Body-Worn Camera Governance Failures Begin in the Review Process

Governance, in body-worn camera programs, is the organizational structure that defines how authority is exercised, footage is reviewed, decisions are documented, and oversight is applied—ensuring consistency, accountability, and defensibility at scale.

Most body-worn camera programs don’t break down when the cameras are deployed.

They break down later in how the footage is reviewed across the organization.

And that doesn’t just mean first-line supervisors.

I've seen this play out the same way in many agencies, review happens at multiple levels, under different circumstances: sergeants, command staff, specialized units, sometimes audit or IA layers depending on the situation. But even with those layers in place, one supervisor reviews thoroughly. Another takes a lighter pass. Command-level review may focus on certain types of incidents, but not others. Some decisions are clearly documented, others aren’t. Some issues are elevated beyond the supervisor level but done so inconsistently, and without clearly defined criteria.

None of that looks like a major issue on its own. But over time, those differences start to add up across units, across ranks, across review layers. And when something does come under scrutiny, the issue usually isn’t a single decision. It’s the pattern behind it. A pattern that leadership hasn’t had a clear line of sight into. That’s not something you fix with more training. And it’s usually not a policy issue either. It comes back to how the overall review structure is designed, or not designed, to function consistently across all those levels.

Before changing anything, policy, training, or technology, there’s a more basic question that has to be answered: Is the review system, across all levels, actually set up to produce consistent, defensible decisions? If you don’t have a clear answer to that, you’re making changes on top of assumptions. That’s where governance readiness comes into play. Not as a fix, but as a way to understand what’s actually in place before deciding what needs to change.

Because if you don’t understand the structure, you can’t really fix it.