Domestic Violence and Body-Worn Cameras: Should Privacy Law Guide Rules on Recording?
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DOMESTIC VIOLENCE AND BODY-WORN CAMERAS: SHOULD
PRIVACY LAW GUIDE RULES ON RECORDING?
Emily Bordelon*
I. INTRODUCTION
She was standing close to him and that funny tingling
started in his fingertips, went fast up his arms and sent
his fist shooting straight for her face... it wasn't until
she screamed that he realized he had hit her in the
mouth - so hard that the dark red lipstick had blurred
and spread over her full lips, reach[ing] ...out toward
her cheeks...He kept striking her and he thought with
horror that something inside of him was holding him,
binding him to this act... And even as the thought
formed in his mind, his hands reached for her face
again and...again.1
In the aftermath, you are a police officer that arrives at this scene of
domestic violence with a camera. Experience tells you to tread carefully
but your training provides little specific guidance. Your patrol guide,
however, has implemented a new rule that requires you to turn on your
body-worn camera. There is a nagging thought in the back of your
mind...is this a good idea? How will the victim be impacted? If you tell
her you are filming, how will she react? Would the presence of a camera
make a difference, right now or in the future? Is the victim even thinking
about you filming her?
There are currently over 410,000 body-worn cameras (BWCs)
on police officers around the United States.2 This number is only
expected to grow. Yet what is left out of discussions to increase BWCs
on officers is the impact cameras could have on domestic violence
* George Mason University Antonin Scalia Law School, J.D., expected May 2022;
M.A., George Washington University, 2019; B.S., summa cum laude, Liberty University,
2017. I would like to thank Professor Yijia Lu for his thoughtful guidance and feedback.
Additional thanks to Samantha Lewis, Emily Gunberg, and the ILJ editors. The views
expressed herein are my own.
1Ruth Nadelhaft, Domestic Violence in Literature: A Preliminary Study, 17
MOSAIC: AN INTERDISC. CRITICAL J. 242, 250 (1984) (quoting ANN PETRY, LIKE A
WINDING SHEET (Crisis ed. 1945)).
2 Shelley Hyland, Body-Worn Cameras in Law Enforcement Agencies, 2016, 2018
BUREAU OF JUST. STATS. 3, https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/bwcleal6.pdf
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Domestic Violence and Body-Worn Cameras: Should Privacy Law Guide Rules on Recording?
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