bodycam videos are a moral grey

03 Jul, 2026

Peep the darker background. And happy July.

Not all bodycam channels are bad. I watch EWU BodyCam all the time. I sometimes watch Midwest Safety, but the robotic voice annoys me.

For the most part, the footage allows for a real, somewhat raw view of police interactions, which is needed in a country like the US. ¹

However, I have two negative things to say about this genre of YouTube video:

1. When you get into some smaller channels, or even the comments of big channels like Midwest Safety, you start to see...Facebook/Twitter-esque narratives. Uneducated bullshit.

Some small channels ONLY post (stolen) footage of minorities (usually black, sometimes Asian) in police interactions. The thumbnails are often AI generated/enhanced, made to make a black person's lips bigger or an East Asian person's eyes smaller. What I'm getting at is this fuels the racist comments and biases. I am NOT saying videos of black or Asian people should never be posted, and if that's what you're getting then nuance is lost on you. I hope you find it :(

I'm just saying that manipulating videos to fuel narratives should not be accepted as that same "raw' content that normal bodycam channels produce.

I must add that any video with young women of any demographic in them as the alleged perpetrator will have misogynistic comments. Without fail.

(Sidenote: Sometimes the whole video is fake! You look at the "Axon Bodycam" in the top corner and the time isn't even moving. They get hundreds of thousands of views before being copyright stricken.)

I always feel like the only one who notices this. You can easily push narratives with these videos and thumbnails. I could do it in my sleep. But you know what? I don't care about that too much. I can't do anything about it and if you know me, I'm so used to seeing some bullshit. Seeing racism online is just another day ending in "y". This isn't my main concern.

2. Here is where the "morally gray" part comes in. When I watched a Midwest Safety video about some boys who were kidnapped at gunpoint and were kept in a bunker, the thumbnail showed shot of the boys coming out of the bunker, with an uncensored child's face in clear view. I don't know if it was actually the child's face, as it was blurred in the video, but if not, they AI generated a face onto the kid. Bad and weird but not illegal. Would you want that done to your child?

But some videos don't blur anyone. Especially not witnesses. They will blur some cops though.

I can't imagine something happening to me, or someone I love, and my face being uncensored on YouTube. I bring this up because of a Midwest Safety (or Dr Insanity, can't remember) video about a woman escaping her abusive husband, only for him to find her and kill her while she stayed at her friend's house. Her friend, clearly traumatized, is crying hysterically about seeing her best friend get shot in the head. I couldn't finish the video. Her face was in full view, uncensored.

Another video was of a man having a mental health crisis and interacting with the police. And another of a suicidal woman being talked off the edge of a building. Both with the face uncensored.

It's the first amendment right for anyone to be recorded in public and not have a right to their image in the US of A. But I mean...still. Is it so crazy to consider the privacy of some of these victims? Just because the public case data is available, does that mean we should post it on YouTube uncensored? I can't, for the life of me, understand why the face a suicidal person getting talked off a ledge should be uncensored.

These videos will sometimes give the full address of the victims or witnesses because it's in the case file and therefore "for educational purposes". (But that phrase doesn't mean anything. People post porn on Youtube "for educational purposes.") I mean, I can find people's addresses online, but posting them on my own platform is illegal in Indiana. Is that not the same thing?

It's not illegal, but I don't think it's always right. Which makes it grey. Idk, i'm not a journalist; not sure what laws apply to them. I may just be showing my ignorance.

#thoguhts