Body-Worn Cameras and Citizen Interactions with Police Officers: Estimating Plausible Effects Given Varying Compliance Levels

Research on body‐worn cameras

“…In total, in 22 of the 32 studies in this area, scholars have used complaints against officers to measure BWC impact on officer behavior (see Table 1:1a), and in at least 18, they have employed experimental or quasi-experimental designs to test such effects between groups of officers, beats, or shifts with and without BWCs. In these studies, researchers have mostly found that officers wearing BWCs receive fewer reported complaints than do those that are not wearing the cameras (see Ariel, 2016a [for complaints related to use of force but not to misconduct]; Braga, Barao, McDevitt, & Zimmerman, 2018;Braga, Sousa, et al, 2018;Ellis, Jenkins, & Smith, 2015;Goodall, 2007;Goodison & Wilson, 2017;Grossmith et al, 2015;Hedberg, Katz, & Choate, 2016;Jennings, Lynch, & Fridell, 2015 ; Edmonton Police Service (2015); Headley, Guerette, and Shariati (2017); Toronto Police Service (2016, whose results were unclear); White, Gaub, and Todak (2018, although noting a downward trend in complaints for the treatment group); and Yokum, Ravishankar, and Coppock (2017). The more important concern for police agencies and researchers is why reports of complaints decline when officers wear BWCs.…”

“…They hypothesized that once officers become aware of being observed by BWCs, this inhibits their ability to function in ways that avoid being assaulted in high-stress situations. In six studies, however, scholars found no significant differences between officers with and without BWCs in terms of assaults upon them or reports of resisting arrest (Grossmith et al, 2015;Headley et al, 2017;Hedberg et al, 2016;Katz et al, 2014;. Indeed, were skeptical of a "civilizing effect" of BWCs on citizen behavior.…”

Paradoxical effects of self-awareness of being observed: testing the effect of police body-worn cameras on assaults and aggression against officers

“…The self-awareness effect of BWCs is conditional on the extent to which the cameras are activated (Hedberg et al 2017;Taylor 2016;Young and Ready 2016), which is unsurprising: if officers choose to not turn the cameras on, the mechanism that causes self-awareness and the cognitive process of self-scrutiny will not materialize. The prerequisite condition is ensuring that officers activate the cameras.…”

“…Despite the evidence against this policy (see 5 There were some pre-agreed types of cases where officers were allowed to switch off cameras-such as serious sexual violence cases or dealing with informants-but otherwise officers were required to keep cameras on throughout their shifts and record every interaction with suspects, witnesses, and victims. Site codes used to mask research locations Paradoxical effects of self-awareness of being observed: testing... Hedberg et al 2017;Roy 2014), some departments gave officers the discretion to use BWCs how and when they deemed fit during treatment condition-that is, which interactions were worthy of recording, at which point during the police-public interaction to turn the cameras on or off, and whether or not to announce the recording of the interaction. Two major reasons for this decision were technological and/or financial: the battery life of the camera did not allow recording of every interaction, and the cost of uploading data, and the storage of the data exceeded the department's budgetary constraints.…”

Cops and Cameras

“…Subsequently, there has been a host of high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship that has further contributed to the BWC evaluation literature. Examples of this research include randomized controlled trials in Tempe, AZ (Gaub, Choate, Todak, Katz, and White, 2016), Spokane, WA (Gaub et al, 2016;White, Gaub, and Todak, 2017), and Las Vegas, NV (Braga, Sousa, Coldren, and Rodriguez, 2018); a host of randomized controlled trials in Europe (Ariel et al, 2016); rigorous quasi-experimental designs in Tampa, FL (Jennings, Fridell, Lynch, Jetelina, and Gonzalez, 2017), Mesa, AZ (Ready and Young, 2015), and Phoenix, AZ (Hedberg, Katz, and Choate, 2017); and several other methodologically sound studies in various jurisdictions (for a review, see Maskaly, Donner, Jennings, Ariel, and Sutherland, 2017).…”