Metropolitan Police to Release More Body-Worn Video Footage

The Metropolitan Police announced it will release more body-worn video footage when doing so can improve transparency and trust in policing. The force said the policy shift will also support officers by showing the public the full context of incidents rather than partial clips shared online. Until now, footage was typically withheld until after any related criminal proceedings ended.

April the Met released video of officers arresting a suspect in the Golders Green knife attacks after online criticism of the force used. The same month the force published footage from a large public-order operation to show the abuse officers faced and the challenges of making arrests in crowds.

The Met began testing body-worn cameras with 500 officers in May 2014 and expanded the program to thousands of officers in October 2016. Civil-liberties group Liberty has warned that combining body-worn footage with facial-recognition software could enable large-scale retrospective searches.

Local policing commander Neerav Patel said selectively edited clips posted online undermine officers' work and that fuller releases will allow the public to see more of officers' daily duties. Patel added that transparency remains important on occasions when officers have not performed correctly.

Liberty cited a 2023 statement by the government's biometrics and surveillance camera commissioner Fraser Sampson noting that an officer's camera can scan hundreds or thousands of people during a shift.