In this photo from January 2016, Sgt. Nathan Peach of the Monroe County Sheriff's Office wears a body camera on the front of his uniform shirt. Staff file photo by David Snodgress
Police body cameras have become part of the uniform, a safety accessory along with the service revolver, pepper spray, riot baton and bullet-proof vest.
Video and audio footage from cameras clipped to officers’ shirts is finding its way into courtrooms, used as evidence in criminal cases.
“We believe that it is now a ‘best practice,’ as well as good public policy, for all police to be equipped with body-cam technology,” said Bob Miller, chief deputy prosecutor in Monroe County. “There is simply no better evidence of what occurs during a police-citizen encounter than video of the event.”
In October 2014, a body camera clipped to BPD Officer William Abram’s uniform recorded the sounds of gunshots from inside a dark residence where two women were being raped at gunpoint. The video shows two men escaping from a bedroom window and one turning and firing toward Abram, who shot back.
It documents just what happened and backed up the officer’s account.
It’s evidence. Strong evidence.
During a trial this month in Monroe Circuit Court in which a man was convicted of causing his 2-month-old daughter’s death, deputy prosecutor David Gohn played for jurors a video and audio recording. It came from a Bloomington police officer’s body camera that was on when the parents of the battered infant were told that despite efforts to revive her, Kenya Rose Smith-Barton had died.
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