WASHINGTON — The Ferguson fallout is likely to include more police officers nationwide wearing cameras as part of their uniforms.

Lawmakers like Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Missouri, are talking about federal funding. Researchers are digging into data about costs and benefits. Cities that already have equipped police with cameras are fielding questions from those that are considering it.

“The officers have welcomed them, and I think the community has, too,” April R. Harris, treasurer of the Greensboro Police Foundation in North Carolina, said in an interview Wednesday. The Greensboro Police Foundation raised more than $100,000 to purchase the cameras for the city’s police officers. While the fundraising drive was a success, it also underscored one of the challenges: the cameras can be costly.

The cameras’ use, moreover, can open up unanticipated conflicts. Harris noted that there are now questions about whether the video taken by a camera worn by an officer amounts to a personnel record that’s exempt from public release.

No good public estimate exists for how many law enforcement agencies deploy officers with cameras. A Police Executive Research Forum study included a survey with responses from 254 law enforcement agencies, 63 of which reported using body-worn cameras.

A yearlong study of the Mesa Police Department in Arizona found that camera-wearing officers had 40 percent fewer public complaints, and 75 percent fewer use-of-force complaints, than they had without wearing cameras.

Individual cameras can cost $800 to $1,200, although TASER International markets an “ultra-durable on-officer camera” for $399. Thirty-nine percent of agencies responding to the Police Executive Research Forum survey identified price as a primary reason for not ordering the cameras.


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