In View: Commentary from BWC Experts
In addition to providing training and technical assistance, sharing related news updates, and directing agencies to the resources provided through the BJA National BWC Toolkit, the BWC team also provides commentary from BWC experts, including researchers, practitioners, and policymakers.
Tech Alert: BWC Manufacturers Now Offer “Record-After-the-Fact” Feature
Jason Lustig, Kaitlin Moloney
Body-worn camera (BWC) technology has advanced significantly over the past several years. Having successfully met the initial demands of increased video storage capacity and battery life, BWC vendors continue to add an array of new and enhanced BWC features and digital evidence management options. With these fast-paced advances and innovations, even the most technologically savvy police department administrators can find it challenging to stay up to date.
This resource focuses on one new BWC feature. Depending on the vendor, this feature is called “always-on,” “always-record,” “look-back,” “video recall,” or “record-after-the-fact” (RATF). It most typically provides the ability to retrieve video but not audio that the BWC captured while it was not actively recording an event. Two major BWC vendors do provide the option to record audio when the camera is in RATF (or pre-event) mode, but this is not the default. In addition, audio-disabled RATF (or pre-event) recordings may be the preferred mode for technical reasons.
Read the full commentary here.