Officers for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) will be equipped with much-delayed body cameras by the end of next month, it was reported on Friday. But experts have questioned the transparency of a policy that allows the ICE director to restrict the public release of footage unless “it is in the best interests of the agency”...Christopher Schneider, a sociology professor at Canada’s Brandon University, and co-author of Police Body-Worn Cameras: Media and the New Discourse of Police Reform, said the ICE director would have discretion to release recordings that reflect well on the agency’s image while working to keep others secret.“In some ways, ICE is saying the quiet part out loud,” he said. “Body-worn cameras are being used as contemporary image-work tools to present the police to the public in the most favorable way possible.”The policy says ICE will promptly release video of shootings and other encounters in which its agents cause death or serious injury only after determining “it is in the best interests of the agency” to do so.
Perhaps the recorded images would still be available to judges and courtroom use? More information at The Guardian.
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