Is it a PR campaign or a necessary reminder of what police are facing?
A number of videos have emerged online this week showing police officers under threat from people with knives, enduring verbal abuse, and being spat at, choked and beaten.
NSW Police say the footage is a testimony to an increasingly hostile attitude toward officers from people influenced by events overseas.
However, the NSW Council for Civil Liberties says the police are engaging in a PR campaign that risks inflaming debate when tensions are high amid the Black Lives Matter movement.
In the Hunter and on the New South Wales Central Coast alone, videos from different incidents were visible online this week.
In comments this week about a violent assault on police in Hamilton, Newcastle District Commander Superintendent Brett Greentree said officers were absolutely sick of it.
"It appears nearly daily, you'll have a police commander coming up and saying we've had another officer assaulted as a result of what can only be disrespect for authority … it's very concerning," he said.
"We've certainly seen not only a spike of assaults against police but what concerns me and what should concern the community is certainly the increase in the level of violence towards police, that's something we really need to have a good look at ourselves about."
The New South Wales Police Association said the latest string of events was unprecedented, but said as many as 50 police officers were assaulted each week.
"As you can imagine it's traumatic for them and it's equally as traumatic for their families and friends who have to endure seeing this sort of stuff," police officer and executive member Ian Allwood said.
"In the days of social media the public are now seeing what our members go through on a daily basis."
'Not appropriate', says civil liberties
NSW Council for Civil Liberties spokesperson Stephen Blanks warned there was a downside to releasing police body cam footage.
"I think it's very good that there is body cam vision; it's very important," Mr Blanks said.
"But the body cam vision is there for a purpose, that is to gather evidence for court. It is not really appropriate for the police to be using it in this PR campaign."
Mr Blanks believed police risked inflaming the debate by posting body cam vision online.
"There is more and more vision of that occurring and there is not an adequate complaints system," he said.
"The community does not have faith in the complaints system where police investigate complaints against police.
"There needs to be independent investigation of complaints."
'Officers putting their lives on the line', says criminologist
The increasing capabilities of technology and social media means more people are watching crime play out as it happens.
Criminologist Xanthe Mallett, from the University of Newcastle, said there needed to be a balanced debate around violence towards and by police, at a time when attitudes around the topic were heated.
Dr Mallett believed the reason the public was being shown more footage was to counterpoint the videos and images being posted by members of the community.
"When only videos are coming out from one side showing police brutality, and while that is awful and there is no excuse for that, I think the public tend to forget that each and every day police officers are putting their lives on the line to protect the community," she said.
"So I think they're trying to have a counterpoint to some of the videos that are coming out that are anti-police so they can show their side of the story."
Dr Mallett agreed that body worn cameras were a way to hold people to account in court, but were also a strategy used by police to keep the debate honest.
"If it hadn't been for body worn cameras we'd miss a lot of the nuance," she said.
"I think it can only be good because it captures their behaviour but it also captures other people's behaviour towards them."
