If you’re arrested in America for a minor charge — say, for speeding or loitering — the punishment from the legal system might end up being the least of your worries. You might wake up a few months later and see your arrest, filmed through a police body camera, with a million views on TikTok or YouTube. A few days later, it might have 5 million views, or 20 million. Your face would be next to dozens of other faces of the recently arrested, all on monetized, for-profit social media channels. And it would be almost impossible to get the videos taken down.

Like so much of the algorithm-driven internet, this particular subsection can be easy to miss. But it’s massive. A popular YouTube channel like Code Blue Cam averages over 10 million views a video, and has totaled more than a billion across hundreds of videos. Another, Midwest Safety, has totaled over 1.5 billion views. There are dozens like this, all with similar names: “Body Cam Watch,” “PoliceActivity,” “EWU Bodycam.” At least one channel is represented by an agency that represents more traditional influencers.

These channels are now well-known enough that recent arrestees have posted specifically about the fear of ending up on these channels. “I literally have panic attacks about this,” one posted on Reddit. “If my video was released I’d go off the deep end.” Another: “I feel like it will not only affect my chances of getting into a good career, but that millions of people would see me acting like a drunken idiot.”

Each channel gets its content from the same basic model: Someone uses public records requests to obtain video from police arrests, lightly edits the video, adding maybe a brief AI narration or captions, and then hits “publish.” Many videos take the same shape: somebody drunk or otherwise intoxicated yelling, speeding, throwing things, hitting cops; that person being arrested while crying, screaming, spitting, and so on. That said, there are videos of people being arrested for just about anything, from shoplifting to murder and kidnapping cases.

The faces of the people who are arrested are almost never blurred, and, depending on the channel and state of the footage, bystanders’ or family members’ faces often aren’t blurred either. Some channels give judicial outcomes, others don’t. Some have full names of those arrested, others redact. There’s little rhyme or reason. Even videos of cases of alleged child abuse feature entirely unblurred children as they’re questioned by police about their father, whose full name is given. And, of course, at the time of their arrest, none of these people have been convicted of a crime.

In a world where civilians make TikToks about embarrassing conversations they overheard on the train, it’s easy to argue that people deserve their privacy. But in this case, granting it might come with a cost. Access to video involving police, who can and do commit misconduct and crimes, has a real value to journalists and to the public. It’s difficult to know how to balance immense and cruel public embarrassment with the right of the public to monitor law enforcement.

This phenomenon of YouTube body camera channels illuminates multiple strange trends in American life: the public becoming the hyperpublic, the use and misuse of public records laws, and every last bit of government policy becoming warped for somebody somewhere to make a buck. The story of how this niche industry popped up and what it means takes us through the influencer industry, public records laws, and the long history of Americans enjoying video of people getting handcuffs slapped on them.

A new, endless supply of public domain content

Body-worn cameras have had a remarkably rapid uptake by police. The first US pilot programs began in 2012, but their popularity surged after the 2014 killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, when the Obama administration authorized $75 million in funding for local police departments to buy and deploy these cameras.

The cameras have enjoyed high support among the public over the years, sometimes exceeding 90 percent. Between 2022 and 2023, over 80 percent of local police officers reportedly wore cameras.

This creates a nearly endless supply of footage, which can be obtained through state transparency and open-records laws. But the people requesting the most usually aren’t on a crusade for justice. They are interested in having footage of someone’s shoplifting arrest rack up millions of views for profit.

Every state has its own laws regarding public access to body camera footage, and the specific application and interpretation of each of those laws is the subject of frequent litigation between news organizations and police departments. Trying to get a video that shows potential police........

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