Despite the market's powerful growth drivers, the industry is not without a set of significant and often contentious Body-Worn Camera Market Restraints that can slow adoption and create significant challenges for agencies. The most significant and immediate restraint is the immense and ongoing cost of the programs, particularly the cost of data storage and management, which can be a major barrier for many agencies. The initial purchase of the camera hardware is a significant capital expense, but it is often dwarfed by the long-term operational costs associated with storing the massive volumes of video data that the cameras generate. A medium-sized police department can easily generate petabytes of video data over a few years, and this data must be stored securely and in accordance with strict evidentiary and public records laws, often for many years. The recurring subscription fees for the necessary cloud storage and Digital Evidence Management Software can become a major and permanent line item in an agency's budget, a cost that can be particularly challenging for smaller departments with limited financial resources. This high total cost of ownership is a major restraint that can make a full-scale deployment financially unfeasible for some communities.

A second major restraint revolves around the complex and deeply personal issues of privacy, for both the public and the officers themselves. Body-worn cameras are indiscriminate observers; they record everything in their field of view, including interactions with vulnerable individuals, the inside of private homes, and bystanders who are not involved in an incident. This raises profound privacy concerns and creates a major challenge in developing policies that balance the need for transparency with the right to privacy. The process of redacting sensitive information (such as the faces of minors or the details of a medical emergency) before a video is released to the public is a time-consuming and costly task, even with the help of AI tools. From the officers' perspective, there are also significant privacy concerns. The constant recording of their workday can feel intrusive, and there are contentious debates about whether officers should be allowed to review footage before writing a report and how the footage can be used for disciplinary purposes. These deeply complex and often emotional privacy issues are a major restraint that can create significant friction and opposition to the technology from police unions, civil liberties groups, and the public.

The third, and often underestimated, restraint is the significant operational and administrative burden that a body-worn camera program places on a law enforcement agency. This is not a "fire-and-forget" technology. A successful program requires the creation of a dedicated administrative unit to manage the entire lifecycle of the video evidence. This includes tasks such as ensuring all video is correctly uploaded and tagged, managing the complex chain of custody for evidence, responding to public records and discovery requests from prosecutors and defense attorneys, and managing the technical aspects of the system, such as device maintenance and software updates. This creates a significant new set of responsibilities and requires a substantial allocation of personnel time. For an already understaffed police department, this added administrative workload can be a major strain on resources. The challenge of building the internal capacity and workflows to manage this massive new stream of digital evidence is a significant practical restraint that can limit the effectiveness of a program if not properly planned for.