Camera-friendly Policing: How the Police Respond to Cameras and Photographers

Abstract

How do police respond to the presence of cameras and photographers? Many speculative theories have been proposed offering mixed and sometimes contradictory answers to this question. Some theories propose that cameras will deter police misconduct, others suggest that cameras might improve police accountability, others suggest that police might respond to cameras by engaging in a risk-averse style of policing. Unfortunately, little empirical data is available to assess these theories. Drawing on data from a participant-observation research study conducted in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, this paper helps fill this gap in research and argues that police might be learning to adapt to cameras by engage in what I call camera-friendly policing. This style of policing involves efforts to control how the police are perceived by photographers, and how they will be perceived by viewers of any recorded footage. In this paper, I outline the basic elements of the police's camera-friendly tactics, and discuss the implications of these tactics for contemporary understandings of police visibility.

‘I’m glad that was on camera’: a case study of police officers’ perceptions of cameras

“…There is a growing body of (mostly quantitative) research into the effects of BWC deployment and (mostly non-empirical) research on the role and implications of bystander video or organized "copwatching" (Farmer & Sun, 2016), but there is little qualitative social research examining how police officers understand and perceive the impact of bystander video or the use of BWCs on their work (for important exceptions see, e.g., Farmer & Sun, 2016;Koen, 2016;Sandhu, 2017;Sandhu, 2016;Sandhu & Haggerty, 2017;Tanner & Meyer, 2015;Timan, 2013). The present research builds on these earlier studies while also focusing on police officer perceptions of both phenomena, with the aim of providing a better understanding of how officers perceive and react to working on camera (theirs or someone else's), especially where the presence of a camera has the potential to increase the visibility of an individual officers' everyday work to a broad audience.…”

Breaking the Order: The Intended and Unintended Consequences of Countersurveillance on the West Bank

“…This police reaction has the potential of starting a spiral of surveillance and countersurveillance (Wilson and Serisier 2010;Ullrich and Knopp 2018) and can result in "war on cameras" (Simon 2012;Wall and Linnemann 2014;Wilson and Serisier 2010). Another approach is accommodating, where police officers accept the surveillance and work with or around it (Sandhu 2016). This approach includes avoidance, meaning leaving the scene if cameras are present, or camera-friendly policing, meaning attempting to control how the police are perceived by photographers and viewers (Farmer 2016;Sandhu 2016).…”

“…Another approach is accommodating, where police officers accept the surveillance and work with or around it (Sandhu 2016). This approach includes avoidance, meaning leaving the scene if cameras are present, or camera-friendly policing, meaning attempting to control how the police are perceived by photographers and viewers (Farmer 2016;Sandhu 2016).…”

Automated policing: the case of body-worn video

“…New technologies automate and change the shape of the craft skills of policing, but also informate the practice of policework. The rapid increase in audio-visual, geo-coded, statistical and other data has given rise to what some police researchers refer to as the 'new visibility' of policing (Goldsmith, 2010;Brown, 2016;Sandhu, 2016). Here, we restrict ourselves largely to work carried out by the public police, not by private security, though many relevant tasks may also regularly be carried out by private security forces (Bowling et al, 2019).…”

“…There is, of course, the potential to record from a different vantage point: that of the watching citizen. Officers have often been reluctant to be photographed on the job, fearing that their actions may be misinterpreted, and have sometimes been reported to engage in 'camera-friendly policing' when being watched, altering their presentation and body language to make footage more favourable (see Sandhu, 2016). It is unclear whether citizens who are filmed by the police alter their behaviour in similar ways.…”