South Carolina shooting renews call for police body cameras in Arizona
Apr 9, 2015, 4:05 PM | Updated: 4:05 pm
PHOENIX — The killing of an unarmed black man by a South Carolina police officer has renewed the call for Arizona law enforcement to wear body cameras.
Scottsdale attorney Craig Rosenstein said Arizona police departments should force officers to wear cameras after the state Legislature failed to make them mandatory.
“We’ve been getting the same stall-tactic answers and I think the latest incident in South Carolina is emblematic of exactly the type of scenarios that would benefit from having body cams or dash cam videos,” he said.
Rosenstein said police body cameras trials throughout the nation led to an 88 percent decrease of complaints against officers.
“It’s to the officer’s benefit,” he said. “It gives a complete neutral third-party impression of what occurred and then we get an accurate depiction of what happened and that prevents loss of life.”
The South Carolina officer, Michael Thomas Slager, was fired following the shooting and faces a murder charge.
