Body cameras were supposed to revolutionize policing. What happened?
“Accountability.”
As anyone with a pulse in America knows, this country is all about accountability—especially when it comes to its Police Officers. In light of the events of August 2014 in Ferguson Missouri, the family of the slain 18-year-old released a statement pleading for peace—and urging people to join their campaign to get police around the nation to wear cameras.
“We need to work together to fix the system that allowed this to happen,” the statement read. “Join with us in our campaign to ensure that every police officer working the streets in this country wears a body camera.”
The crusade is understandable. No video recordings of the Aug. 9, 2014 confrontation between Ofc. Darren Wilson and Michael Brown exist, and eyewitness accounts of the incident were often in conflict. Some said Brown had his hands up when he was shot; others said Brown was charging toward Wilson when the officer fired.
DNA records actually show Brown's fingerprints on Wilson’s gun while inside his car…but regardless of facts, a camera on Wilson’s uniform would have ended the uncertainty and potentially avoided the subsequent tumult that engulfed the St. Louis suburb (despite prematurely ending one of the greatest false-mantras of modern times in the now debunked “Hands Up / Don’t Shoot” battle cry of pre-fact-laden Social Justice Warriors across the nation).
No. This event was the impetus behind President Barack Obama having the Justice Department provide $23 million dollars in funding for Body Worn Cameras for police agencies in 32 states in 2015—with Congress also taking the symbolic action of supporting a non-binding resolution to encourage Body Worn Cameras be used by on-duty police officers in June of that same year. After Ferguson and Baltimore, to name a few cities, what was the downside? Two years into the experiment, it turns out there is apparently a great deal.
In San Diego, California, there was an 88 percent decline in complaints against officers in the first year of body worn camera deployment according to city records. (Hang on to this fact, as it will come into play in a few segments.)
In Los Angeles, victims and witnesses of crime said that they were now fearful of reporting crimes since there was video footage of them making complaints, therefore making them susceptible to retaliation.
Officers themselves said that it divided their concentration (for purposes of their safety—being a profession prone to receiving gunfire and stab wounds as a matter of day to day business after all), and that it made them feel second guessed which discouraged the always elusive yet often encouraged “officer initiative.”
And then, of course, was the inevitable death knell of Body Worn Cameras: The fact that they showed the behavior of ACLU clients all too accurately and resolutely in 4K HD, which was of course terrible for the business of recouping pro-bono legal fees. Remember the 88 percent reduction in complaints reported above? Exactly.
As it turns out, you are wildly less likely to get out of a ticket or arrest when your actual behavior is a part of the observable record, as opposed to when it was not. Cops call it the “reverse Rodney King.” Ambulance chasers call it “a deal breaker.”)
The in-car cameras have been around for some time now, and locally speaking they are most appropriately branded “Arbitrators” by their parent company. These have been invaluable tools, but are moot given the more current mobile topic.
But law enforcement, as it turns out, has been begging for years to have these cameras implemented on their actual uniforms. (This is another point to remember in a few moments.)
Prior to the Great Enlightenment of 2014? Officers themselves have been supplying their own up to this point, USB-based “MUVI” clip-on cameras being a big hit in particular. Complaints did indeed drop as the disheveled and bombastic (if not fatalistic) behavior of the customers were entered into permanent publically viewable record, but this created the unexpected problem in the form of annoyance from the ACLU…the organization that cried the loudest for these articles since day one.
It destroyed the credibility of their most vociferous clients, and therefore the weight of the stick they chose to hit their target audience with. Their response?
“We have seen fit to refine our recommendations in some areas [regarding the use of body worn cameras], such as when police should record.” Meaning, this has gone from 24/7 accountability to “Okay, sometimes too much is too much.” And that’s not even considering footage of cops using the restroom never before considered.
Just three months back, researchers published the results of the largest, most sophisticated study to date on the effect of body worn cameras on policing. The research team conducted a methodologically rigorous, randomized trial involving officers with the Washington, DC, police department, one of the largest departments in the country.
They tracked officer behavior for 18 months, from the middle of 2015 to the end of 2016, comparing more than 2,200 officers throughout the city of Washington DC.
Roughly half the officers in the study were assigned a camera and half were not. All the participants held a rank of sergeant or below, which helped guarantee that the study group included only those officers who have the most frequent contact with the public.
The researchers examined the effect of body worn cameras (“BWC’s”) on four “outcome categories,” including the use of force, citizen complaints, routine patrol activity, and judicial outcomes.
This, however, is the bottom line: “Across each of the four outcome categories, our analyses consistently point to a null result: The average treatment effect on all of the measured outcomes was very small, and no estimate rose to statistical significance.”
Imagine that pause; body worn cameras made no difference at all in how the police went about their job, to citizen complaints about police conduct, or to judicial outcomes—at least, no difference that rose to the level of statistical significance.
And of particular note for those concerned about police violence? Officers who wore cameras were no more or less likely to use force than those who did not.
Observers were shocked.
In article after article, commentators and participants expressed astonishment at the results. The New York Times said the study “defies expectations.” The Washington Post similarly thought it “bucks early expectations about the impact of the devices.” Another journalist thought the results were “contrary to widespread expectations.”
The scholars involved in the project were likewise baffled. The results “kind of blew my mind,” said Yale political scientist Alexander Coppock. Even Peter Newsham, the Chief of Police in Washington, DC (a guy you would think knew his people) was “surprised.”
“I think a lot of people were suggesting that the body-worn cameras would change behavior,” he said, but “there was no indication that the cameras changed behavior at all.”
“We found essentially that we could not detect any statistically significant effect of the body-worn cameras,” says Anita Ravishanka.
That is to say at long last: The story here is not that the cameras had no effect. It’s that so many people were certain they would.
In the case of the body worn cameras, people believe the police misbehave in some statistically significant number of cases. Since no one wants to be caught on tape being abusive, they firmly believe the cameras will deter the misconduct. And because they are convinced the abuse occurs…they are at a loss to explain the results.
Of course, D.C. Chief Newsham offered one possible explanation for the non-results. “Maybe,” he mused, “his officers were doing the right thing in the first place.” The cameras did not deter misconduct because there was no misconduct to deter.
As it turns out however, when you hold Police Officers accountable, you hold criminals accountable too. Is that the unintended takeaway here?
Only time will tell. But perhaps that too could be researched now that funding cuts are being recommended for body worn cameras for police in light of these new statistics.Happy New Year, Citizens.