Ethical qualms make UK police cameras a mixed success

LONDON: With accusations of police misconduct raging on both sides of the Atlantic, Britain has taken the lead in supplying officers with body cameras despite worries about ever-increasing surveillance by the authorities.

London’s Metropolitan Police Force is currently providing over 22,000 officers with Body Worn Video (BWV), saying it will “help officers to gather evidence and demonstrate their professionalism.”

The force is one of around a dozen that have tested wearable technology, motivated by a fatal police shooting in 2011 that sparked widespread riots, as well as a major study that suggested they led to a 93 per cent reduction in complaints against the police.

A series of police shootings in the United States and the recent claims of rape against a French policeman have intensified an international debate about whether cameras used all the time.

British police say they have helped defuse tense encounters and speed up prosecutions, but the absence of a legal obligation to use them means their scope in uncovering any police misconduct could be limited.

Privacy advocates also fear that the speed of technological advancement is outpacing ethical considerations about privacy.

“While we understand the perceived transparency benefits relating to body-worn cameras, we do have profound concerns about the potential rollout of the technology for purposes beyond law enforcement,” Renate Samson, head of Big Brother Watch, said.

Officials such as traffic wardens and even local council litter enforcers see the “new capabilities as the solution to a broad range of problems”, should be she said. “We could find ourselves being filmed all the time by officials wandering the streets.”

Bernard Hogan-Howe, Chief Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, began a trial of body-worn video cameras in 2014 after the death of Mark Duggan, who was shot by officers in north London in August 2011.

The death led to riots in London and other major cities, and the police chief said the use of cameras would aid investigations into police shootings.

However, the fatal shooting of Yassar Yaqub by West Yorkshire Police marksmen during a car chase last month was not caught on camera despite a force-wide rollout of the devices.

Home Office guidelines state that “the decision to record or not to record any incident remains with the user”.