<P> Ever since body cameras were first worn by police officers, there has been a debate over whether capabilities that make the camera superior to that of the officer's eyes should be allowed . For instance, infra - red recordings could in hind - sight clearly show that a suspect did or did not carry a gun in his hand, but the officer at the scene may not have been able to see this . This type of issue forces companies to choose whether they want to incorporate' super human' features into their products, or not . HD video quality, for instance, no doubt improves usability of recordings as evidence, but at the same time increases file size, which in turn leads to an increase in bandwidth requirements for data transfer and storage capacity . At present, HD quality is the industries' standard, but until roughly 2016 that was not the case even though the technology was widely available in other devices . </P> <P> Another important feature in law - enforcement is buffering: the option to let a body camera' pre-record' . The bodycam can record continuously and store the most recent for instance thirty seconds . If the officer presses the record - switch, the preceding thirty seconds of recording will be kept . If he does not, the recording will be deleted after thirty seconds have passed on a' first in, first out' basis . The ability to buffer enables officers to retain video of everything that occurred prior to the moment the record switch was pressed . This buffered video and audio may provide more context to an incident . </P> <P> Other features are constantly being trialed and implemented into the cameras and the data - storage process, such as cloud storage . Axon offers the possibility of sharing footage outside the police department, for instance with district attorneys or other prosecutors or the courts . </P> <P> Algorithms can be helpful in sifting through the recorded data that can quickly become overwhelming . Video content analysis, such as facial recognition or automatic indexing of recordings to simplify searching of the data, can help to reduce the time needed to find relevant fragments . </P>

When was the first police body camera used