Police Body-Worn Camera External Audits
Body-worn camera programs were adopted largely to increase transparency and accountability in policing, but a camera program that isn't actually operating the way its policy says it should doesn't deliver either of those things — it just creates the appearance of them. The questions that matter are specific and checkable: are officers activating cameras when policy requires it, and is non-activation tracked and addressed? How long is footage actually retained, and does that match the statute and the department's own policy? Who can access footage, under what justification, and is that access logged? Is the chain of custody for footage used as evidence actually defensible in court?
These aren't abstract governance questions — they're the specific things a court, a civilian oversight board, or an investigative reporter will ask about the moment a body camera becomes relevant to an incident, and a department that can't answer them cleanly has a real problem regardless of how good its original policy looked on paper.
What I'd actually examine
I review activation compliance against policy and look for patterns in non-activation, not just isolated incidents. I check retention practices against both state statute and department policy, and whether footage is being purged or preserved the way it's supposed to be. I look at access controls and audit logs for who has viewed or exported footage, and at the chain-of-custody process for footage that ends up in evidence, because a gap there can undermine a case entirely. And I assess how the program handles privacy-sensitive footage — inside homes, involving minors, involving medical situations — against whatever redaction and release policies apply.
Why independence matters
A department auditing its own camera program, however well-intentioned, doesn't carry the same credibility as an outside review — especially to an oversight board or a community that's specifically asking whether the program can be trusted. An honest external audit, including the parts that aren't flattering, is what actually builds that trust, and what gives department leadership something defensible to point to.
If your agency needs an independent audit of its body-worn camera program, reach out.