Body Cameras, Big Data, and Police Accountability

Abstract

The increase in data from police-worn body cameras can illuminate formerly opaque practices. This article discusses using audiovisual big data from police-worn body cameras, citizen recordings, and other sources to address blind spots in police oversight. Based on body camera policies in America's largest cities, it discusses two possible roadblocks: (1) data retention and deletion, and (2) limits on use for evaluation and discipline. Although recordings are retained for criminal prosecutions, retention for oversight and accountability is overlooked or is contentious. Some departments have no policy on videos concerning civil suits against the police. The retention time for nonevidentiary recordings is also much shorter. Some policies limit their use for evaluation and discipline. Transactional myopia-seeing at the case rather than the systemic level-leads to a focus on specific footage for particular cases, rather than the potential of aggregated body camera big data to reveal important systemic information and to prevent the escalation of problems.

“Big Brother’s Bigger Brother”: The Visual Politics of (Counter) Surveillance in Baltimore

“…What I have called state-centered sousveillance, where citizens rely on the state to create and manage the data, is a prominent and controversial alternative. Expanding the concept this way helps us understand a vibrant public discourse around state accountability and transparency measures that are often sold to the public as sousveillance, even if, in practice, they can deviate significantly from that purpose (Fan 2018). The politics of sousveillance are complex and contradictory, so it should come as no surprise when citizens struggle to make sense of a particular program or technology.…”

“…As I have shown, understanding the management of sousveillance data at each step is crucial for understanding the political implications of these technologies. Technologies pitched to the public as sousveillance might, in practice, not meaningfully deliver on this promise because of the way the program is designed (Fan 2018). The devil is in the details.…”

Visual Data and the Law

“…In yet other contexts, the creation and sharing of sexual, intimate, private, and pornographic visual content has given rise to a range of civil and criminal penalties related to voyeurism (Koops et al 2018), sexting (Reyns et al 2013), live-streaming sexual abuse of minors (Schermer et al 2016), nonconsensual or “revenge” pornography (Citron and Franks 2014), animal cruelty (Strossen 2010), child pornography (Lynch 2002), and domestic abuse (Moore 2013). Perhaps no visual documentation has garnered as much public attention as bystander video of police misconduct (Goldsmith 2010; Ariel, Farrar, and Sutherland 2015; Bosman, Smith, and Wines 2017; Yokum, Ravishankar, and Coppock 2017), spurring the rise in body-worn police cameras among police departments in many countries around the world (Brucato 2015b; Mateescu, Rosenblat, and boyd 2016; Taylor 2016; Fan 2018).…”

“…Once visual data are created, whether and for how long they must be retained varies by context and jurisdiction. As Fan (2018) explains, police body cameras generate an unprecedented amount of data: a video is uploaded to Axon's Evidence.com platform every 2.9 seconds (Mearian 2015, quoted in Fan 2018). What to do with those data once uploaded—and who controls and pays for their retention, access, and dissemination—are critical questions for socio-legal scholars and legal practitioners alike, let alone the agencies that use the technologies on a day-to-day basis.…”

“…Legal actors are implicated and legal principles challenged in new ways when visual data are recorded, distributed or disclosed, redacted or deleted, or used as evidence in a legal proceeding. The visual records created by the use of police body cameras and citizen video, for example, can serve as powerful means to “police the police” (Fan 2018), just as citizen media has been used to document human rights abuses and war crimes (Aronson 2018). Visual recording may be conducted covertly for more voyeuristic purposes, giving rise to privacy violations (see Koops et al 2018).…”