According to a new report by CBS, so far this year 15 police officers have been charged with manslaughter with 9 of the cases recorded on video.
The figure is three times the annual average of less than 5 officers that were charged in the preceding years.
"If you take the cases with the video away, you are left with what we would expect to see over the past 10 years -- about five cases," said Philip Stinson, a criminologist at the Bowling Green State University. "You have to wonder if there would have been charges if there wasn't video evidence."
The importance of video evidence was underscored last week when footage of a black teenager’s fatal shooting by a white Chicago officer was made public.
