Should Madison police wear bodycams? That’s the question the Madison Common Council has been debating as they move toward a vote on whether or not to implement a pilot program for the city.

Community activist and UW–Madison scientist Greg Gelembiuk offers a resounding “no.”

His views on police bodycams have changed after carefully examining the reports and the statistics. Rather than creating more transparency and accountability for the police, he learned that bodycams often end up exonerating police officers, creating distortions of police-involved events, being used to capture evidence against low-level offenders, and trumpeted out to create good PR.

“So you have this expensive thing that’s basically a way of expanding the criminal-justice system and entrenching the status quo.”

For today’s show, Greg Gelembiuk joins Thursday host Allen Ruff to discuss the ins-and-outs of Madison’s police bodycam debate and why he says they have no place in the MPD.

Cover photo: Policeman with body-worn videocamera (body-cam) in North Charleston, 2016 by Ryan Johnson, shared under CC BY-SA 2.0

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