Body-worn video

Body-worn video (BWV)—also called a body-worn camera, body camera, or bodycam, among other names—refers to a device designed to provide eyewitness testimony of the behavior of on-duty police officers as they carry out daily duties, typically in the form of a camera that provides a recording of situations from the perspective of the officer wearing it. The BWV is small and unobtrusive and is easily worn on a shirt, jacket, or helmet, giving a record of an officer during arrests, crime-scene investigations, and suspect interviews. Recordings are usually transmitted digitally to a law enforcement computer that processes them for storage and indexing.

In the early twenty-first century, as relations between police officers and suspects became increasingly strained in many cases, and incidents of both police brutality and attacks on police officers generated much public debate, BWVs were increasingly adopted as a way to provide evidence of controversial events. Advocates of BWVs insist that they generate greater transparency among the law enforcement community and promote accountability of both the police and the public. Since volatile situations are likely to be caught on cell phone videos by bystanders, BWVs may provide an alternate view of a situation, reflecting events as viewed by the officer wearing the camera. However, BWVs have faced considerable opposition as well, including from those who question whether they actually improve policing as well as others who consider them a threat to privacy. While anecdotal evidence is plentiful on both sides, the body of scholarly research on the subject is still under development.

Background

BWVs began to receive international attention in 2006 when officers in the United Kingdom tested wearing them on a limited basis. Initial tests proved promising, and the British police began insisting that BWVs provided evidence that could not be manipulated by astute defense attorneys. As a result, criminals were more likely to admit to crimes, negating the need for lengthy and expensive trials. Through the Domestic Violence Enforcement Campaign, the legal community learned that body-worn cameras could provide legal evidence in cases where victims of domestic abuse were unwilling to press charges or testify against their abusers.

The British insisted that BWVs could be used as a deterrent to crime and for providing clear evidence of officer and criminal activity. The legal community launched pilot programs to test the effectiveness of BWVs. Two of those projects took place in Scotland in Renfrewshire (2006–10) and Aberdeen (2010), providing evidence that cost-effective BWVs helped to generate positive views of police officers, reduced crimes and officer attacks, cut down on the number of cases going to trial, and cut down on citizen complaints. In July 2013, through Operation Hyperion, officials on the Isle of Wight, provided every officer working on the frontline with BWV cameras. British lawmakers passed new laws allowing for evidence from BWVs to replace witness testimony.

Other countries, including the United States, Canada, Australia, Germany, and the Netherlands, also begun using BWV cameras. Australia wholeheartedly supported the use of BWV cameras. In the Netherlands, the city of Amsterdam equipped not only local police officers but also city wardens and guards at public events and sporting matches with BWV cameras.

Overview

The use of BWVs has been more controversial in the United States than in Europe. There are more police shootings in the United States than in Europe overall, and the US has a long history of strained relations between police officers and minority communities, particularly Black Americans, who are shot and killed by police at a disproportionately high rate (2.5 times higher than White Americans, according to the Washington Post in 2015).

In 2014, BWVs received national attention following the shooting of Michael Brown, an unarmed Black teenager who was fatally wounded in Ferguson, Missouri, after being shot by White police officer Darren Wilson, triggering major civil unrest. The Michael Brown case and several other high-profile cases in which Black Americans were shot and killed by police led to a call for greater police accountability, and BWVs were subsequently promoted as a means of ensuring that accountability. In December 2014, President Barack Obama instituted the Task Force on Twenty-First Century Policing and pledged federal funds to US police departments for the purchase of fifty thousand BWV cameras. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) came out in favor of BWV cameras, but only if the cameras operated continuously to prevent selective editing of the footage by police, and only if there was secure storage of the recorded data and the timely removal of irrelevant footage. Many police departments continued to question the use of BWV equipment, citing safety issues and the possibility of police distraction as causes of concern. In the summer of 2016, the North Carolina legislature passed a law strictly limiting public access to videos taken by BWV cameras.

Overall, many researchers concluded that BWV cameras are generally effective in recording the behavior of police officers. Evidence suggests that a police officer is more likely to avoid force when they know that behavior is being recorded. The fact that police officers act more responsibly means that citizens are less likely to complain. A police officer wearing a BWV camera knows that evidence from the device may be used in a court of law to prove that they acted responsibly or that poor judgment or bias led to improper behavior. A chief benefit from the use of BWVs is the elimination of conflicting testimonies about what was said and done in a given situation.

Some of the studies of the effectiveness concerning BWVs have been contradictory, however. In 2012 researchers at the University of Cambridge conducted the first full scientific study of the effects of BWV cameras on policing. The researchers’ study of police officers in Rialto, California, suggested that the use of BWV cameras may have helped to reduce the use of force by police, leading to a significant reduction in citizen complaints. The researchers cautioned that further studies were needed to validate their findings. A study that examined the use of BWV cameras among officers in Mesa, Arizona, from November 2012 to October 2013 concluded that the cameras reduced incidents of arrests while increasing the issuance of citations and the initiation of encounters with the public. However, in 2016, another study undertaken at Cambridge University examined use of BWVs by both British and American police, suggesting that officers wearing BWV cameras were more likely than others to be attacked. Other conflicting studies on the effectiveness of BWVs continued to appear over the years.

Additionally, not all feedback about BWVs has been positive. American privacy advocates have found much to complain about, insisting that BWVs infringe on the inherent right to privacy as interpreted by the US Supreme Court. These issues include the degree to which the public access to the recordings, and whether there is sufficient legislation to protect the rights of individuals who are recorded. Controversies have also arisen over whether wearers are required to record all interactions or only those that they feel may become volatile. Some question the feasibility of "always on" recording given the limitations of certain types of BWV equipment. The costs of providing officers with BWV cameras may be prohibitive for small police departments because they include the costs of sophisticated computer systems that store and index recordings, as well as the costs for training officers and computer technicians.

The debate over BWVs saw renewed attention in 2020 after the killing of George Floyd by police officers in Minneapolis, Minnesota, which triggered massive protests across the nation and even internationally. The incident was captured on video by both a bystander and two BWVs, helping to generate intense public scrutiny of police tactics. With issues of police brutality and social justice at the forefront of public discourse, several polls conducted in June 2020 indicated that a strong majority of Americans favored mandatory use of BWVs by police officers. This attention also helped spur new research into the impact of BWVs. For example, a 2020 report from the National Police Foundation suggested that camera-wearing officers received fewer formal complaints than officers without body cameras. The Council on Criminal Justice's Task Force on Policing and the University of Chicago Crime Lab released a study in 2021 that indicated BWV use decreased the use of force by police as well as the number of complaints against officers, and suggested that these outcomes ultimately made BWVs fairly cost effective. By August 2024, twenty-five US states and Washington, DC, had passed laws mandating usage of BWV by most law enforcement officers interacting with the public.

Bibliography

Barak, Ariel, William A. Farrar, Alex Sutherland. "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, vol. 31, no. 3, 2015, pp. 509−35.

"Body Camera Laws by State 2024." World Population Review, Aug. 2024, worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/body-camera-laws-by-state. Accessed 29 Oct. 2024.

Corley, Cheryl. "Study: Body-Worn Camera Research Shows Drop In Police Use of Force." NPR, 26 Apr. 2021, www.npr.org/2021/04/26/982391187/study-body-worn-camera-research-shows-drop-in-police-use-of-force. Accessed 29 Oct. 2024.

Coudert, Fanny, Denis Butin, and Daniel Le Métayer. "Body-Worn Cameras for Police Accountability: Opportunities and Risks." Computer Law and Security Review, vol. 31, no. 6, 2015, pp. 749−62.

"First Scientific Report Shows Police Body-Worn Cameras Can Prevent Unacceptable Use of Force." University of Cambridge. University of Cambridge, 23 Dec. 2014, www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/first-scientific-report-shows-police-body-worn-cameras-can-prevent-unacceptable-use-of-force. Accessed 29 Oct. 2024.

Harris, David A. "Picture This: Body Worn Video Devices (‘Head Cams’) As Tools for Ensuring Fourth Amendment Compliance by Police." Texas Tech Law Review, vol. 42, 2010, pp. 357−71.

Jennings, Wesley G., Lorie A. Fridell, and Mathew D. Lynch. "Cops and Cameras: Officer Perceptions of the Use of Body-Worn Cameras in Law Enforcement." Journal of Criminal Justice, vol. 42, 2014, pp. 546−56. P

Kahn, Chris. “Exclusive: Most Americans, Including Republicans, Support Sweeping Democratic Police Reform Proposals - Reuters/Ipsos Poll.” Reuters, 12 June 2020, www.reuters.com/article/us-minneapolis-police-poll-exclusive/exclusive-most-americans-including-republicans-support-sweeping-democratic-police-reform-proposals-reuters-ipsos-poll-idUSKBN23I380. Accessed 29 Oct. 2024.

Newcombe, Tod. "For the Record: Understanding the Technology behind Body Worn Cameras." Government Technology, vol. 28, no. 6, 2015, pp. 29−40.

"994 People Shot Dead by Police in 2015." The Washington Post, 22 Jan. 2020, www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/national/police-shootings/. Accessed 29 Oct. 2024.

Ready, Justin T. and Jacob T. N. Young. "The Impact of On-Officer Video Cameras on Police-Citizen Contacts: Findings from a Controlled Experiment in Mesa, AZ." Journal of Experimental Criminology, vol. 11, no. 3, 2015, pp. 445−58.

Ulmer, Alexandra, and Julia Harte. "Explainer: How Police Body-Worn Cameras are Used in the United States." Reuters, 30 Apr. 2021, www.reuters.com/world/us/how-police-body-worn-cameras-are-used-united-states-2021-04-30/. Accessed 29 Oct. 2024.

White, Michael D. Police Officer Body-Worn Cameras: Assessing the Evidence. Office of Community Oriented Policing Services, 2014, bja.ojp.gov/sites/g/files/xyckuh186/files/bwc/pdfs/diagnosticcenter‗policeofficerbody-worncameras.pdf. Accessed 29 Oct. 2024.