New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio tweeted about the new rule that requires officers to wear body cameras while on duty just a couple of hours before the jury released their decision on the Eric Garner chokehold case, according to Mediaite.com.
The Staten Island grand jury did not indict NYPD officer Daniel Pantaleo in the choking death of Garner, even though the entire incident was caught on tape.
An eyewitness camera captured the police officer applying a chokehold that led to Garner's death, according to the Associated Press. Garner was not armed.
In the Ferguson case, a camera was not present to record what happened when a white police officer fatally shot Michael Brown, a black unarmed man. Officer Darren Wilson was also not indicted on any charges.
On Wednesday, two hours before the grand jury released their decision, de Blasio and the NYPD tweeted about the cameras' potential value on preventing incidents from escalating in the future, Mediaite.com reported.
The NYPD said the pilot body camera program will debut later this week, and will be used to monitor police activity.
In one out of every six departments in the country, officers are currently using body cameras of some sort, the AP reported. Now, President Barack Obama wants to spend $74 million to equip another 50,000 officers with them.
Body cameras are almost widely supported, even though there are concerns about the development of policies governing their use and their impact on privacy.
Camera footage provides an independent record from the officer's perspective along with tangible evidence that cannot be changed, unlike often malleable and faulty eyewitness accounts, experts say.
