CRJ 738’s Final Group Project: Ivory Kennedy, Angelina Vaszuez, & Kenneth Yambo
A 10-minute lecture presentation is due on Wednesday 12/8 and 12/15.
An essay of about 15-pages, double-spaced (excluding your bibliography) is due by Monday 12/13, no later than 11:59 p.m.
Issue: Police Officer’s Subjective Use of Body Cameras
Objectives: Are there racial disparities with the use of body cameras? What are some solutions/policies in place to help regulate the use of body cameras regardless of race?
Prompt: Based on your research, describe what kind of policy, training, or intervention could solve, reduce or mitigate the issue you have identified along with the potential obstacles and probability of success. Additionally, describe how you would measure the results of your suggestions and attempt to define what success in the area would look like.
Angelina V.’s Bibliography (3 Articles)
Ariel, B., Sutherland, A., Henstock, D., Young, J., Drover, P., Sykes, J., Megicks, S., &
Henderson, R. (2016). Report: increases in police use of force in the presence of body-worn cameras are driven by officer discretion: a protocol-based subgroup analysis of ten randomized experiments. Journal of Experimental Criminology, 12(3), 453–463. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11292-016-9261-3
Previous reports have shown disparities between multi-site analyses of body-worn cameras and police use of force, complaints against police, and assaults against officers. The report found no overall effect of body worn cameras on police use of force because in some instances the use of force increased and in other instances use of force decreased. Deterrence theory is the theoretical basis for body-worn cameras. This indicates that being monitored should alter behavior. This deterrent effect can only work if 1. The camera is worn by the officer, 2. It is turned on, 3. It is used during a police-public encounter, and 4. suspects are aware there is a body-worn camera. The main experiment randomized shifts where officers turned cameras on and shifts where they turned them off. Noncompliance with the experiment led to subgroups of those who were granted discretion when to turn cameras on and off, those who complied with the study, those who were stripped of discretion completely, and those who complied with the control conditions but not the experimental conditions. In these noncompliance groups with discretion, use of force increased 71% while high compliance groups had 37% decrease in use of force. The results suggest that once there is a verbal announcement that a body camera is worn and recording it reminds both the officer and the suspect of “rules of conduct”. This verbal announcement might mitigate deterrence theory more than the actual presence of body cameras.
Taylor, E. (2016). Lights, Camera, Redaction… Police Body-Worn Cameras; Autonomy,
Discretion and Accountability. Surveillance & Society, 14(1), 128–132. https://doi.org/10.24908/ss.v14i1.6285
There is a lot of variation between departments and their officers’ discretion about whether to turn a body camera on or off. The two practical issues that factor whether officers can turn their cameras on or off are 1. The preferred technology used has limited battery life and 2. If they recorded their entire shift there would be massive amounts of data to sort through and store for later retrieval. Phoenix PD reported only 13-42% of incidents are recorded and Denver PD reported less than half of their 45 incidents that involved use of force(i.e., stun guns or punching a suspect) were recorded because either the camera was turned off or there were technical problems. One potential challenge is “camera view bias” where seeing footage from a body- camera elicits us to see things through the police’s perspective and might favor their actions. Regardless, the hope is to have more accountability in the interactions between officers and the public and improve behaviors.
Houwing, L., & Ritsema van Eck, G. (2020). Police body cams as equiveillance tools?
Reflections on the Debate in the Netherlands. Surveillance & Society, 18(2), 284–287. https://doi.org/10.24908/ss.v18i2.13925
The introduction of body cameras was used to make police officers feel safer and record encounters for evidence in case there was violence towards police officers. When body cameras were present violence towards police was reduced and feelings of safety increased. However, it is not known if suspects were less violent towards police because of the presence of body cameras or if police acted in a more professional manner leading to less hostility. The placement and perspective of the body camera only shows the suspect’s face and is at chest level, making them appear larger or more overwhelming. While the discretion of whether to turn on the camera, cover things up, or have it face away from the encounter is controlled by the officer wearing the camera, the storage is also at the discretion of the police. Storage and right to privacy is usually in a standard 4-week period. Although suspects may request footage for trial etc. there are many obstacles to obtaining that footage if it even exists. Because social media and smartphones are showing one sided perspective on police encounters, body cameras were introduced to balance the narrative. In order to make body cameras “objective referees” there needs to be regulations for 1. placement of the cameras, 2. Situations that call for recordings, and 3. the citizens have access to the recordings.
Kenneth Y.’s Annotated Bibliography (4)
Hood, J. (2020). Making the Body Electric: The Politics of Body-Worn Cameras and Facial Recognition in the United States. Surveillance & Society, 18(2), 157–169. https://doi-org.ez.lib.jjay.cuny.edu/10.24908/ss.v18i2.13285
This paper explores the rapid deployment of police body-worn cameras (BWCs) and the subsequent push for the integration of newer biometric technologies, such as facial recognition, into these devices. With that being said, the author tries to make us understand the political dangers of the implementation of these technologies.The author of the study then analyzed the rise of body cameras in a cultural moment where high-profile police violence against unarmed people of color in the United States. In addition to examining the ethics of body cameras, the author then examined the politics of facial recognition and the dangers it poses for “marginalized
groups” (minority groups), arguing against the interface of these two technologies. The author theorizes that the pairing of body cameras with facial recognition presents a number of
dangers that reinforce the privilege of perspective granted to police in visual understandings of law enforcement activity.
Melissa Powell-Williams, Todd Powell-Williams & H. David Hunt (2021) Effects of officer perception of race and racial tensions on support for body-worn-cameras, Journal of Ethnicity in Criminal Justice, 19:1, 1-24, DOI: 10.1080/15377938.2020.1842281
This article delved into the increased usage by the police of body-worn-cameras (BWCs) and how it has changed the narrative on racial bias and police accountability. To date, the growing research on BWCs has yet to address the racial tensions that underlie contentious interactions between police and citizens. Using survey and interview data this research study evaluates: (1) whether officer race influences perceptions of race/racism and support for BWCs; (2) whether officer perceptions of race/racism influence support for BWCs; (3) how officers perceive racial conflict within their communities; and (4) how these perceptions shape their views of the efficacy of BWCs as a means to reduce racial conflict. One of the author’s survey findings indicate that on average officers are more likely to agree that racism is problematic throughout the country rather than within their community.
St Louis, E., Saulnier, A., & Walby, K. (2019). Police use of body-worn cameras: Challenges of visibility, procedural justice, and legitimacy. Surveillance & Society, 17(3), 305-321.
This research study looks into the festering concerns that police conduct is racist and procedurally unjust have generated public sentiments that accountability must be externally imposed on police. One such accountability mechanism is body-worn cameras (BWCs). The authors acknowledge the more optimistic outlooks of body-worn cameras suggest that the technology will contribute to the improvement of community–police relations. However the authors argue that body-worn cameras solely address consequences, not the causes (more important), of poor community–police relations. They argue that the evolving visibility of police associated with body-worn cameras is “double-edged”, and suggests that the adoption of surveillance technologies such as these body worn cameras in the quest to improve
community–police relations will fail without a simultaneous commitment to some inclusionary policing practices such as: community policing strategies, community and social development. The initiatives that were recommended prioritize community policing practices alongside the adoption of BWCs in the interest of addressing the relational concerns underlying the power imbalances characterizing the current police legitimacy crisis.
Willits, D. W., & Makin, D. A. (2018). Show Me What Happened. Journal of Research in Crime & Delinquency, 55(1), 51–77. https://doi-org.ez.lib.jjay.cuny.edu/10.1177/0022427817701257
In this study, the authors used the sequencing of unedited police body-worn camera
(BWC) footage of use of force incidents to test four hypotheses to understand how incident-characteristics influence use of force, duration of that force, and the type and severity of force used by police. The researchers found that use of force occurs relatively early in most interactions, though gender, race, and behavioral factors partially explain when and
how much force is used. Statistical regression results indicate that force is used more
quickly against Black suspects and males. The researchers concluded that there is disproportionate use of force, more specifically racial disparities.
Ivory K.’s Annotated Bibliography (3):
Miller, & Toliver, J. (2014). Implementing a body-worn camera program : recommendations and lessons learned. Police Executive Research Forum.
The Police Executive Research Forum (PERF) with support from the United States Department of Justice’s Office of Community oriented policing services (COPS office) conducted research in 2013 on the use of body- worn cameras. The research project consisted of three components which were: an informal survey of 500 law enforcement agencies nationwide; interviews with police executives, and a conference in which police chiefs and other experts from across the country gathered to discuss the use of Body Worn Cameras (BWC’s). This book also discusses the alleged benefits of deploying BWC’s and how agencies have been using the cameras to resolve complaints and prevent complaints. It discusses the larger policy concerns that agencies must consider when implementing BWC’s including privacy complications. Lastly, this book presents PERF’s policy recommendations which reflects the promising practices and lessons that emerged from PERF’s conference as well as it’s widespread discussions with police executives and other experts.
Ray, R., Marsh, K., & Powelson, C. (2017). Can Cameras Stop the Killings? Racial Differences in Perceptions of the Effectiveness of Body-Worn Cameras in Police Encounters. Sociological Forum (Randolph, N.J.), 32(S1), 1032–1050. https://doi.org/10.1111/socf.12359
In this article, 81 respondents from a racially diverse county were interviewed regarding racial differences in police interactions and views of Body Worn Cameras (BWC’s). The results showed that many viewpoints varied. In terms of the use of police wearing BWC’s, respondents were placed into two primary groups- supporters and skeptics. Supporters were police and citizen supporters and skeptics were privacy and structural skeptics. Privacy skeptics believe that BWC’s violate not only police, but citizens privacy and structural skeptics did not believe that BWC’s will have a big change in relations with other citizens and police. The article also discussed racial differences in views about BWC’s noting that not one specific race felt 55% confident that BWC’s will improve relations. Social class and prior police contact of citizens was also factored into how BWC’s are viewed. Transparency was also mentioned and how respondents want to assure that police officers are properly trained in having better social skills etc. The author believes that this study should be conducted in other racially standardized areas. Yes, there is hope that BWC’s is going in the right direction however other measures should be taken to help build better relations with the citizens being served.
Jennings. (2014). Cops and Cameras: Officer Perceptions of the Use of Body-Worn Cameras in Law Enforcement. Journal of Criminal Justice, 42(6), 549–556. https://doi.org/info: doi/
In this article, a study was conducted which examined police officer perceptions of body-worn cameras through data collected from officers within the Orlando Florida department. The study relied on baseline data of officer’s insights towards BWC’s collected from surveys managed by Orlando Police officers who were participants in a randomized experiment evaluating the impact of body-worn cameras in law enforcement. Results showed that police officers were open to and supportive of the use of body-worn cameras in policing, they felt comfortable wearing them, and they observed a potential for benefits of BWC’s in improving citizen behavior, their own behavior, and the behavior of their fellow officers. Officers were supportive of BWC’s, and they held insights that the devices could be beneficial in positively affecting appropriate outcomes. Study limitations and implications were also discussed.
Paper Outline
Introduce what BWCs are and why they are more prominent in today’s world. Ken
Introduce the research behind BWC’s that indicate whether it is effective or not. Supported by police/community or not. Strengths? Ken
Analyze if there are any racial disparities in BWC’s? Any other disparities ? Other observations?
Suggested revisions/solutions that can help improve overall BWC usage
Conclusion and implications for the future of BWCs.
Ivory Kennedy, Angelina Vasquez, & Kenneth Yambo
CRJ 738 – Perspective on Race & Crime in America
Professor Dina Zloczower
Police’s Subjective Use of Body Cameras: A Research Study
Due December 12th, 2021
In the hopes of vastly improving the relations between civilians and law enforcement, police departments have begun utilizing body-worn cameras (BWCs) for their officers. The sentiment behind the use of these BWCs is not only to promote it as a technological mechanism that improves policing relations with the community, but also a tool that can increase the overall levels of legitimacy of police through the police and other legal institutions. When a precinct chooses to deploy BWCs, these departments are making a statement that the actions of its own officers are a matter of public record. To further this, by facing the challenges and expense of purchasing and implementing a BWC system, developing policies, and training its officers in how to use the cameras in an effective and appropriate way, a department creates a reasonable expectation (both internal and external) to observe, report and review the actions of their officers. The public’s desire for more transparency and accountability in law enforcement has only increased given a multitude of societal issues that have risen to the forefront over the past calendar year. Some of these issues include extensive quarantine due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, public displays of extreme (possibly racially motivated) police violence, unrelenting pursuit of legislation solely for social/political clout, and an astronomical increase in large community demonstrations (both peaceful & otherwise) calling to either defund or reform the criminal justice system as a whole.
BWCs are geared towards reducing the likelihood of police brutality occuring and some would make the argument that police brutality is fundamentally an issue of institutional racial inequality. While people from all ethnic backgrounds can certainly become victims of police brutality, the societal reality is that African American men and women have suffered through this unfathomable issue the most. Despite comprising less than a quarter of the country’s demographic chart, African Americans face over twenty percent of hostile police contact, make up a third of the incarcerated population, and are over three times more likely to be killed by the police than their caucasian counterparts. The story told by these statistics is evident, these racially motivated injustices, more times than not, can be narrowed down into categories such as: racially motivated hate crimes committed by the general public, criminal sentencing imbalance and policing bias against African Americans. Recent police killings of African Americans have reignited the national discussion back towards issues such as: police reform, institutional racism, unjust treatment, and mass incarceration to name a few. This paper’s foundational theme is centered on the subject of police officers’ subjective use of these BWCs and will also attempt to unearth whether there are racial disparities with the police’s use of these body-worn cameras. In addition, based on research that is conducted on the BWCs, suggestions that revolve around identifying different versions of policies/reform that can help mitigate police officers’ subjective use of BWCs into regulated use.
From the public’s perspective, the use of body worn cameras represents ideas behind police departments showing not only an increase in accountability, but transparency as well. By the use of BWCs alone, research studies have shown that they improve certain aspects of an officer’s professionalism and behavior exhibited towards communities. According to a 2020 report by the National Police Foundation that synthesized 10 years of research on the BWCs (NCP, 2020), police officers who wore body cameras on a consistent basis showed to have fewer civilian complaints filed against them than officers without cameras. Despite the results of recent quantitative and qualitative research studies regarding BWCs certainly showing promise, the general consensus still remains mixed. When the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department in Nevada implemented BWCs, it experienced a significant drop in both the rate of complaints and the use of force (Braga et al, 2017). In stark contrast, when the Metropolitan Police Department of the District of Columbia did the same implementation of BWCs within patrols, it found no distinguished benefits. The researchers noted that these differences might have more to do with policies that allow officers to choose when to turn on their cameras, as well as a lack of controls for situations in which one officer shows up wearing a camera while another does not. To further this divide within research on BWCs effectiveness, in a multi-site analysis that conducted previous randomized controlled trial reports that showed that BWCs had no visible effects on incidents involving police use of force, the researchers attempted to understand the variation amongst the sites since in some sites saw rates of use of force decrease and in others, it increased (Ariel et al, 2016). The main experiment analyzed randomized shifts where officers turned BWCs on and shifts where they turned them off. Noncompliance with the experiment led to the creation of experimental subgroups, which included: those who were granted discretion when to turn cameras on and off, those who complied with the study, those who were stripped of discretion completely, and those who complied with the control conditions but not the experimental conditions. In the noncompliance groups with discretion, use of force increased by a staggering 71% while high compliance groups had 37% decrease in use of force. The results demonstrate that BWCs are able to achieve the objective of deterring police from using force and/or deter suspects from instigating forceful encounters, but only in situations where police relinquish some discretion on activating these devices. A number of studies have investigated the impact of BWCs on important outcomes such as citizen complaints and police use-of-force, but in one of the first randomized control trials of BWCs in the U.S., the Rialto (CA) Police Department reported a 59% reduction in use-of-force incidents, as well as an 88% decrease in complaints against officers when compared to the year prior (Ariel et al, 2015).
These studies, and a number of others, seem to suggest that in order for BWCs to be considered a credible deterrent, four “critical points” must be met: BWCs are actually worn by the officer, BWCs are turned on and used during the police–public encounter, all parties must fully cognizant of the presence of BWCs. The one largest cited detraction against BWCs (which will be followed up in more depth later on) is when an officer applies any form of discretion and does not record an encounter, for whatever reason, the deterrent effect of BWCs will always be nullified.
What the public knows and thinks can have important implications for the design and the success of the various policing styles and strategies, such as BWCs. Strong relationships built on mutual trust between police agencies and the communities are critical to maintaining public safety and effective policing, something BWCs strives to do. Therefore, judging not only the public’s perception but taking into consideration the police’s overall perception on BWCs, can go a long way into determining what is the best way to implement BWCs on a larger, more country-wide scale. Over eighty respondents from Prince George’s County in Maryland (considered a racially diverse county) were interviewed in a research study that attempted to discover racial differences in police interactions and views of BWCs (Ray et al, 2017). Generally speaking, the researchers found that perceptions on BWCs varied and were further categorized into two primary groups of supporters and skeptics. The results showed that non-white respondents reported more fear and mistreatment by police officers than their caucsian counterparts. In terms of BWCs, the researchers found that police supporters of BWCs believed that they will illuminate the difficulties of policing while citizen supporters of BWCs cited the idea that BWCs will be able to create more police transparency that will hold officers more accountable for their actions. On the other hand, the researchers also found that skeptics fall into one of two typologies: privacy skeptics who think that BWC may put police officers at even more risk and those structural skeptics who do not see BWC as structurally changing the power dynamics between citizens and police officers. Another study that was conducted within the Orlando Police Department examined the department’s personnel perceptions of utilizing BWCs. The researchers found that a majority of the department’s police officers were largely supportive of BWCs in policing as the reported officers observed a potential for behavioral benefits of BWC’s which include: citizen behavior, their own behavior, and the behavior of their fellow officers (Jennings et al, 2014).
As evident by the BWCs research introduced up until this point, the “determined effectiveness” of BWCs presents a mixed picture. On one hand, the number of filed complaints statistically decreased against police officers following the cameras’ introduction within police departments, which one could argue is a large enough effect to justify the costs of BWCs in the short term. On the other hand, some precincts that have implemented BWCs have shown no difference within their own provinces or have even shown an escalation in negative encounters between the police and the community. The question to ponder now is what causes this variation in the determined effectiveness of BWCs? While the answer to this question can vary, generally speaking, one can look at police discretion as a possible detraction of BWCs. Police discretion is a pillar of modern policing and can be generally defined as the discretionary use of police authority in which police officers evaluate the situations in which they intervene and choose a course of action from among a set of alternatives. Providing too much discretion to police officers over their use of body-worn cameras can lead to nullifying the good that BWCs present, as evident in Ariel’s previously mentioned 2016 study. The researchers found that police officers that stuck with the protocol of BWCs being on all the time led to use of force falling over a third. On the flip end, the reported use of force was higher when officers exercised levels of their own perceived discretion (Ariel et al, 2016). In essence, not providing a threshold for police discretion allows the possibility for these officers, whether intentional or not, to display certain biases that contend with an individual’s race, gender, sexual orientation, etc. This notion, more times than not, leads to disparities in the way police officers subjectively employ BWCs.
Current Policies and Implementation Challenges
The previous literature highlights the current debate between why BWC are used, what the current polices, or lack thereof are, and the types of disparities and lack of transparency that is present throughout departments in the United States. If deterrence theory is one of the main theoretical frameworks for why BWC are essential during police and public interactions, because this theory indicates that being monitored or watched should alter behavior, then officers will be less likely to use force when encountering civilians because their actions are being monitored. Indeed, Spokane PD found that once officers were equipped with BWC, civilian complaints and use of force decreased by 50%. Additionally, Mesa PD found that officers were more risk aversive when wearing BWC and less likely to stop and frisk (Walker & Archbold, 2018).
However, one of the persistent challenges mentioned in the literature is that numerous studies have shown that not all interactions with civilians get recorded. Indeed, Phoenix PD reported between 13-42% of incidents are actually recorded and less than half of the incidents involving use of force were recorded by Denver PD (Taylor, 2016). In 2015 Phoenix PD reported that for the interactions that do get recorded, 47.5% were for domestic violence, 38.7% for violent offenses, 37% for back-up, 32.9% for status offenses, and 30.9% for vehicle/suspect stops (Walker & Archbold, 2018). If BWC have the potential to decrease use of force and reduce civilian complaints, they why aren’t they more widely used and regulated? If the majority of interactions do not get recorded, who chooses what type of events get recorded, what is the basis of that decision, and where does the data go?
Placement. While these “objective measures” are theoretically supposed to be used to document civilian and police interactions, there are factors that might make them less objective. Some of the challenges of have to do with the placement on the officer’s body, and whether the camera view is distorted of pointed away from the interaction When cameras are used, they are typically placed on an officer’s chest. Thus, the viewpoint that gets depicted from the camera is looking up at the civilian or suspect making them appear larger or more overwhelming (Houwing & Ritsema van Eck, 2020). Another potential problem is “camera view bias”. Since the BWC show footage from the police perspectives, viewers might be more inclined to trust the police officers’ actions since they are seeing one side of the story (Taylor, 2016).
Storage and Right to Privacy. One of the emerging issues with BWC is the right to privacy (Miller & Toliver, 2014). Some devices can record conversations, video footage, and zoom in to use facial recognition technology. The type of information that gets recorded, even any, could be used to provided evidence in cases of misconduct, use of force, or to justify the actions taken by an officer. However, in some departments, the storage of footage and right to privacy has a standard 4-week period. Meaning that even if a use of force encounter occurred and the suspect requested that footage, there are many obstacles to obtaining the footage in that standard window of time (Houwing & Ritsema van Eck, 2020).
The storage of footage largely depends on security, reliability, cost, and technical capacity. Some practical issues that might explain current discrepancies are the battery life of the current BWC technology, amounts of data from footage, and the cost of cameras (Taylor, 2016). If the battery life of these camera is limited, then it would be hard to have them stay on during an entire shift without back up batteries or chargers. If massive amounts of data get recorded during a shift, then it might cost more to store the footage or comb through it if evidence was needed later. Indeed, much of the footage data is either stored in house through a server or through the cloud by a third-party vendor. In much of the previous literature has shown that there are discrepancies between departments policies and procedures, that begs the question how much variations is there is what happens to the footage, where things are stored, for how long, and whether or not people can access it, or it gets posted online.
Recent Policy Recommendations
To address the above issues, conferences have been used to discuss and pinpoint these disparities, so that researchers could recommend new policies and directions for implementation. Indeed, Miller and Toliver (2014) highlighted that the research that emerged from discussions with police chiefs, experts, and interviews with police executives in 2013 lead the Police Executive Research Forum (PERF) to comprise a list of policy recommendations and implementation tactics lessons. The ACLU recommended the approach of having BWC record every encounter, so that we don’t have to give police officers another list of things to have to consider before turning on or off. However, PERF recommended recording in some situations, while allowing discretion in others such as: talking to witnesses, victims, and other non-law related interactions. Regardless, there needs to be a balance between privacy consideration, need for transparency, documentation of events, and evidence collection.
Walker and Archbold (2018) mentioned that during a 2017 leadership conference, they used score cards to analyze 8 different factors to see if various police departments were implementing completely, partially, or not at all. The score card asked the questions: Is the BWC policy easily accessible for members of the public? Does the policy limit officers’ discretion on when to record or activate BWC cameras? Does the policy address personal privacy concerns? Does the policy require officers to file an initial written report before video camera footage is reviewed for all incidents? Does the policy protect footage from being tampered with and accessed by unauthorized persons? Does the policy require every person who accesses BWC video footage to log in before receiving access? Does the policy allow individuals who are filing police misconduct complaints to view all relevant footage? Does the policy limit the use of biometric technology, such as facial recognition software, to identify people featured in body-camera footage?
After analyzing the data from these score cards and finding that each department differs on implementation practices, Walker and Archbold (2018) proposed solutions that would include officer specific recommendations: 1. Officers should be required to obtain consent to record with BWCs prior to recording interviews with victims of crime. 2.With limited exceptions, officers should be required to activate their BWCs when responding to all service calls, during every encounter with the public, and during other activities while on duty. 3. Officers should have the discretion to turn off BWCs during conversations with crime witnesses and community members who want to discuss criminal activity in their neighborhood. 4. Officers should be required to explain on camera or in writing their reason for not recording an activity that is required to be recorded according to department policy. Walker and Archbold (2018) also included policy specific recommendations such as: 5. Policies should include measures to prevent tampering, deletion, and copying of BWC footage. 6. Policies should articulate the length of time that BWC video footage must be retained. 7. Officers should be permitted to review BWC footage of an incident prior to writing a statement about the incident. 8. BWC policies should clearly articulate circumstances in which supervisors will be authorized to review BWC footage. 9. Police agencies should have clear and consistent protocols for releasing BWC footage to the public and news media. 10. BWC training should be required for all police department personnel who may use or are involved with the use of BWCs. 11. Police agencies should collect statistical data on BWC usage. Additionally, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) implemented a disciplinary document so that officers who fail to turn on their BWCs three times will receive a report in their file, fours time will result in a supervisory intervention, and the fifth time will result in a written reprimand. Lastly, Walker and Archbold (2018) mentioned that some departments have hired a video specialist, who is not a police officer, to view the footage and create reports or audits to present instances of footage that included use of force, etc.
Our Recommendations for Implementation and Measures of Success
Based on the above suggestions and challenges mentioned by Walker and Archbold (2018) and Miller and Toliver (2014), we have created an experiment to first test out which of the policy recommendations seems to deter use of force, and way to measure success. As Miller and Toliver (2014) mentioned, it is easier to start implementation with a smaller target group (as well as the least costly), so we will be giving BWC to those who come in contact with the public the most (i.e., patrol or traffic officers) and those who have the most complaints.
These officers will be separated into four conditions, with deterrence theory as our primary justification for behavior change. Deterrence theory will be operationally defined by the use of BWC. The conditions will include BWC to be turned on 1. during the whole shift/ no discretion, 2. allowing discretion/obtaining consent ONLY with witness/victim statements and interactions, and 3. allowing discretion with any interaction, however the officers must announce and document when they are turning their camera off and give thorough justification for why they did not use it, and 4. the control group which will adhere to their departments current policy. In all cases, at the end of an interaction, the officer should obtain contact information and provide theirs to the person they had an encounter with as well as document race, time of day, neighborhood, reason for encounter, and any other demographic data that is typically noted in a report. This experiment should last about three months, to provide enough encounter and interaction instances to measure our dependent variable, use of force complaints.
In order to measure the effect, after each encounter, another officer would contact the person who came in contact with the officer in question and get a statement about their interaction. Then at the end of every shift an independent monitor could examine the footage and audit the number of uses of force interactions. The final analysis would compare number of uses of force incidents from three months pre-implementation to after the three-month implementation period, written reports, personal statement, and footage during implementation and see if use of force decreases in any of the four conditions. The analyses would comprise of paired sample t-tests to analyze before and after number of complaints per officer in each condition. An ANOVA analysis could compare the conditions to see if there was a difference among the interventions. Lastly, a correlation analysis could be used to compare use of force between people of color and non-people of color to see if the discrepancies still occurred.
Possible Challenges and Things to Consider
Researchers should consult with lawyers and law makers to confirm that they are in a one-part consent jurisdiction, as well as to ensure storage complies with t with laws no tampering, auditing system. Should check if the technology has battery life for whole shift or if needed batteries. There should be weekly trainings or reminders which condition you are in. Additionally, future researcher should consider placement of cameras , since they typically are on head or chest but could use other areas.
Citation Page:
Ariel, B., Sutherland, A., Henstock, D., Young, J., Drover, P., Sykes, J., Megicks, S., &
Henderson, R. (2016). Report: increases in police use of force in the presence of body-worn cameras are driven by officer discretion: a protocol-based subgroup analysis of ten randomized experiments. Journal of Experimental Criminology, 12(3), 453–463. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11292-016-9261-3
Ariel, B., Farrar, W. A., & Sutherland, A. (2015). The Effect of Police Body-Worn Cameras on Use of Force and Citizens’ Complaints Against the Police: A Randomized Controlled Trial. Journal of Quantitative Criminology, 31(3), 509–535. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10940-014-9236-3
Braga, A., Coldren, J. R., Sousa, W., Rodriguez, D. & Alper, O. 2017. The Benefits of Body-Worn Cameras: New Findings from a Randomized Controlled Trial at the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department. National Criminal Justice Reference Service.
Houwing, L., & Ritsema van Eck, G. (2020). Police body cams as equiveillance tools?
Reflections on the Debate in the Netherlands. Surveillance & Society, 18(2), 284–287. https://doi.org/10.24908/ss.v18i2.13925
Jennings, Wesley G. & Fridell, Lorie A. & Lynch, Mathew D., 2014. Cops and cameras: Officer perceptions of the use of body-worn cameras in law enforcement. Journal of Criminal Justice, Elsevier, vol. 42(6), pages 549-556.
Miller, & Toliver, J. (2014). Implementing a body-worn camera program : recommendations and lessons learned. Police Executive Research Forum.
National Police Foundation. (2020). Police body cameras: What have we learned over ten years of deployment?
Ray, R., Marsh, K., & Powelson, C. (2017). Can Cameras Stop the Killings? Racial Differences in Perceptions of the Effectiveness of Body-Worn Cameras in Police Encounters. Sociological Forum (Randolph, N.J.), 32(S1), 1032–1050. https://doi.org/10.1111/socf.12359
Taylor, E. (2016). Lights, Camera, Redaction… Police Body-Worn Cameras; Autonomy,
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Walker, S. E., & Archbold, C. A. (2018). The new world of police accountability.(3rd edition.). Sage Publications.
With the presence of BWCs, the overall goal is to have police officers more aware of their actions and interactions with the general public, making it less likely that the line between the type of use of force necessary to apprehend active suspects and blatant overuse of force is not crossed.