In the age of Vine and YouTube, encounters with police are being documented on video at an alarming rate.
In Fort Collins, there are 25,787 students enrolled at Colorado State University as of the spring 2016 semester. This means there is a high potential for student-involved encounters with police in Old Town, Campus West and at CSU.
Whether it be a simple traffic stop-turned bad, tear gas at a riot or a full-blown police fight, modern technology allows for more accuracy and evidence during civilian encounters with police.
Beginning in 2012, the Fort Collins Police implemented 20 body-worn cameras for use within the force. Since then, 40 more cameras have been added, totaling 60 body-worn cameras by 2015. There were 15,300 digital videos housed by the Property and Evidence Team of the Fort Collins Police Services by the end of 2015. However, these numbers are not enough to prove that all recent police encounters with students have been accurately and efficiently recorded.
Every officer, both of the CSU Police Department and the Fort Collins Police Department, should be required to wear a body camera during to record all interactions on and near the CSU campus.
As both the campus enrollment and the Fort Collins populations are increasing at a steady rate, it is imperative that the police use modern technologies to provide accurate evidence for every student encounter. In 2016, technology is providing the opportunity to record accurate evidence for police-student encounters:
- The Fort Collins Police Services is planning to increase the number of body-worn cameras in 2016, but the exact number of expected cameras is unknown.
- It is almost a given that students will carry their phones on them at all times. This means they should use video to record their encounters with police, whether it be at a Campus West party or in Old Town.
Although the videos recorded on body-worn cameras need to be sorted and stored, the benefits of organizing this footage far outweighs the costs of not having a video to review in court.
This article first appeared on Medium.