As departments have begun to adopt body cameras for police officers, the major issue confronting lawmakers is how the footage gathered should be handled. Certain departments, including San Diego, refuse to release footage to the public, while others have adopted a policy of releasing footage relevant to certain arrests or all footage collected.

Americans overwhelmingly think that body camera footage should be made available as evidence in legal cases. A small majority (51%) think that all video footage collected should be available to the general public, though 28% say that it should not. 62% of Americans also think that the footage collected by police body cameras should be handed over by the police to an independent authority for storage.