Police Body Cameras: Opportunities and Challenges | Eastern North Carolina Now

    Publisher's note: This post was created by the staff of Civitas's online edition.

    Police-involved shootings have grabbed headlines this year. That's led to a call for more officers to wear body cameras.

    But a recent panel discussion, "Watching the Watchmen," sponsored by the Civitas Institute and the Charles Koch Institute, revealed that such policies pose challenging questions. Here is a crucial segment of the wide-ranging conversation:



    The event at the Greensboro Historical Museum featured four leaders who have thought long and hard about this subject:

• Congressman Mark Walker, NC 6th District
• State Rep. John Faircloth
• Tim Lynch of the Cato Institute
• Perry Terrant of the National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives
• The moderator was Angela Hight of Civitas Institute.

    Among the issues the discussion surveyed were: how to balance privacy with the public's interest in police incidents, managing expectations about such videos, protecting the integrity of investigations, and the limitations of today's technology.

    A key segment of the wide-ranging discussion can be viewed above.