In a February 3 op-ed for The News & Observer, faculty member Jeffrey Welty urged law enforcement to balance privacy, transparency, and other issues when implementing police body camera programs. 

According to Welty’s piece, at least five of North Carolina’s largest law enforcement jurisdictions have equipped police officers with cameras as a means to improve transparency. This aligns with a national trend among police departments across the country and a public opinion poll reporting that 88 percent of Americans support the use of body cameras. 

“The benefits of body cameras may be clear, but whether the public and the media should have access to the recordings is not. Officers frequently interact with citizens who may be intoxicated, emotionally distraught, injured, or engaged in behavior that isn’t typical of them. ...There is a balance to be struck. Transparency is an important value, and body cameras have the potential to give us a valuable window into the conduct of law enforcement officers. But privacy matters, too, and body cameras have the potential to record all of us.”

Read the full op-ed here. 

Published February 5, 2016