Policemen With Body Cameras May Become New Standard in US After Ferguson

MOSCOW, December 2 (Sputnik) – The US government has come up with a new method to prevent future incidents like the shooting of Michael Brown by a police officer in Ferguson. The administration thinks that by providing body cameras to law enforcement agencies such incidents could be avoided. President Obama’s administration is allocating $263 million to increasing the use of body cameras by police officers. The funding includes $75 million over three years to help police buy cameras, in addition to support for better training and oversight, Business Week reports.

The White House plans to provide 50,000 police officers with cameras, which would almost double the number of cameras currently in use by law enforcement officials in the country. There are currently two major US companies selling body cameras: Vievu, which has sold more than 40,000 cameras to 3,900 police agencies, and Taser, with 30,000 cameras in use by 1, 2000 agencies. The $75 million reserved for the purchase of new body cameras is over seven times the total revenue Taser had earned from selling the devices in 2013.

Jim Bueermann, president of the Police Foundation, has mentioned that he feels that the cost of equipping every police officer with a body camera may be problematic, although he thinks that the administration will carry out its federal program in the same manner it did when it supplied law enforcement agencies with over 1.1 million vests; in time it will be mandatory for every officer in participating departments to wear a camera at all times while in the field.

He further said that federal support could be a major tipping point in policing and technology. “In five years this will be ubiquitous; it will be more unusual to see officers not wearing a body cam than wearing one.”

According to Business Week, representatives of Vievu and Taser stated that they are willing to meet the demand for the body cameras, even though the market is ripe for new investors given that cameras are still expensive compared to similar products in the commercial market.

Wall Street has been predicting good days ahead for Taser for months. The company’s stock has risen over 75 percent since the shooting of unarmed African-American teenager Michael Brown by police officer Darren Wilson on August 9 in Ferguson.

Last week, the grand jury decided not to bring charges against Wilson. The controversial decision led to a new wave of protests that swept across 180 US cities in 38 states.