Are You Recording This: Enforcement of Police Videotaping Essay

Increasing numbers of police departments equip officers with dashboard or body cameras. Advances in technology have made it easy for police to create and preserve videos of their citizen encounters. Videos can be important pieces of evidence; they may also serve to document police misconduct or protect officers from false allegations. Yet too often, videos are lost, destroyed, or never made, often depriving criminal defendants of the only objective evidence in a case. When this happens, there is not always a consequence to the prosecution. This Essay explores this problem of enforcement by examining how different states are compelling law enforcement to make and preserve videos through a combination of legislation and judicial intervention