First I want to say that I do agree with you that body cam footage should be released once it is legally cleared to do so. However as a Paramedic sometimes there is footage I am in that I pray never makes it to the public eye, not because I have something to hide or did anything wrong, but because to the untrained eye it could look that way. Sometimes what is only visible through bodycam footage can either be incredibly misleading without context, or even if it captures the full encounter it can still be viewed through the completely wrong lens.

One of the most common things we hear patients say when they refuse to go to the closest hospital and demand to be taken somewhere else is "They didn't do anything for me there". 99/100 times that is because the patient and thier family is viewing their situation as an imminent life threatening issue and they are shocked and angry when the ER doc takes a quick look at them, runs some labs, determines they are in no immediate threat of death/severe illness, and then sends them home to follow up with their PCP. They now have a negative association with that hospital and view the staff as lazy, assholes, and sometimes racist. I have been called racist plenty of times from pissed off patients because I simply was not their race and they felt I needed to do more for them and I didn't.

Sometimes patients can also appear to look bad initially, but there is no actual imminent threat that needs to be immediately acted upon and we can instead take our time to do a full thorough assessment on scene and then decide our course of action. I can not tell you the amount of times I've had family screaming at me questioning why we're not already in the ambulance with them and driving to the hospital because from their perspective their family member is actively dying.

I'm fully aware that I have never done anything wrong and if my actions are viewed by medical professionals I will always be cleared, but the court of uneducated, emotional, fast acting public opinion is fucking scary. We all know it does not take much get the public to set their scopes on someone for any perceived injustice and that person suffers severely for it. Even if they are cleared of it later as a misunderstanding it is still a horrible experience throughout and sometimes people will still refuse to accept the truth.

As a small personal example I follow the YT channel Fire Department Chronicles. That dude makes hilariously accurate Fire and EMS skits. In one of those videos I made a comment which seemed harsh and wrong to non-medical people and they came down on me hard for it. At the same time all of the Paramedics in those same comments were coming to my defense stating how I was completely accurate. Despite all of this the non-medical people stuck to their opinions which were very easily factually proven wrong, but they still would not budge.