In the recent years there has been many instances with police violence in the U.S. If there is footage of these occurrences most of them come from the public posting on social media. Body cameras are becoming increasingly popular for police. But one option is coming back into play, the police embed. Sometimes this is referred to as a ‘ride-along’ and consist of a photo journalist sitting in the back of a police car and going through the entire 12 hour
work day with them.
This is so important for journalists to think about this option so they are literally placed in their shoes to uncover a story. The option to do this is not always possible. It takes a lot of time and money to place a journalist in a police car and on the streets all day. There is also a safety issue by placing journalists in this position. But I feel this is the best way to understand what our officers do for us every single day. With all of the bad publicity police receive it needs to be balanced out and show both sides of the story. This method is the best one to chose to get those results.
I find this so interesting because I would love to experience something like this. The concept is something we think of before social media took off. But what is so interesting is bringing back this older idea and being able to have the public see their side of things. There are many times that police just walk
on the streets and talk to residents, business owners and anybody else that would like to chat. We would not know about this if it weren’t fort the embed.
In case it wasn’t obvious yet, I love this idea. I have major respect for all men and women police officers. It is so crucial to capture some moments, good and bad, that they deal with. In no way am I saying that police brutality is acceptable at all but unfortunately this the only time they receive any media attention. Journalists could discover so much more this way and I am positive they would be able to write about some awesome things they saw that day.