After Michael Brown was killed by a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri, igniting the national Black Lives Matter movement, everyone from then president Barack Obama to members of Brown’s family embraced a relatively new solution for reform: Equip officers with body cameras. If police knew their every action was being recorded, the reasoning went, they would more likely be on their best behavior. If not, the cameras would at least capture any misconduct, making law enforcement more transparent and accountable.
Six years later, body cameras are now used by nearly every major police department in the US, but they’ve failed to prevent more police violence. Technology didn’t prevent the killing of George Floyd while he was in police custody last month. Body cameras “were on and activated,” the Minneapolis Police Department said the next day, while alleging Floyd had resisted arrest. But it was videos from bystanders and security cameras, not body cam footage, that revealed what law enforcement failed to mention: Floyd died after one of the officers, Derek Chauvin, pinned him to the ground with a knee on his neck for almost nine minutes. Floyd’s death was later ruled a homicide, and the four officers involved now
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