Video cameras in police - Term Paper Example

As the technology improves, the safety of the officer and of the public is greatly enhanced by the use of video within a police vehicle. The use of video in police vehicles was first attempted during the early 1980’s. As the availability of home video cameras came into use by the consumer, police departments began experimenting with using the technology in a official capacity within their police vehicles. This posed a few problems. A handful of companies set out to utilize this equipment in the police environment.

Many lessons were learned regarding the harsh and RF-rich environment of a police car and the suitability of standard consumer-grade VCR’s. Wireless microphones were ‘borrowed’ from uses in other industries with similar results regarding suitability and longevity in the police environment. Service became a key issue since most of these products suffered high failure rates when used every day in the hot, cold, wet, dry, dirty, and generally physically demanding mobile environment. (Sharp) These difficulties made the use of video within the vehicle a limited choice for the various departments throughout the United States.

The industry worked on solving the dilemmas caused by the problems with the technology, but the use was not being widely utilized. The use of camera’s in the police vehicle would take an event to resurge the appearance of the necessity of a visual record of an interaction between an officer and a suspect. The importance of recording the interaction between the police and the public surged to the front of the technological investigative world when “in 1991, viewers across the country tuning in their evening news watched in horror and fascination as Los Angeles Police Officers brought down motorist Rodney King.

” (Olsen) As the ordeal of Mr. King was watched in