How can Bodycam Footage Help You Win Your Accident Case in Florida?

In this article, Fort Lauderdale car accident attorneys, Eric Rosen, and Alex Litowsky give us insight on why Bodycam footage is such an important piece of evidence for your attorney to obtain if you’ve been injured in an accident.

Some of the major cases Rosen Injury Law handles include car accidents, motorcycle accidents, and pedestrian accidents. They have been working on many recent car accident cases in Fort Lauderdale where they have their standard pieces of evidence they look for after an incident.

The first being… Bodycam Footage

What is bodycam footage and why has it been so important in most car accident cases?

So as far as bodycam footage is concerned, a lot of the police departments, especially in south Florida, are mandating procedures that every one of their officers has a body cam. Bodycams record sound and visuals simultaneously from the officer’s point of view. A bodycam can show the placement of the vehicles at the time of the crash, which is extremely important. It also records witness statements and statements of your client, and it’s extremely important in evaluating a claim.

Both attorneys have worked on cases where someone was involved in an accident and the other driver was blaming our client for the crash. However, after obtaining the bodycam footage they were able to acquire statements from the defendant driver on the bodycam footage and place the other driver at fault.

Can bodycam footage be more important than a police statement?

Although both pieces of evidence are equally important, the answer is still yes. There have been cases where the police officers actually put our client at fault for a crash. And by watching the body bodycamcam footage and seeing the placement of those vehicles, we understood that the police report was incorrect and that the point of impact was completely different than what the police report reflected. Therefore it is evident that a police report is subject to more human errors than that of bodycam footage.

How soon should you request access to bodycam footage?

Hiring a lawyer soon after an accident is critically important to make sure critical bodycam footage and other evidence is preserved and obtained, if available. Ten years ago it was very rare for an officer to have a chest cam while on duty but now it is uniform across the board for most Fort Lauderdale police officers. However, some departments are allowing the bodycam footage to get deleted so we always suggest requesting the footage within 30 days of the incident just to be safe. As long as the request is in, they’ll usually maintain that bodycam footage even past whatever their department says is standard procedure and the same applies to 911 recordings and police reports as well.

If you’ve been in a car accident make sure to hire a Fort Lauderdale car accident attorney immediately so that they can get all the evidence they need to help you recover financially and win your case.