A majority of both Republicans and Democrats believe that police officers should be required to wear small video cameras while on duty, according to a new poll.
The Washington Post/ABC News poll of 1,000 randomly selected persons also saw different races in near agreement of the proposed requirement.
86 percent of whites, 92 percent of blacks, and 86 percent of Hispanics said they support such a requirement.
The debate over officers being required to wear the cameras has been fueled by a series of situations where officers’ actions have come into question, including the deaths of Eric Garner and Michael Brown.
The new poll comes after a CBS News poll of 1,122 adults nationwide earlier this month also found broad support across political ideologies and races. “There is near unanimous support (91 percent [of all respondents]) for on-duty police officers wearing video cameras,” CBS noted.
The polls come after a recent study found that body-worn cameras on police officers reduced the use of force by roughly 50 percent.
The study, by the University of Cambridge’s Institute of Criminology, took place over 12 months in Rialto, California.
Dr. Barak Ariel, the lead author, also told Newsweek that complaints against police decreased 90 percent compared with the previous 12 months.
“This is a promising tool for police officers, which is likely to be a game changer not only for the professionalization of policing, but in terms of police-public relations,” said Ariel, an assistant professor at the Institute of Criminology at Hebrew University in Jerusalem and a lecturer in Experimental Criminology at the University of Cambridge.
