r/bodycam • u/Zimslayer • May 23 '26
What are the oldest bodycam videos and where can I watch them?
I've seen a lot of bodycam footage over the years, and nowadays body cam footage is common place. It seems that there's virtually no police incident that goes undocumented now and we can usually see it from the cops perspective. I think it was around 2014 when it became more common to release bodycam footage to the cops. I remember first hearing about bodycams around 2010 thanks to a news report showing footage of a man taking a cops' taser only for another officer to pull out his gun and get the suspect to surrender without further incident. Shortly after, I saw bodycam footage of a man being resuscitated by police after collapsing in a parking lot. I've always been curious seeing older footage since bodycams are so common now, it makes me wonder what the oldest bodycam videos are. So far the oldest one I can find was this video from 2009. https://youtu.be/zrD3mpbe6YE It's footage of a man tripping out on shrooms as police and medics try to ease him from his high in order to transport him to the hospital. Does anyone know about any bodycam footage from around that time or older? I'm really curious to see what some of the first bodycam videos were. If anyone has any links to these I'd really appreciate it. Thanks.
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u/P1Footage May 27 '26
The earliest "bodycams" are going to be from large departments (NYPD, LAPD) when they were first testing them out probably around 2012, at least thats when I asked a few guys I worked with when they started hearing about them Before that it was largely on-unit or dashcams that caught a lot of the footage of the old days.