Usually, we behave better when we know we’re being watched. According to decades of research, the presence of other people, cameras or even just a picture of eyes seems to nudge us toward civility: We become more likely to give to charity, for example, and less likely to speed, steal or take more than our fair share of candy.
But what happens when the cameras are on the chests of police officers? The results of the largest, most rigorous study of police body cameras in the United States came out Friday morning, and they are surprising both police officers and researchers.
For seven months, just over a thousand Washington, D.C., police officers were randomly assigned cameras — and another thousand were not. Researchers tracked use-of-force incidents, civilian complaints, charging decisions and other outcomes to see if the cameras changed behavior. But on every metric, the effects were too small to be statistically significant. Officers with cameras used force and faced civilian complaints at about the same rates as officers without cameras.
Officers with cameras used force and faced civilian complaints at about the same rates as officers without cameras.
My opinion may be unpopular in this PC society, but sometimes force is necessary by officers to keep themselves safe and situations under control. It doesn’t surprise me that the people on the other end of the force may not feel it’s necessary, but I would hope having a camera on an officer does not keep them from using force when necessary.
The bodycams should not be used to specifically reduce the use of force just by the fact that they are there, they should be there to record the incident, so it can be determined if force was necessary.
Point being that prior smaller studies had shown a dramatic reduction in the use of force and complaints about force … in a department which had a problem with that. One of the footnotes on this study is that the Washington D.C. force had an earlier problem which was already being addressed in other ways.
What this also may mean is that police officers, in the great majority of incidents, act professionally.
I don’t know that that has ever been seriously in question. But, clearly there are exceptions. What it may demonstrate is that consent decrees, recent awareness, training programs and the like are as effective as cameras … at least for a while. Bad news for Axon, but good news for the rest of us, providing that such programs are actually implemented.
(1) A friend of mine in Minneapolis found that that city hasn’t been enforcing the use of the cameras, and that they are not being turned on much.
(2) Once the cameras are widespread, doesn’t that flatten the future sales curve for quite a while? It’s not like shoes, where you have to buy them fairly regularly, with some people having quite a few pair.
Once the cameras are widespread, doesn’t that flatten the future sales curve for quite a while?
AAXN is betting that their cloud service evidence.com will take off. IIRC, they’re offering law enforcement agencies use of the cameras and the service for free for a year. They believe that the automatic storage and expedited retrieval of needed footage will make it indispensable to the agencies.
Yes, but my impression is that it is the storage costs which are racking up the expenses. If the cameras make a notable difference, that that is just a needed expense, but if the cameras are not making a difference, then there is no reason to store all that video.
every metric, the effects were too small to be statistically significant. Officers with cameras used force and faced civilian complaints at about the same rates as officers without cameras.
Sounds like a good study, but irrelevant. What counts is perception and high profile media stories. Think of the public (smartphone) videos of police shooting someone and how effective they can be showing the truth. That give the public the desire to force cameras on all cops, so stats don’t matter. Think of the Ferguson case, assuming the officer was telling the truth, if he had a camera we would have seen a very large man reaching in the squad car, grabbing for his gun, running for it then turning around and charging and then getting shot. It would have been hard to riot with that on tv. So the police force has a good incentive too. Face it, if you see observation cameras around, you will change your behavior, or it will be changed for you.
So I think they have good potential going forward, especially with the evidence.com ongoing charges model. Razors and Razor Blades.