Police body-worn-cameras can prevent unacceptable use-of-force: Report

Some in the United States, however, question the merit of camera technology given that the officer responsible for killing Eric Garner — a 43-year-old black man suffocated during arrest for selling untaxed cigarettes — was acquitted by a grand jury despite the fact that a bystander filmed the altercation on a mobile phone, with footage showing an illegal ‘chokehold’ administered on Garner who repeatedly states: “I can’t breathe” (a medical examiner ruled the death a homicide).

For the Cambridge researchers, the Rialto results show that body-worn-cameras can mitigate the need for such evidence by preventing excessive use-of-force in the first place. Data from the Rialto experiment shows police officers are deterred from unacceptable uses-of-force — indeed, from using force in general — by the awareness that an interaction is being filmed; but this deterrence relies on cognition of surveillance.

While the evidence provided by the video of Garner’s death would suggest a heinous miscarriage of justice, say researchers, the filming itself by a bystander would not generate the self-awareness and consequent behavior modification during the incident as observed during Rialto’s institutionalized camera use.    

“The ‘preventative treatment’ of body-worn-video is the combination of the camera plus both the warning and cognition of the fact that the encounter is being filmed. In the tragic case of Eric Garner, police weren’t aware of the camera and didn’t have to tell the suspect that he, and therefore they, were being filmed,” said Dr. Barak Ariel, from the Cambridge’s IoC, who conducted the crime experiment with Cambridge colleague Dr. Alex Sutherland and Rialto police chief Tony Farrar.     

“With institutionalized body-worn-camera use, an officer is obliged to issue a warning from the start that an encounter is being filmed, impacting the psyche of all involved by conveying a straightforward, pragmatic message: we are all being watched, videotaped and expected to follow the rules,” he said.

“Police subcultures of illegitimate force responses are likely to be affected by the cameras, because misconduct cannot go undetected — an external set of behavioral norms is being applied and enforced through the cameras. Police-public encounters become more transparent and the curtain of silence that protects misconduct can more easily be unveiled, which makes misconduct less likely.” In Rialto, police use-of-force was 2.5 times higher before the cameras were introduced.

The idea behind body-worn-video, in which small high-definition cameras are strapped to a police officers’ torso or hat, is that every step of every police-public interaction — from the mundane to those involving deadly force — gets recorded to capture the closest approximation of actual events for evidence purposes, with only case-relevant data being stored.

In Rialto, an experimental model was defined in which all police shifts over the course of a year were randomly assigned to be either experimental (with camera) or control (without camera), encompassing over 50,000 hours of police-public interactions.

The dramatic reduction in both use-of-force incidents and complaints against the police during the experiment led to Rialto PD implementing an initial three-year plan for body-worn cameras. When the police force released the results, they were held up by police departments, media and governments in various nations as the rationale for camera technology to be integrated into policing.

Ariel and colleagues are currently replicating the Rialto experiment with over thirty forces across the world, from the West Yorkshire force and Northern Ireland’s PSNI in the United Kingdom to forces in the United States and Uruguay, and aim to announce new findings at the IoC’s Conference for Evidence-Based Policing in July 2015. Early signs match the Rialto success, showing that body-worn-cameras do appear to have significant positive impact on interactions between officers and civilians.

The researchers caution, however, that more research is required, and urge police forces considering implementing body-worn-cameras to contact them for guidance on setting up similar experiments. “Rialto is but one experiment; before this policy is considered more widely, police forces, governments and researchers should invest further time and effort in replicating these findings,” said Dr. Sutherland.

Body-worn cameras appear to be highly cost-effective: analysis from Rialto showed every dollar spent on the cameras saved about four dollars on complaints litigations, and the technology is becoming ever cheaper. The sheer levels of data storage required as the cameras are increasingly adopted, however, has the potential to become crippling.

“The velocity and volume of data accumulating in police departments — even if only a fraction of recorded events turn into ‘downloadable’ recordings for evidentiary purposes — will exponentially grow over time,” said Ariel. “User licenses, storage space, ‘security costs’, maintenance and system upgrades can potentially translate into billions of dollars worldwide.”

If body-worn cameras become the norm, what might the cost be when video evidence is not available? “Historically, courtroom testimonies of response officers have carried tremendous weight, but prevalence of video might lead to reluctance to prosecute when there is no evidence from body-worn-cameras to corroborate the testimony of an officer, or even a victim,” said Ariel.

“Body-worn-video has the potential to improve police legitimacy and enhance democracy, not least by calming situations on the front line of policing to prevent the pain and damage caused by unnecessary escalations of volatile situations. But there are substantial effects of body-worn-video that can potentially offset the benefits which future research needs to explore.”

— Read more in Barak Ariel et al, “The Effect of Police Body-Worn Cameras on Use of Force and Citizens’ Complaints Against the Police: A Randomized Controlled Trial,” Journal Quantitative Criminology (19 November 2014) (DOI: 10.1007/s10940-014-9236-3); and Barak Ariel and Alex Sutherland, “Cameras on cops: the jury’s still out,” The Conversation (23 December 2014).