Believing is seeing: Biased viewing of body-worn camera footage.

Abstract

Body-worn camera (BWC) footage is expected to be objective, thereby improving transparency. But can other information about an incident affect how people perceive BWC footage? In two experiments, we examined the effects of officer-generated misinformation and outcome information on people’s memory for an event. Participants viewed BWC footage and/or read an officer’s report containing misleading information. Some participants learned the officer was punished, some that the citizen was arrested. Participants then answered questions exploring their memory for the facts, the extent to which they relied on the officer’s misinformation in judging who was at fault, and their impressions of the officer and civilian. Even when participants saw the BWC footage, their conclusions were consistent with the officer’s misinformation. Moreover, participants’ attitudes toward police predicted their interpretation of the footage, suggesting BWC footage is unlikely to be perceived objectively. We explain our results in terms of misinformation effects and confirmation bias.

Look there! The effect of perspective, attention, and instructions on how people understand recorded police encounters

“…For almost every dependent variable, the extent to which people reported to identify with the police predicted their responses. This finding is consistent with previous research examining how people consider police encounters (Granot et al, ; Jones et al, , ). However, in Study 2, IPS was not always a significant predictor.…”

“…The attention instruction did not attenuate or exacerbate people's judgments of the officer or the civilian. Finally, participants who read the officer's police report containing misleading information provided responses that were more favorable for the officer and less favorable for the civilian, replicating the results of Jones et al (). For Study 2, we focus on the role that more specific, directive instructions might have in attenuating the positive bias that BWC footage affords officers.…”

“…To account for this potential issue, we tested four different police-civilian encounters in Study 2. We also dropped the misleading report manipulation, because although our Study 1 results replicated those of Jones et al (2017), the camera perspective did not predict differential memory distortion on the misinformation score measure.…”

The effects of body‐worn camera footage and eyewitness race on jurors' perceptions of police use of force

“…This understanding of use of force creates ample opportunity for debate around whether a use‐of‐force incident was legally justifiable versus illegal and excessive. One might think that evaluations of the reasonableness of police use of force would be made easier in the BWC era, but research demonstrates that interpretations of video footage are connected to pre‐existing beliefs, challenging the presumption that video produces objective assessments of what is observed (Jones, Crozier, & Strange, , ). Bearing in mind that videos are interpreted through our own biased individual lenses, and that videos depicting police use of force are inherently evocative, it is important to explore the effect of BWC evidence relative to other media of evidence presentation.…”

“…Little research explores how exposure to BWC footage affects public perceptions. Studies by Jones et al (, ) found that interpretation of BWC footage is influenced by officer statements that present misinformation (which could happen intentionally through lying or unintentionally through flawed recollection) and observers' pre‐existing attitudes toward police. Both variables serve to undermine assumptions that video footage always serves as objective, stand‐alone evidence.…”