Police body worn cameras are in your city, on the officers you interact with, recording everything. In Canada, if you want to see footage that documents you, you file a freedom of information request and wait. The officer who recorded you reviews it whenever they want. That asymmetry is not a bug someone is working to fix. It's how the policy is written.

Chris Schneider spent years tracking how "transparency" and "accountability" became the defining language around body cams, and found that the research literature on whether cameras actually change police behavior is inconclusive. Sometimes use of force drops. Sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes civilian complaints decrease. Sometimes they don't. The cameras keep rolling out anyway, at significant taxpayer expense, attached to terms nobody has agreed to define.

Professional liability insurance is Schneider's most direct fix: tie misconduct findings to premiums, let the insurance math do the work that oversight agencies haven't. If police administrators are right that bad actors are rare, almost no officer would be affected. That's the version of accountability that comes with a number attached to it.

Topics: police body worn cameras, body cam footage Canada, police accountability, freedom of information, police reform

GUEST: Chris Schneider | http://chrisschneider.org

Originally aired on 2026-02-20