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Will Putting Cameras on Police Reduce Polarization?
In the wake of national outrage and polarization over several high-profile police shootings of unarmed citizens, reformers have called for police officers to wear body cameras. This Note argues that, despite the seeming objectivity of the camera, video footage remains susceptible to biased interpretation by observers such as grand jurors. Reporting empirical findings based on mock jurors' perceptions of real police footage, this Note observers that viewers' prior attitudes toward the police color their interpretations of the events caught on tape, resulting in considerable polarization on a variety of dimensions. Further, this Note finds that video evidence does not conclusively outperform nonvideo testimony in minimizing mock jurors' reliance on their prior attitudes. Study participants learned about an incident involving a police officer and a citizen in one of four ways. Some participants watched a video of the altercation, others read dueling accounts of the altercation written from the perspectives of the police officer and of the citizen, a third group read a single account from the perspective of a disinterested third party, and a final group read only the police officer's version of events. Participants' prior attitudes toward police significantly affected their judgments of the officer's conduct in all four conditions, and the degree of bias did not differ significantly across the different types of evidence. Furthermore, people who identified strongly with the police-but not those who identified weakly—became more confident in their judgments when presented with video evidence. This Note discusses the implications of these findings for the policy debate over bodyworn cameras, cautioning against the assumption that body cameras will reduce polarization and societal conflict following instances of use of deadly force by police. It concludes that we should be more skeptical of the widely held belief that video footage tells us unambiguously and definitively what happened.
Journal Article
POINTS OF VIEW
Entirely absent from debates about the desirability and potential impacts of police body-worn cameras (BWCs) are the views of a significant group on the other side of the lens—individuals who have recently experienced arrest by a police officer. In a bid to redress this significant gap, this article reports findings from the first study to examine arrestee views and experiences of police BWCs. Data from interviews with 907 police detainees reveal that they are largely in favour of officers wearing cameras, believing that they can provide greater accountability and improve the behaviour of both law enforcement officers and members of the public. Importantly, however, this support is contingent on a number of operational and procedural policies regulating the use of BWCs.
Journal Article
The body-worn camera perspective bias
Objectives
Footage from body-worn cameras (BWCs) is sometimes used to assess the quality of police interventions. This study investigates whether there is a “body-worn camera perspective bias,” in which the point of view provided by the footage influences perception of an intervention.
Methods
Participants with different backgrounds (undergraduate students and police candidates) were randomly allocated to a group that looked at one of two videos showing a fictional police intervention during which lethal force was used against a subject; both videos showed exactly the same intervention, but one had been filmed with a BWC and the other with a surveillance camera installed in a top corner of the room. Participants were then asked to rate the appropriateness of the intervention.
Results
No camera perspective bias was found among university respondents. However a significant camera perspective bias was found among police candidates: respondents’ opinions on the appropriateness of the intervention were significantly different when the film was from the body-worn camera than when it was seen from the surveillance camera. This result may be explained by the finding that viewers of the BWC footage reported that the subject was further from the officer.
Conclusions
Results suggest that the more training individuals have in analyzing police interventions, the more affected they will be by the camera perspective in these interventions. One implication of these results is that the perspective of people assigned and trained to evaluate the appropriateness of an intervention (e.g., members of a committee monitoring police misconduct) might be biased if only video footage from a BWC is presented.
Journal Article
BODY-WORN CAMERA FOOTAGE RETENTION AND RELEASE
The widespread use of body-worn cameras (BWCs) by law enforcement agencies calls into question how those departments store and publicly release the large amounts of video footage they amass under public access laws. This Note identifies a changing landscape of public access law, with a close look at the federal Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and its state analogues, as the result of the Capitol Insurrection and the national Movement for Black Lives. Namely, legislative enactments, DOJ programs, agency policy statements, and judicial opinions all indicate a movement toward more access and potentially more proactive disclosure of government records. This Note considers what a disclosure regime of BWC footage should look like in light of the new developments in freedom of information laws; it proposes an intermediary framework for release that balances proactive disclosures and agency responses to requests for disclosure. Three policy goals should serve as guideposts to achieve this intermediary framework: minimizing privacy violations and unnecessary oversurveillance, improving cost efficiency, and assessing the need for redistribution of resources from police to other more community-improving apparatuses. The congressional investigation of the Capitol Insurrection, the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, and the Colorado Enhance Law Enforcement Integrity Act are exemplary, in some ways, of what disclosure should resemble. This model for approaching disclosure will be important for considering what types of information the public can access, what the public can do with that information, and how resources can be diverted or otherwise reconsidered as a part of disclosure regimes.
Journal Article
Police body worn cameras: a mixed method approach assessing perceptions of efficacy
Purpose
The importance of body-worn cameras (BWC) in policing cannot be overstated. This is not a hyperbolic statement – use of force incidents in Ferguson and Baltimore, the ensuing riots, coupled with critical long term implications for police community relations demonstrate the need for BWC data. Few studies have been published on the use of BWCs and little is known about officer perceptions, administrator decision making, and agency use of BWC data. No published studies incorporate qualitative data, which lends important context and depth, in the interpretation of officer survey data. The paper aims to discuss these issues.
Design/methodology/approach
The current study presents a mixed-method study of a large university police agency prior to full implementation of BWC. A survey of patrol officers and supervisors, using a census approach with near full participation, coupled with focus group interviews, produced data on perceptions, concerns, and expectations of full BWC implementation.
Findings
Findings point to officer concerns regarding the utilization of BWC data and administrative expectations regarding complaint reduction and officer assessment.
Originality/value
Important implications regarding training and policy are presented. BWC data represent an important tool for agency decision makers but have numerous potential negative uses. Understanding officer concerns juxtaposed with administrator expectations, through both survey and qualitative data, advance the knowledge on BWC.
Journal Article
The Influence of Pre-video Information and Appraisal Time on Judgments of Police Officer Use of Excessive Force
Confrontations between police officers and civilians are sometimes videoed and made available to the public. In two experiments, we examined emotional regulation of such videos. Participants viewed a video of a confrontation between a police officer and a civilian and were asked if the officer used excessive force. In experiment 1, we investigated whether the information provided to participants prior to watching a police officer-civilian confrontation video (pre-video information: yes, no) might create a context that would allow them to regulate their emotional responses to the video. Additionally, we examined how that context might affect their judgments of excessive force used by the officer in the video. Results of experiment 1 showed that pre-video warnings influenced excessive force judgments. Results also showed that excessive force judgments were related to the amount of time it took participants to make the excessive force judgments: participants took less time to make a “yes” than a “no” excessive force judgment. In experiment 2, we investigated both the influence of pre-video information and appraisal time on excessive force judgments: participants in different groups were required to withhold their excessive force judgments for different periods of time (appraisal times 0 s, 3 s, 8 s, 13 s). Results of experiment 2 revealed an interaction between pre-video information and appraisal time on excessive force judgments. Excessive force judgments decreased with appraisal time but only when participants were given pre-video information. We think our results have implications for how people may process police officer-civilian confrontation videos when viewing them on the news.
Journal Article
A MUNICIPAL SPEECH CLAIM AGAINST BODY CAMERA VIDEO RESTRICTIONS
This Comment describes one approach to securing public access to the data collected by police-worn body cameras (PWBC). Ever since the rapid expansion of body camera programs following highly publicized police shootings (particularly the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, in the summer of 2014), state legislatures across the country have rushed to decide who should have access to the collected video and how to limit its public release. Over half of the major police departments across the country are using body cameras supplied by a single manufacturer alone, and the storage and release of the video is an urgent issue. The patchwork of laws governing the disclosure of PWBC data has left the public without simple or consistent means of accessing that information.
Journal Article
PBS newshour. Why the promise of police body cameras is falling well short of expectations
The use of police body cameras has become much more widespread in recent years with the hope that they will curb police violence and improve accountability. But a new investigation by ProPublica and The New York Times Magazine found it can often take months or years before the video is released, if at all. William Brangham discussed more with Eric Umansky of ProPublica.
Streaming Video
The effects of body-worn cameras (BWCs) on police and citizen outcomes
Purpose The purpose of this paper is to review the extant of the published literature on body-worn cameras (BWCs) in policing, specifically in the context of how BWCs affect both citizens and officers. Design/methodology/approach The current study is a narrative review of the impact of BWCs on police and citizens generated through a search of four repositories (Google Scholar, Criminal Justice Abstracts, EBSCO Host, PsychInfo). Findings The current narrative review identified 21 articles that matched the selection criteria. In general, this body of research demonstrates that: the police are supportive of BWC adoption; the evidence from BWC evaluations suggests that the use of BWCs can have benefits for police-public encounters. Practical implications The practical implications derived from this narrative review suggest police administrators that the adoption and effective implementation of BWCs are one mechanism that can strengthen police-community relationships and decrease police misconduct through enhanced legitimacy and accountability. Originality/value This study is useful for researchers who wish to further examine BWC issues in policing, for police managers/administrators who are currently utilizing BWC technology, and for those who are considering adopting BWC technology.
Journal Article