Question: How do body cameras come into play with your Savannah DUI arrest?
Answer: Most all of the police now are required to have body cameras, and that’s something that by the next three or four years, the state of Georgia is going to require of everyone. But right now that is a local thing. The best thing about that is that most of the police officers in the area do have those. A lot of people discount those, they won’t look at them, they think the police report is sufficient. But those body cameras are the best way to see what happened. And what I do with those is not only sit down with the officer or the prosecutor and point out their lack of a case, I also get a chance to look at it and see what a jury is going to see. If I put this tape up from this body camera, which is going to show everything that happened, what is an average citizen going to think? Are they going to think that it was a DUI or are they going to see someone who was picked on by the police? Someone that was in an accident and then harassed because they thought that a DUI had happened? What are they going to see? The video is one of the greatest pieces of evidence that we have. And I have some clients who are hesitant to watch it because they don’t want to relive it. But I routinely get it, sit down with my clients and we look at the video and I just point out to them the prose and cons of it, and it can be a great tool for helping explain away some of the behaviors or showing a lack of evidence.