Michael D. White - Cops, Cameras, and Crisis: The Potential and the Perils of Police Body-Worn Cameras

Cops, Cameras, and Crisis

The Potential and the Perils of Police Body-Worn Cameras

Michael D. White and Aili Malm

NEW YORK UNIVERSITY PRESS

New York

NEW YORK UNIVERSITY PRESS

New York

www.nyupress.org

2020 by New York University

All rights reserved

References to Internet websites (URLs) were accurate at the time of writing. Neither the author nor New York University Press is responsible for URLs that may have expired or changed since the manuscript was prepared.

ISBN: 978-1-4798-7453-8 (hardback)

ISBN: 978-1-4798-0328-6 (paperback)

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Our thoughts on police body-worn cameras have been shaped by our colleagues, and we owe a debt of gratitude for their wisdom and experience. We are especially grateful to Barak Ariel, Anthony Braga, James Chip Coldren, Scott Decker, Hank Fradella, Janne Gaub, Chuck Katz, Daniel Lawrence, John Markovic, Dina Perrone, Denise Rodriguez, Craig Uchida, Jerry Ratcliffe, Shellie Solomon, Bill Sousa, Charles Stephenson, Natalie Todak, Craig Uchida, and Tom Woodmansee. We also are very thankful for the dozen or so police and criminal justice leaders who contributed their own personal observations in the book: Arif Alikhan, Kathy Armstrong, Brenda Buren, Edward A. Flynn, Gary Jenkins, Michael J. Kurtenbach, Steve Marcin, Damon Mosler, Carolyn Naoroz, Paul M. Noel, Geoffrey D. Smith, Seth Stoughton, and Dan Zehnder. These practitioner perspectives are the most valuable part of the book, and we are indebted to them for their contributions. We also thank Ilene Kalish and the staff at NYU Press.

Innovation, the Current Crisis, and Police Body-Worn Cameras

When you put a camera on a police officer, they tend to behave a little better, follow the rules a little better, and if a citizen knows the officer is wearing a camera, chances are the citizen will behave a little better.

William A. Farrar, Chief of Police, Rialto (California) Police Department (Lovett, In California)

We are unable to detect any statistically significant effects. As such, our experiment suggests that we should recalibrate our expectations of BWCs. Law enforcement agencies (particularly in contexts similar to Washington, DC) that are considering adopting BWCs should not expect dramatic reductions in use of force or complaints, or other large-scale shifts in police behavior, solely from the deployment of this technology.

Yokum, Ravishankar, and Coppock, Evaluating the Effects of Police Body-Worn Cameras

Over the past 150 years, technological innovation has redefined the very nature of policing, from the development of the call box in the late 1800s to automobile patrol, the two-way radio, and 911 systems in the twentieth century. These innovations have been complemented by the development of new tools such as geographic information systems (GIS), crime analysis, CompStat, DNA and forensics, license plate readers, less lethal alternatives (TASER), drug and alcohol field testing, and gunshot detection systems.

The tremendous innovation in how police go about their daily business (strategies) and the tools they use to conduct that business (technologies) has been increasingly grounded in evidence-based policing. Police leadership organizations, researchers, and practitioners have worked to build a body of knowledge that applies rigorous research methodologies to the study of innovation in policing, both tools and strategies, and that charts a course forward into the twenty-first century. There are now multiple directories of evidence-based police strategies and tools, such as CrimeSolutions.gov and George Mason Universitys Evidence-Based Policing Matrix. Evidence-based policing provides an important lens for examining the diffusion and impact of innovations in policing. So it should come as no surprise that we use this lens to study police body-worn cameras.

The past few decades have also been defined by an increasing reliance on technology as a mechanism for surveillance, both by citizens and by the police. In the early 1990s, dashboard cameras emerged as a method for capturing the real-time encounters between police and citizens. Despite early resistance to dashboard cameras by officers,

The most recent surveillance technology for policing is officer body-worn cameras (BWCs). Sander Flight states, Bodycams are small cameras that are worn on the person, that have at least one microphone and an internal data storage that allows audio and video footage to be recorded. In short, BWCs had already begun to garner attention among law enforcement before the summer of 2014. In July and August 2014, the dialogue surrounding policing and BWCs in the United States changed dramatically

On July 17, 2014, NYPD officers approached Eric Garner on a street corner in Staten Island because they suspected he was selling unlicensed cigarettes. Officers attempted to take Garner into custody, and during the struggle, police officer Daniel Pantaleo applied a choke hold. Garner stated nearly a dozen times that he could not breathe. Garner lost consciousness after the struggle, and he was pronounced dead an hour later. The entire incident was captured on a bystanders cell phone.

On August 9, 2014, Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson stopped Michael Brown and Dorian Johnson. Though there is no video of the incident and the facts are disputed, it is clear the initial stop led to a struggle between Wilson, who was still seated in his patrol car, and Brown. Officer Wilson fired one shot while he was still in his car and then several more shots after he exited the vehicle, killing Brown. Protests and civil disorder began within hours of Browns death and continued for several days. On August 16, Governor Jay Nixon of Missouri declared a state of emergency in Ferguson. On November 24, a grand jury declined to indict Officer Wilson for Michael Browns death, and riots again exploded on the streets of Ferguson. Controversial police killings of minority citizens continued over the next few years: Tamir Rice in Cleveland, Walter Scott in North Charleston, Freddie Gray in Baltimore, Samuel DuBose in Cincinnati, Laquan McDonald in Chicago, Alton Sterling in Baton Rouge, Philando Castile near St. Paul, Justine Damond in Minneapolis. Public outrage over these (and other) incidents produced civil disorder in several cities, created strong antipolice sentiment, and led to a national movement demanding police reform (i.e., Black Lives Matter: http://blacklivesmatter.com).