Squad car cameras can be ok. I generally support them. Body cameras have flaws, which are likely to be repeated in gun cameras, and may bring their own.

The first is that the field of view is too narrow, so they do not show all of the surrounding circumstances that should be going into the assessment of uses of force. That is a major flaw and almost completely invalidates their use.

It also shifts the constitutional assessment of force decisions, which are not supposed to be based on things discovered later. I'd be concerned a gun camera could screw up functioning, too.

The last flaw is more of an interesting side issue: what has been learned is that contrary to popular perception, force of all types is rare. In fact, at least one study done by WSU found that the use of force was rare enough that they could not come to statistically valid generalizations! They also found that suspect conduct was the big variable, and generally, just as awful as LE has been saying.

Force is ugly, and effective force more so. Tough.

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NHI, 10-8.