Police Body Cameras and Use of Force Study Has Numbers, Raises Questions

A Minneapolis Police Department officer wears a body camera while responding to a call on October 25, 2019. Photo by Tony Webster CC BY-SA 2.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

Some numbers on police body cameras and police use of force from a study about the technology, the cost of that technology, and the benefits of implementation.

Across the country, police departments are increasingly using body-worn cameras to better monitor what officers are doing out in the field with the hope that they will reduce the prevalence of misconduct and improve fairness in policing. Still, there’s been a lot of uncertainty over whether the technology is actually helpful. In addition, local governments and police departments that have not integrated the technology as part of their policing practice often cite cost as a barrier.

Now, in one of the latest studies about the equipment, a team of public safety experts and world economists say body-worn cameras are both beneficial and cost effective. They outline their reasoning in a research paper released recently by the University of Chicago Crime Lab and the Council on Criminal Justice’s Task Force on Policing. The report is an update of a variety of studies of body-worn cameras, and it also compares the cost of the technology to the dollar value of the benefits that may come as a result.

Professor Jens Ludwig, head of the Crime Lab, says the findings show the key benefit of body-worn cameras is the reduced use of police force. For example, among the police departments studied, complaints against police dropped by 17% and the use of force by police, during fatal and non-fatal encounters, fell by nearly 10%.

“That’s hopeful but not a panacea,” Ludwig says. “Body-worn cameras are a useful part of the response but not a solution by themselves. Body-worn cameras are not going to solve the problem of the enormous gap we see in police use of force in the U.S. against Black versus white Americans. ”

Even so, New York University Professor Morgan Williams Jr. says, “integrating the technology into policing practices can be an important step towards making policing fairer and more accountable.”

In 2013, about a third of local law enforcement agencies, used some form of body-worn camera technology. By 2016, the number had grown to nearly 50%. While law enforcement often cites finances as a barrier to adopting body-worn cameras, the researchers say the benefits to society and police departments outweigh the costs of the cameras.

Police body cameras are hailed as an important innovation in accountability and transparency in policing. As we are seeing though, technology is not a cure all. Even this study’s backers admit that usage of police body cameras and data collection is mostly on the police departments themselves to report, as is often the manner and edit of footage released to the public. Still, the numbers look promising that the common sense of more visibility leads to more accountability holds up in the real world.

The part that gets missed is the technology of watching these events means that both law enforcement and the community are going to get an unvarnished look at what is happening. The word “accountability” is easy enough to sling around, but with these videos comes the realization that when you are dealing with real people under tremendous stress in life-or-death situations, accountability is far from a clear-cut thing. Sometimes it is, as with the Derek Chauvin video where almost everyone saw something very wrong, even if maybe disagreeing on criminal liability for the now-convicted Chauvin. But there are also situations like the Ma’Khia Bryant situation where even having video from multiple angles both from body cams and security tapes still leave people with differing views of what happened and why. And then there are the situations where the police body camera footage is not forthcoming such as the Andrew Brown shooting. Now after days of delay and controversy, authorities only showed the family a 20-second redacted clip of footage that is further fueling controversy.

Technology like police body cameras is not accountability in and of itself. Police body cameras are just a tool to show us what is happening. Accountability is a long, difficult, and labor-intensive process that is far removed from the sterilized buzzword that is easily pounded out on a social media post. As often happens when the mirror is held up, plenty of folks aren’t liking what they see. But the mirror, while not giving you all the answers, doesn’t lie. As the preliminary data here shows, making folks look in the mirror that is police body camera technology is just one step in the process. But it is a step.