What police bodycams really reveal

Police accountability is important, but few talk about the other side of the trade

"The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command." — George Orwell

A still novel trend in modern society is the ability to see footage of many real-world events. Note many are fake, AI or positioned for political purposes. But plenty of it is real too, inclusive of legal documentation and court filings. That brings us to today’s topic of police bodycam footage, which if you’ve not taken time to watch some of, you should. Everyone can look at various crime stats and facts. But facts tell, stories sell, and in this case video documentation is going to not just create accountability, but change how people view both the police and criminals.

If you are a student of human nature and take interest in society, police bodycam footage is oddly compelling. Maybe it's the unfiltered nature, the raw tension, the confusion, the unpredictability of our species. A traffic stop turns chaotic. A drunk driver slurs through a lie. A domestic dispute escalates in real time. These aren’t scenes from a Hollywood drama, they’re real, messy moments that police officers walk into every day, often without knowing what will happen. It’s hard to look away as these are our fellow citizens, after all. And they reveal something we should care about, the disorder in our public spaces, a fact we should take far more seriously.

I’m going to embed a few of these videos throughout this story, I’d encourage you to watch at least one. There’s 1,000s of them online, as police bodycams become increasingly standard and transparency becomes ubiquitous. They might tell a different story about police than the one you thought or that the media told you. I’m not going to share any charts of stats today. You can look those up (they actually are trending better). But if you go through and watch enough police videos you’ll start to see a pattern: in most cases cops are extremely patient, professional and on the whole doing the best they can. I know this isn’t a popular narrative. And of course it doesn’t excuse any bad behavior. But let’s talk about it more.

When body-worn cameras were first introduced, the pitch was simple: accountability. They were meant to create a record, to protect both the public and the officers. Following high-profile use-of-force incidents and the social unrest that came with them, bodycams became the public’s way of saying: “we want to see what really happens.” It was transparency by design. The hope was that police would behave better if they knew they were being watched. Everyone wants that. Police should be accountable, they should treat all citizens the same, and with respect. They shouldn’t harass anyone or profile unfairly. This is all uncontentious and universally agreed upon.

But something unexpected happened along the way. Bodycams began revealing not just the actions of police, but also the behaviors of the people they interact with. And what they reveal is that some people just behave badly in the face of courteous law enforcement officers. Particularly in America. Grown adults driving inebriated beyond belief, putting all our lives at risk. Brazen criminals threatening retail workers in broad daylight. Outright disrespect for fellow citizens.

This isn’t to say that every action caught on camera is criminal. But the footage shows the fraying edges of civil society in a way few other mediums do. It’s one thing to read about a drunk driver in a police report, it’s another to watch that person weave through traffic, slur their words and resist arrest. It’s one thing to hear about a shoplifting call, it’s another to see the suspect scream at a cashier, hurl a bottle, and bolt out the door. The footage doesn’t sanitize anything. It simply shows the reality, that some Americans are volatile, unstable, and unpredictable. The cameras didn’t make people behave badly. They just started recording it.

This side effect wasn’t the headline feature. But it might be just as important.

The history of bodycams is relatively short. While early prototypes existed in the UK as far back as 2005, they gained widespread traction in the U.S. after the 2014 shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. The Department of Justice and local governments began funding bodycam programs with the goal of increasing trust and reducing misconduct. By 2020, the vast majority of large police departments had adopted them. And for good reason: studies where police are required to keep cameras on have shown that in many cities, the presence of bodycams correlates with fewer citizen complaints and lower use-of-force incidents. That’s good.

At the same time, and what I’ve not seen discussed, is the footage has become a kind of accidental mirror, reflecting not just the actions of law enforcement, but also the culture they’re tasked with policing. And if the mirror’s image is occasionally ugly, that’s not a failure of the camera or the officer, it’s just an honest picture.

There’s a popular argument that crime is downstream of larger structural issues, and of course there’s ongoing work to address that. But bodycam footage isn’t a thesis on root causes. It doesn’t explain why someone is high, or violent, or unstable. It simply shows what happened. And when an officer walks into a situation where someone is threatening their spouse, crashing a stolen car, or brandishing a weapon, the root causes are secondary. At that moment, the job is to keep people alive and maintain order. Maybe it’s also unpopular, but people have agency to behave in a civic way no matter who or where they are. The vast majority of us do. Even in communities with high crime rates, a small minority of individuals are responsible for the majority of offenses (a phenomenon known as the "chronic offender" pattern). Most people do follow social norms and laws.

Regarding crime rates, after a spike in homicides during the pandemic, many cities are now seeing modest declines. But violent crime does remain higher in the U.S. than in most developed nations. We ask police to manage that reality every day. Bodycams have become the documentary of that request, a daily film reel of what we expect our police to confront, and the ways in which the job is harder, more human, and sometimes more heartbreaking than we like to admit.

The best cops are those who manage to stay calm in the chaos. Who show restraint when others wouldn’t. Who defuse instead of escalate. Bodycams help hold the bad ones accountable, but they also spotlight the quiet professionalism of the good ones, those who don’t make headlines because they don’t need to.

The camera doesn’t lie. But it does sometimes show us truths we’d rather not see, not about the cops, but about ourselves. And maybe that’s the real benefit. Because if we want better policing, we also need a better society. And you can’t fix what you won’t look at.

If we’re being intellectually honest, I don’t think even in a better run America we would ever want to “defund the police.” We would want to fund and train a force that was respectful, aligned with our values and keeps the peace. I understand the impulse to hate cops, but watch some of the videos and you’ll see plenty of wealthy people who have everything behaving poorly as well.

Police are a necessary part of a functioning society. A society without police would be anarchy. What else do we have a government for if not to protect our rights, enforce laws and safeguard our family and property? Some adults simply can’t behave, particularly in America. If you think this is limited to certain socio-economic classes you’re wrong, the data reads this, there’s plenty of bodycam videos with wealthy individuals in nice neighborhoods, but just watch an episode of American Green, or look at how many politicians and executives behave thinking they won’t get caught.

Some humans just behave badly. To think if we change certain parts of society or “have socialism” or whatever everyone will behave perfectly is naïve and to misunderstand human nature (it’s a childlike view of the world). But of course, we want an even-handed application of policing, and hopefully bodycams, which I think are positive, help us get there.