The short film, shot from a camera mounted on a Connecticut police officer’s chest, delivers an instant jolt of adrenaline.
Called to a nursing home to deal with a troubled resident, the officer races up several flights of stairs and reaches the man just in time to grab his legs as he tries to dive over the sixth-floor balcony to almost certain death.
“It was like out of Hollywood,” said Thomas Wydra, the town police chief who sent the video to every news outlet he knew and posted it on Facebook and Twitter. He added that he “absolutely” thought the video would improve the Hamden police force’s image.
Police body cameras are intended to improve the transparency of law enforcement and help verify episodes of alleged police misconduct.After an officer shot Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, in 2014, causing days of riots, there was a push for them to be introduced nationwide. President Obama praised them as a tool for increasing trust between the public and police.
More than half of medium to large police departments have adopted or are testing body-worn cameras, according to the Police Executive Research Forum in Washington. Many officers and police unions are wary of the added scrutiny that the cameras bring but police departments have begun to realise that they can boost awareness of underappreciated good deeds.
Advertisement
The heroic acts of American police can be experienced in thrilling first-person videos across the internet. In Topeka, Kansas, a policeman leapt into a pond to rescue a boy from drowning. In Norton, Ohio, two officers hauled an unconscious man from his car seconds before it exploded.
Some activists are concerned by the development. Segun Idowu, a community organiser who lobbied for Boston police to adopt the cameras, worried that upbeat incidents would be used to distract from negative ones. “It is subverting the original use of the cameras,” he told The New York Times.