ONCE USED largely in law enforcement, body-worn cameras, or bodycams, have become de rigueur for employees who meet the public at their worst: ambulance-drivers, litter-enforcement officers, ticket inspectors and security guards. Now they are coming to retail, where abuse by customers was rising before the pandemic and escalated during lockdowns. According to Usdaw, a shopworkers’ union, 90% of workers were verbally abused in 2021 and 65% were threatened with violence, up from 68% and 43%, respectively, in 2019. Customers got angry when shop workers enforced mask mandates, social-distancing or limits on purchases of toilet paper. Delivery workers suffered too. The pandemic boosted online shopping—and rage when orders were late or incomplete.

In law enforcement, bodycams protect police from spurious complaints and citizens from abusive officers. In retail, they are largely a deterrent. Threatening to turn one on is often enough to calm an irate customer, says Claire, who used to work as a store manager. Tesco, Britain’s largest supermarket chain, says the number of serious violent incidents has fallen by more than a fifth since it equipped staff with bodycams during the pandemic.

Fans of bodycams brush away privacy concerns. Staff record only during altercations, they point out, and footage is deleted after 30 days. Claire says she threatened to turn hers on pretty much daily during the pandemic, but rarely actually needed to do so. And Britain is already rife with surveillance, having been an early and enthusiastic adopter of CCTV.

But critics say bodycams are more invasive than CCTV. The camera is closer and the image resolution higher. Bodycams record audio, unlike most CCTV. Companies could use them to monitor staff. They could dip into footage for marketing analytics, or an employee might share footage of a celebrity customer—both privacy violations, says Robin Hopkins of 11 KBW Chambers, which specialises in commercial law. Abuse of retail staff is a pressing problem, says Sarah Gold of Projects by IF, a data firm. But increasing surveillance, and allowing private firms to hold the data, is a high price for customers to pay.

Privacy fans may be fighting a losing battle. In 2020 Omdia, a retail-pricing company, put the global market for bodycams at $540m, with four-fifths accounted for by law enforcement. By 2024 it expects the market to have grown to $700m, and law enforcement’s share to have fallen to half. Most customers are large retail chains—bodycams are pricey, at £200-800 ($260-1,050) each, depending on features, with data storage on top. That is prohibitive for most small retailers, says Andrew Goodacre of the British Independent Retailers Association.

Pandemic restrictions are now being lifted. But companies are emphasising employee well-being more than before covid-19 hit, says Marc Curtis of Fujitsu, an electronics group that sells bodycams for law enforcement and is eyeing the retail sector. Retailers are struggling to lure workers back to the storefront, with Brexit-induced labour shortages an added complication. Bodycams may be an invasion of customers’ privacy—but the trade-offs have tilted in shopworkers’ favour. ■