75 dollars per hour of video produced, up to $750 in total. Arizona also permits an hourly rate of $46 to review footage.
Though lawmakers say they have implemented these policies to save money and deter frivolous requests, others believe they were created to inhibit public access.
“A lot of police forces, police unions and people who support police drew the conclusion that there was no way to stop the rollout of body cameras. Their next best play was to try to prevent the release of footage from body cameras,” said Chad Marlow, senior policy counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union. “They’re trying to use a lack of access to financial resources as a way of preventing communities from getting access, and it shouldn’t be lost on anyone that the communities who are often overpoliced are frequently those with less financial resources.”
Marlow explained that body-worn cameras were implemented as a police transparency tool to promote better behavior by law enforcement. But, he said, if the rules governing their use are not aligned with this mission, they can transform into a police propaganda and surveillance tool.
As a surveillance tool, law enforcement could use cameras for constant monitoring of the public and apply face recognition – which has higher error rates for people of color – to identify civilians in real time. As a propaganda tool, officers may use discretion to release footage that paints police in a good light and withhold footage that supports negative narratives about policing.
“If the tool is designed to watch the police but the police get to decide who watches them and what they see, it’s more of a propaganda tool than a transparency tool,” said Marlow. “Those are real risks, especially when you consider that you’re spending time, resources and money to buy this technology. If it’s not actually used for the purpose it claims it’s being used for, then maybe it shouldn’t be used at all.”
