Funny enough there’s a section on body cams in a video essay that was just released by a creator I think does pretty good work. The video is technically about other things, but body cams come up in the conversation and the video goes into pretty good depth on them.

Jacob Geller - Reality is a Camera Trick

I’m not denying the usage of the footage. Like yes, of course that is the exact example of when it should be used. However, many times, even if not releasing footage seems incriminating to the populace, when it is successfully withheld accountability is lost. Even when the footage is released cops often see no consequences for their actions, so the footage ends up just serving to normalize and broadcast police violence resulting in control via fear not peace via collaboration. But that’s all more anecdotal I fear.

In the end the data pretty much says body cams have a negligible impact on policing, at least according to this PBS article (most of the way through the article for that), but you can also cherry pick quotes from this to support pretty much any stance.

The idealized version of body cams would help with police reform, but I don’t believe in reform, I believe in abolition, so in the end they just look to me like giving them more tech to be twisted for oppression rather than accountability. If police thought body cams would hold them accountable they wouldn’t care about citizens filming them, and the fact people are being prosecuted for doing that says everything it needs to about what the police think about footage of their violence and crimes.

Just my thoughts. If you’ve got better info than my lone article from a source I’m slightly partial to I’d love to read it! I took a class on carceral technology, and I’ll try to track down some of the sources we used!