COM 213 Speech Outline Template

Planning

Speech Topic: Police-worn Body Cameras

General Purpose Statement To inform and persuade

Audience Information: My target audience is the officers and the citizens.

Audience Considerations: I will have to be considerate of the audience as it also targets different races and how the use of body cameras will impact them.

Introduction

Attention Getter: Law is meant to serve and protect. As a citizen you want to feel safe and protected by the government, you want to be served by the police and know you can rely on them. As a free citizen, you want to walk past an officer and feel safe. What about the officers, you also want to feel safe and trust the people you are protecting. Body-worn cameras; how would this have an impact on you?

Statement of Credibility: In recent events, the trust between the police and the citizens has been diminishing. There has been a rise in police brutality cases. Body cameras will be one of the tools that will help identify, and monitor police movements to keep track of the events of their days and rule out corrupt officials.

Relevance Statement: Body cameras have the potential of reducing the trust gap between police officers and citizens.

Thesis Statement: I believe that we have a future where we can all feel safe around the police and in case of any corruption, innocent citizens can know their whole encounter was recorded and they have the law on their side as there is evidence to prove their innocence.

Introduction

Law is meant to serve and protect. As citizens, we need to know we can trust the police and that we can have the government on our side to fight for the rights of everyone. With recent police brutality on the rise, there is a need to rule out corrupt officers and record officer encounters. This is one of the ways to reduce the trust gap between the police and the citizens.

Body

Main Point One: One of the best highlights of this topic is that body cams will be one of the methods to reduce police brutality. There has been an increase in the number of police brutality cases and this was one of the drivers of the need to have body-worn cameras.

Sub-point: This is an issue where police brutality has been on the rise, especially in the African American community. With these, there is a need of identifying if there is any racial discrimination within the police force (Wright & Headley, 202). The research was done by Ariel and other researchers and a study was done on 2000000 people the findings were that police body-worn cameras reduce police brutality and there was a 6% reduced complaint against police officers (Ariel et al 2016). Number of People Killed by Police in the United States from 2013-2022 graph. (Statista, 2023).

Sub-point: Reducing police brutality is one way of making sure that everyone feels safe around the police and not scared (Jespersen, K, 2021). When people feel safe around the police then this reduces the trust gap between the citizens and the police. In this, there is a statistical table to show the use of police body-worn cameras, and a study was done with the results displayed in the table (Ariel et al, 2016)

Transition: People might doubt the use of body-worn cameras but there is also a psychological effect of the presence of the body-worn camera which would make the idea work.

Main Point Two: I know at first many people will not put faith in the idea but people tend to behave in a good manner when they know they are being watched.

Sub-point: The point talks about how civilians and the police will act better because they know they are being recorded (White et al, 2020).

Sub-point: Civilians will act better even around the police as they know that the encounter is being recorded and they cannot be blamed for something they did not do the police also know that the civilians cannot harm them too as they are also being recorded. This is because there has been a rise in police recordings and it would be great to also see the story from the police’s point of view to judge the case (Houwing, L & Ritsema 2020).

Transition: With all the cases of police brutality and all the videos going around of police videos some also mocking the police, this has made it a reason to use the police body-worn cameras to also share the officer’s side and also protect the officers too.

Main Point Three: The topic is in support of adding facial recognition through body cams. This will assist the police in identifying criminals and also keep the police safe.

Sub-point: Having body cams with facial recognition can assist in tracking criminals who are caught by other police officers or who get in their path (Bromberg et al, 2020).

Sub-point: The facial recognition feature can assist with clearing mistaken identities and keep the trust of the public intact. In a movie on Netflix called black and blue where a police officer with a body-worn camera gets to record corrupt officers killing a teenager, she has to fight to prove she is not guilty as she was framed for the murder and the only evidence she had to prove her innocence is the recording from the body camera (Netflix, 2019). This shows that the body camera is important to the officers too. The body cameras were to record the officers’ day and there was a note that officers were more times assaulted in site B and D. The other sites recorded a decrease however the cases were fewer than in B and D. Just as we see the values tested and the results presented, we can see the sides B and D have a higher positive standard difference. In the chart, you can see site B and D are closer to the 2-axis (Ariel et al, 2016).

Transition: The use of body-worn cameras to assist not only the citizens but the officers too is an added benefit of the tool. Trust goes two ways and this will make sure safety does too.

Conclusion

Statement of Closure: Body-worn cameras are important in making society feel safe. The use of body-worn cameras will reduce police brutality and offer room for discipline not only for the officers but with the citizens. With the features in the body camera such as facial recognition this can also help rack criminals and also clear up mistaken identities and framed cases offering quality honest service.

Recap of Thesis/Main Points: Not only is the use of body cameras to increase safety levels, reduce police brutality, and reduce the trust gap between the police and the citizens, but also keep everyone safe as even the officers are humans too.

References

Ariel, B., Sutherland, A., Henstock, D., Young, J., Drover, P., Sykes, J., … & Henderson, R. (2016). Wearing body cameras increases assaults against officers and does not reduce police use of force: Results from a global multi-site experiment. European journal of criminology, 13(6), 744-755.

Bromberg, D. E., Charbonneau, É., & Smith, A. (2020). Public support for facial recognition via police body-worn cameras: Findings from a list experiment. Government Information Quarterly, 37(1), 101415.

Houwing, L., & Ritsema van Eck, G. J. (2020). Police Bodycams as Equiveillance Tools? Reflections on the Debate in the Netherlands. Surveillance & Society, 18(2).

Jespersen, K. (2021). (Not So) Innocent Bystander: The Embodied Views of the Body Camera.

Netflix (2019). Black and Blue movie.

Statista (2023) Number of People Killed y Police in the United States from 2013 to 2022. https://www.statista.com/statistics/1362796/number-people-killed-police-us/

White, M. D., & Malm, A. (2020). Cops, cameras, and crisis: The potential and the perils of police body-worn cameras. NYU Press.

Wright, J. E., & Headley, A. M. (2021). Can technology work for policing? Citizen perceptions of police-body worn cameras. The American Review of Public Administration, 51(1), 17-27.