When Being Recorded No Longer Seems to Matter
I’ve been thinking about something that feels difficult to name, but harder to ignore.
Four Corners: Brutal Force brought it into public view, but the concern had been sitting with me long before this episode aired. I’ve seen, up close, what alleged misuse of police power can do to a person’s life when authority, internal relationships and institutional silence begin working in the wrong direction.
For some time, I have been close to a situation involving alleged misuse of police power, institutional relationships, intimidation, reputational damage and the silencing of someone who tried to raise serious concerns. I’m deliberately not naming the people involved or sharing identifying details. The situation still hasn’t been resolved, but that story isn’t mine to expose.
However, it’s shaped the way I now think about accountability.
When power is misused inside systems that are supposed to protect people, the harm can be devastating. It can destroy careers, traumatise families, damage reputations, drain finances, and leave people feeling as though every pathway to justice has been quietly blocked.
That’s the context I bring to this article. Not only the misconduct itself, but the confidence behind it. The apparent belief that consequences will not come.
Body-worn cameras, CCTV and public phone footage were all supposed to create a stronger layer of accountability. The theory was simple enough: when people know they’re being recorded, they may be more careful, more professional, and more aware that their actions could later be reviewed by supervisors, courts, oversight bodies, journalists, lawyers or the public.
But what happens when the camera is rolling and the conduct doesn’t change?
That, to me, is one of the most disturbing parts of the current conversation about policing. It’s not only the use of force itself, although that matters deeply. It’s the apparent loss of shame.
There’s a sense, in some of what we’re seeing, that people in positions of authority are no longer particularly troubled by being seen. Not by CCTV. Not by body-worn video. Not by members of the public filming on phones.
When misconduct becomes brazen, the problem is no longer just individual behaviour. It points to something larger: a culture in which people have learned, rightly or wrongly, that the system will protect them.
Body-worn video was meant to protect everyone
Body-worn video was never only about catching police doing the wrong thing. It was also meant to protect police from false, exaggerated, malicious or mistaken complaints. That matters a great deal.
Good officers deserve protection from vexatious allegations just as much as the public deserves protection from misconduct. In that sense, body-worn video should serve everyone. It should protect the public, police, the integrity of investigations, and the truth itself.
But that only works if the footage exists.
It also only works if the footage is treated as evidence, not as an organisational convenience.
If body-worn video is relied on when it clears police, but is unavailable, incomplete, ignored, muted, delayed or minimised when it raises uncomfortable questions, then the problem is not the camera. The problem is the culture around it.
A camera is only as honest as the system that reviews the footage.
Mandatory activation should not be controversial
I was genuinely surprised to learn that body-worn video activation in NSW is still not compulsory in the circumstances where it most clearly matters.
The NSW Law Enforcement Conduct Commission reported in March 2025 that operational NSW police were required to wear body-worn cameras when available, but the policy used “should” rather than “must” language around activation in certain circumstances. The LECC recommended strengthening the policy so that officers must activate body-worn video when exercising police powers, or when an interaction is likely to lead to the exercise of police powers.
Since Four Corners: Brutal Force aired, NSW Police has reportedly flagged a move toward mandatory use when officers exercise police powers or use force. According to the ABC, the proposed operating change would require officers using police powers to immediately start recording with body-worn cameras.
Before I left the NSWPF, my understanding was that officers were expected to activate body-worn video when exercising a police power. Operationally, that made sense to me then, and it makes even more sense now.
Of course, there are practical realities. In a rapid-onset incident, no reasonable person is suggesting an officer should pause in the middle of controlling a violent person to think, “Hang on, I’d better turn my camera on.” There are also legitimate issues around battery life, privacy, sensitive locations, victims, children, medical incidents, and the fact a camera can’t simply remain activated for an entire 12-hour shift.
But none of that is an argument against mandatory activation. It’s an argument for clear, practical policy.
Activation should become part of natural operational safety behaviour. Just as officers build habits around radio use, appointments, tactical options and situational awareness, they can build the habit of activating body-worn video as soon as it’s safe and practical when police powers are being exercised or are likely to be exercised.
Many cameras also capture a short period before activation, which helps in fast-moving situations. That doesn’t remove the need to activate the camera, but it does recognise the reality that incidents can escalate quickly.
Where activation genuinely isn’t possible, the reason should be recorded and explained. But the default should be simple: if police powers are being used, body-worn video should be on.
A discretionary camera can’t carry the full weight of public trust.
Cameras don’t create accountability. People and systems do.
The evidence on body-worn cameras is more complicated than many people assume.
A Campbell systematic review of 30 studies found that body-worn cameras did not have clear or consistent effects on police use of force or citizen behaviour across the studies reviewed. That doesn’t mean body-worn cameras are useless. It means cameras alone are not enough.
Recording is not accountability. It’s documentation.
Accountability only exists when footage is properly captured, preserved, reviewed, disclosed and acted upon. Otherwise, visibility without consequence becomes little more than a record of what power believes it can survive.
That’s the part I can’t stop thinking about.
The question is no longer only, “Did they think no one would see?”
Sometimes the more troubling question is, “Why did they think being seen wouldn’t matter?”
This is not about being anti-police
I served proudly in the NSW Police Force for 23 years.
I loved my job. I remain proud of the work I did and the people I was able to help. I also know policing is difficult, dangerous, relentless and increasingly complex.
Police are often expected to respond to situations involving trauma, mental illness, addiction, family violence, homelessness, child protection issues, community crisis and social breakdown. They often do this with limited training, limited staffing and very little breathing room.
I know what it feels like to go from job to job, then try and find the hours required to complete the paperwork attached to each one. I know what it feels like to go in on days off because the corro has become impossible to keep up with. I also know there are good officers still trying to do the right thing in extremely difficult environments.
But none of that justifies excessive force, malicious prosecution, lying, fabricating or “losing” evidence, giving false testimony, copying statements, protecting offenders within the organisation, bullying colleagues into silence, or terrorising vulnerable people who should have been protected.
There is a legitimate conversation to be had about how use of force can look from the outside. Sometimes controlling a violent or combative person is messy, confronting and extraordinarily difficult to understand unless you’ve been in that situation, deep in the moment and at times, quite literally fighting for your life. To win the fight in those circumstances can very likely look, to an outside observer, like a disproportionate use of force.
I know that too.
But this is not about people misunderstanding every use of force. It’s about whether force is lawful, necessary, proportionate and truthful. It’s about whether power is being exercised with discipline or entitlement.
The real issue is visible impunity
I’ve been thinking a lot about whether we’re seeing something broader than isolated misconduct.
Not a simple cause-and-effect line from one agency to another. That would need proper evidence, and I’m not claiming it.
But perhaps we’re seeing something more subtle and more dangerous: a shared permission structure.
In the United States, there have been growing concerns about aggressive immigration enforcement and law enforcement conduct, including public allegations of excessive force, intimidation, disputed official accounts and behaviour that appears almost indifferent to being filmed.
Here in NSW, after watching Four Corners: Brutal Force, I’m left wondering whether we’re seeing our own version of institutional brazenness.
Not because one agency directly copies another, but because cultures of impunity travel. They’re modelled, normalised, excused, defended and reframed until, over time, some people in authority seem to learn that consequences are unlikely.
Once that happens, the presence of a camera may no longer feel like a deterrent. It may simply become part of the scenery.
That’s deeply dangerous.
When people misuse power while being recorded, the issue is not only operational failure. It is cultural permission. It suggests some people have learned that authority will protect them, that consequences are negotiable, and that force can be justified later if everyone sticks to the story.
Good police are harmed by this too
Poor accountability doesn’t only harm the public. It also harms good police.
It harms officers who are trying to do the job ethically. It harms officers who activate their body-worn video, write accurate statements, use force appropriately, disclose evidence properly and treat people with dignity even under pressure.
It also harms officers who know something is wrong but fear the consequences of saying so.
Every good officer I know carries some version of the same fear: speak up, and it can be career suicide.
That should concern everyone.
When good police are afraid to report misconduct, the organisation is failing them too.
A healthy police culture should not make integrity feel professionally dangerous. It should make integrity the minimum standard.
The standard should be simple
If police powers are being used, body-worn video should be activated as soon as it’s safe and practical.
If it isn’t activated, the reason should be recorded. The same should apply if it’s turned off or muted.
If footage is lost, unavailable or incomplete, that should be treated as serious. If footage contradicts a police statement, that should matter. If officers collude, copy statements, omit relevant information or give false evidence, that should not be treated as an administrative inconvenience. It should be treated as a fundamental breach of public trust.
Body-worn video was never meant to be a decorative accountability measure.
It was meant to protect truth.
And truth protects everyone worth protecting.
What this moment asks of leadership
The answer is not to pretend policing is easy. It absolutely is not. Nor is the answer to demonise every officer, or to dismiss every criticism as anti-police. Both responses are too simple, and both avoid the harder work.
What’s needed is leadership with enough courage to tell the truth.
That means proper policy, training, supervision, disclosure, consequences, whistleblower protection, support for ethical officers, and independence in how serious misconduct is investigated.
It also means accepting that public trust can’t be demanded. It must be earned, and it isn’t earned through secrecy, defensiveness or damage control. It’s earned when organisations are willing to confront what is ugly inside them, not because they hate the institution, but because they understand what the institution is supposed to stand for.
One of the core reasons I chose to leave after 23 years of proud service was that I had reached a point where I could no longer defend the gap between the values being claimed and the values being demonstrated. That wasn’t easy. I didn’t leave because I stopped believing in service. I left because I still believed in it, and I still do.
My core driver has always been service to others, and I believe that’s true for most people who enter policing. Most don’t join because they want power over others. They join because they want to help, protect, respond, intervene, and do work that matters.
But service and authority must be held together carefully. If authority isn’t guided by restraint, integrity and consequence, it stops being service and becomes something else entirely.
Bad policing anywhere should concern us everywhere, not because every agency is the same, but because the logic of unchecked power is disturbingly portable.
Cameras were supposed to make power more accountable. But in too many cases, they seem to be showing us something else: power becoming less ashamed of itself.
That should never be acceptable.
Not to the public. Not to good police. Not to anyone who still believes authority should come with restraint, integrity and consequence.
