The evidence is clear: Body-worn cameras should be on the radar screen of every law-enforcement agency

Several types of body-worn cameras are available to law-enforcement agencies. The most common is the type that clips to an officer’s shirt front. Other types clip to eyeglass/sunglass frames or are combined with speaker microphones. And then there’s Google Glass, which combines a camera capable of capturing both video and still images with smartphone capability. An added advantage of Google Glass compared to other options is that it is voice-activated.

While the cost of the high-tech Google Glass is about $1,500 per unit, other types of body-worn cameras are relatively affordable, about $500 per unit. When compared with the cost of litigating an officer-wrongdoing case, or even that of the portable radio carried by officers, the cost of a body-worn camera appears quite reasonable.

However, the real price concern related to body-worn cameras involves the cost of storing the collected video. Such devices generate massive amounts of video, which means that law-enforcement agencies need massive amounts of storage. While the cost of storage has come down considerably over the years, the amount of storage needed to support a body-worn camera initiative would be huge.

Another key storage factor that must be considered is how long video must be kept. This decision will depend largely on whether the video is evidentiary. It also will depend on the statute of limitations of the alleged crime; for instance, violent crimes have statutes of limitations that can extend out five years or more. Consequently, any video related to such events may need to be retained as long as the case remains open. The longer that video has to be retained, the higher the storage costs.

But the most important factor that needs to be considered in terms of video storage concerns chain of custody. The integrity of any evidentiary video is paramount; if it is compromised in any way, it may not be admissible in court—in other words, it will be worthless.

Given this, policies need to be created that control access to the video and ensure it can’t be altered. In addition, a date-and-time-stamped electronic audit trail is needed to provide a clear record of what happened to the video at every step—from the time it is captured until it is admitted into court as evidence. It must be impossible for the video to be altered or duplicated without someone knowing about it.

There are other significant factors to consider before mulling whether to launch a body-worn camera initiative. Context is one. Video is of greatest value when it is a true representation of the event that occurred. The big question in regard to context concerns whether the entire event was recorded.

Of course, the answer will hinge on when the camera was turned on. For this reason, some recommend that officers turn on their cameras as soon as they leave their patrol car. But doing so may result in the capture of large amounts of irrelevant video, which only will exacerbate the storage dilemma.

Others recommend that officers engage their cameras only when it truly is warranted. The risk in this approach is that the officer may not turn the camera on in time—if at all—resulting in the failure to capture evidence that would provide critical insight into why a situation occurred or why it devolved, which is especially important in incidents where an officer used force. The failure to capture all of the video related to an incident often leads to accusations that the police were trying to cover up something, which would destroy any sense of transparency.

Another factor to consider is that law-enforcement officers may not want body-worn camera, at least at first. This is due in part to the ubiquitous Big Brother worries, but also to the age-old conflict between management and those with their boots on the street. Labor-management distrust exists in every sector, and public safety is no exception.

In the case of law-enforcement officers, they typically are most concerned that the real intent of the body-worn cameras is to capture evidence that can be used against them in some way. At the very least, they may not like the feeling of someone constantly looking over their shoulders that the use of body-worn cameras might create.

Finally, statutes in some states may prevent some agencies from deploying body-worn cameras. In Pennsylvania, the state’s wiretapping laws prevent a person’s voice from being recorded without their consent. While an exemption was written into the law for in-vehicle police cameras, which also might cover body-worn cameras in public spaces, no such exemption exists for recording someone’s voice within their home.

Given the often-dynamic nature of police incidents, this would create significant legal issues for the police.  For instance, let’s say that officers are called to a residence for a domestic dispute. Upon arrival, they encounter individuals outside of the residence, so they activate their body-worn cameras. Then the incident suddenly turns volatile and the people retreat into their home with the officer in pursuit. If the officers still have their body-worn cameras activated, they would be in violation of the law. This makes it impractical for any Pennsylvania agency to deploy such devices, because an officer would need to ask for the permission of those they wish to question—permission that likely isn’t going to be granted.

Even if consent were to be given, incidents play out so quickly that the officer likely wouldn’t have time to ask for it. In fact, they would have to ask twice—once before the camera is turned on and then after, in order to capture the person’s consent.