BlackCrime BlueShield: How Race Affects Support of Police Body Cameras

Undergraduate: Erin Lewis

Faculty Advisor: Courtney Rivard
Department: Public Policy

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This paper examines the support students at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill show towards the mandatory implementation of police body cameras nation-wide. With the topic of police brutality and accountability being a hot button issue among Americans, especially young adult Americans, a survey was given to UNC students to measure support of mandated body cameras. While I hypothesized that African-Americans would be more likely than non-African-American students to support a federal mandate for body cameras, the results showed that UNC students as a whole, regardless of race, were more likely to be in favor of the cameras. The overwhelming support was best contributed to the technological advancement of the age group surveyed. From the study, policymakers can begin to see that the overwhelming consensus the UNC students showed could be a miniature version of America¿¿¿s mindset. Thus, giving political figures the support to strive toward establishing a mandate that would require officers nation-wide to be equipped with body cameras. Such a mandate would allow for better monitoring of police-civilian interaction in order to increase police accountability and possibly decrease the amount of police brutality victims.