Every good thing, when used in excess or abused, has the potential to become a bad thing. This simple logic holds true in virtually every facet of life, including the use and abuse of police #bodycameras.

The job of a police officer isn’t exactly an easy one. Apart from the daily risk to life that each officer faces in varying degrees, there is also the ethics of the profession to consider. Legally and by right, police officers are only permitted to engage in physical altercations under extreme circumstances. However, as many who follow the news headlines will know, reports of #police officers acting in undignified ways in heated situations have been rapidly increasing. To control, or at least monitor the actions of officers in the field, the use of body cameras has been incorporated.

For a time this produced pleasing results. Several reports indicated that the mere presence of the cameras worn by officers improved their behavior both in public and in private with citizens. An added benefit of this seemingly innocuous device is that it afforded concrete and incontestable evidence that aided prosecution cases. Since it wasn’t strictly the word of a police officer against the accused, it became relatively easier to exonerate the innocent and subsequently sentence the guilty with the evidence at hand.

Of course, slowly but surely, the downsides of using this device started to reveal itself. Even without considering variables like cost, and the fact that the devices themselves might not be completely safe for the officers wearing them, many other problems began to make themselves known.

One of the first issues that quickly arose was the fact that these video cameras had to be properly used by police officers in order to function properly. Due to the nature of the design of these devices, the cameras do not auto record, as many people would assume. A police officer actually has to turn the device on before a scenario can be recorded. This implies that an officer has the power to decide what gets recorded on tape. In these situations the body camera may see too little. The next and perhaps more concerning issue comes with the body cameras seeing too much.

You see, when a body camera is used, it doesn’t just capture all that the police officer wants to see, it also captures peripheral information that might not only have no bearing to the issue at hand, but might also invade the privacy of others in the area.

There’s no contesting the fact that this device can be a great tool for justice but it’s clear that it still has a long way to go. In the quest for justice, the private moments of citizens shouldn’t be made a public matter under any circumstances. The NYPD has even launched a partnership with Ring to use doorbell camera footage in their investigations. This is going way too far. What happened to our right to privacy?

The NYPD has a major role to play here in preventing a massive breach of privacy. It’s imperative that we censor all aspects of recordings that aren’t pertinent to the case. Once it has been conclusively determined that footage of certain citizens isn’t relevant to a case, their portion of the recording should be omitted or edited before the video is published.

It is crucial to bear in mind that violation of a citizen’s privacy is still illegal, regardless of whoever is doing it. Mandating that these videos be released as captured would actually turn the NYPD into violators of the law they are sworn to uphold. The NYPD must stay true to its calling and protect all parameters of the law, our privacy included.