Op-ed: Police body cams could fall short like dash cams

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Law enforcement and civil rights groups seem to agree that cameras would help make police-public interactions more transparent.
But Robinson Meyer, The Atlantic's technology writer, cautions that body cameras may not live up to the hype:
The body camera debate now... is where the dash-cam debate was 15 years ago. We can look back at the promises that dash-cam advocates made and see where they fell short--we can, in a limited way, predict the future from the past. And while history doesn't exactly repeat itself, understanding what was supposed to happen with dash cams--and what actually did--takes us out of the fanciful future of shining screens and dystopian omniscience and puts us in our own--where cops get tired, camera lenses get scummy, and it's harder to fix things than it is to buy them.
Meyer joins The Daily Circuit to talk about his piece.
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