Body Cameras

The move is part of a broader criminal justice reform bill that also ends prison gerrymandering, and mandates body cameras for all police departments.

‘It’s an insult to the activism and organizing that defined 2020, and falls far short of the transformational leadership that Boston deserves,’ one City Council member said.

Hours of video given exclusively to The Appeal show police officers bragging about attacking protesters and multiple instances of excessive force and the liberal use of pepper spray.

Spotlights like this one provide original commentary and analysis on pressing criminal justice issues of the day. You can read them each day in our newsletter, The Daily Appeal. The criminal legal system is unequal. Technology was supposed to help. But most of the time, technological advances end up magnifying inequality instead. Consider an example as […]

The popularity of Axon’s tech soared after the police killing of Michael Brown in 2014, but it may be doing more harm than good in protecting people from excessive force.

People who view body cam footage of an incident are less likely to attribute blame to a police officer than those who see the same incident through the lens of a dashboard camera.

In the last month, the Baltimore Police Department has been rocked by accusations that officers are staging or “reenacting” the discovery of drugs for the benefit of capturing, after the fact, the seizure of evidence on their body cameras. In response, Baltimore County State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby has decided to drop the charges in those cases — and possibly hundreds of […]

Justine Damond called 911 Saturday night because she was concerned about a possible assault in the alleyway behind her home. For reasons that remain unknown, she was shot and killed by police after they arrived to investigate the incident. So far police have offered no explanations for the shooting. The officers’ body cameras were off […]