When body-worn cameras were first widely adopted, the primary challenge facing law enforcement agencies was implementation. Agencies needed policies written quickly. They needed training delivered at scale. They needed programs stood up under public, legal, and political pressure. Much of the early work in this space—ours included—was focused on helping agencies meet those immediate demands. Over time, however, the nature of the challenge changed. Body-worn camera programs ma

Most agencies don’t struggle with body-worn camera review because people don’t care. They struggle because manual review does not scale . Supervisors and trainers are expected to: Watch increasing volumes of footage Apply consistent judgment across incidents Balance review with operational demands Over time, subjectivity creeps in—not from bad intent, but from fatigue, time pressure, and inconsistency. This isn’t a personnel problem. It’s a systems problem. Technology can hel

Agencies that treat body-worn cameras primarily as transparency tools usually miss their real value. BWC programs succeed or fail based on how well they function as risk-management systems —not recording devices. The questions leadership should be asking are not: Did we capture video? Did we release it on time? They should be: Are we reviewing consistently at scale? Are decisions defensible across hundreds or thousands of incidents? Are we reducing institutional risk—or simpl

At the executive level, body‑worn camera programs succeed or fail based on governance, not hardware. Policies, accountability structures, review standards, and decision rights determine whether cameras reduce risk or quietly create it. When BWC programs are treated as IT deployments rather than organizational systems, agencies often discover too late that expectations, capacity, and oversight were never aligned. Effective BWC governance requires executives to define why foot

There’s a persistent myth in policing that cameras alone drive better outcomes. They don’t. What changes behavior is what happens after the recording: How footage is reviewed How patterns are identified How lessons are fed back into training How leadership responds consistently over time Without a system, BWCs become an archive. With a system, they become feedback. The agencies seeing real value aren’t watching more video. They’re making better decisions with the video they

A new audit in Philadelphia’s 24th District sampled 119 interactions from January 2025 and found that officers properly activated, categorized, and recorded footage in just over half (54 %) of the stops. Here are some key takeaways: Non-use or incorrect use of BWCs undermines policy credibility — if officers routinely skip or delay activation, the value of the system is diminished. Audits should not be one-and-done — regular, random checks help reinforce accountability.