The impact of Body Worn Cameras on public safety

The impact of Body Worn Cameras on public safety
The police department across the US, and indeed across the globe has, over the decades, been seen as one of the central and most important departments or agencies in the maintenance of law and order internally in the respective nations. They are charged with the sole mandate of ensuring that the wide ranging laws, from laws on petty theft to traffic offence and to more serious crimes like murder and assault, are followed to the letter and tranquility, law and order is maintained. It is due to this enormous and central role of the police in every country that pushes all governments to continually improve the police force in terms of equipping them for their duty. In the USA, the police department in every state has been seen to undergo significant changes in all sectors of their operations as decades go along. These have been seen in terms of their protective gear, the weapons they use, the vehicles they deploy in their daily operations, the communication system that the departments use in ensuring effective coordination of their security, rescue and recovery operation, the artificial intelligence employed in solving crimes and more so the process of evidence collection in crime scenes or scenes of crime.
One of those areas that have been considered as a positive step in many ways is the employment of the Body Worn Cameras (BWC) otherwise referred to as Officer Video Camera (OVC) by some quarters. These are specialized camera rigger devices that are worn on the front side of the police officer, attached to the uniform with a clear view same as that of the police officer. They are meant to be on throughout the time that a police officer steps out to go on duty in the field.
Purpose of the research
The BWC is meant to help the police officers in several ways in the process of executing their duties. This paper therefore looks at the various roles that the BWC plays, the advantages and efficiency that this device brings to the police force and the possible challenges that the BWC face as well as the solutions suggested towards ensuring the BWC becomes more efficient and acceptable among more police departments. There will be extensive literature review conducted with the aim of finding out the content concerning these aforementioned aspects surrounding the BWCs.
Perception of BWCs,
The BWCs have been receive in various parts of the country with varying perception and differing levels of acceptance. They have also been criticized and faulted in equal measure. However, the police departments that have fully employed this technology have always conducted a pilot test of them then rolled it out in full backed by data and facts. Most police departments and police officers therein have embraced the idea. Apart from ensuring that there is efficient public safety, the BWC have been proven to increase the safety of the police officers too since the possible violent or ill intentioned member of the public will likely think twice before attacking a police officer wearing a BWC knowing that the evidence was being recorded. There are the proponents of the BWCs who opine that there are various benefits of the devices including increased transparency and accountability, reductions in officer use of force, citizen complaints, and crime, officer and citizen compliance, enhanced police legitimacy, better evidence collection and documentation, training benefits, and assistance in court processes (Halac Y, 2016). On the other hand, there are that who have counterclaims to the effect that the devices intrude into privacy, has issues to do with health, excessive costs, and the possibility of police occupational culture thwarting implementation benefits. These shall be explored herein as follows;
Uses and importance of the body worn cameras
In the process of their work, the police face various challenges and stress that can be made more manageable through the use of the BWCs. These include and are not limited to the following;
Evidence gathering
The video footage has over the years become an admissible form of evidence in many states and this has been seen from the use of various dash camera footages to conclusively solve several traffic and even serious criminal offences. According to Headley A.M, Guerette R.T & Shariati A., (2017: Pp 103) the quality of evidence that the BWC collect is way higher and more reliable in executing proceedings that from personal cameras. Further, the police can use the footages collected to see where there are training gaps, use them for complain follow-ups.the police can also use the footages for report writing, preparing for court, in disciplinary matters as well as training purposes. Indeed, in the Mesa and Rialto case studies as reported by Young J.T & Ready J.T (2015) the accessibility of video evidence helped in the quick and conclusive resolution of several cases, there was more scrutiny of the criminal procedure and policy violations as compared to instances where there was no video evidence. Once the data is captured through the video mode, it needs to be tagged, indexed and stored and managed in a manner that it is readily available for any possible court use. The video should not be edited, not tampered with and not illegally copied.
Police job performance
The BWC have long considered a companion of the police officer whenever they are on patrol. The human psychology is such that on supervision they tend to have higher levels of accountability than when they are not supervised. The continuous collection of video footage acts as a supervision to the quality of work that the police officer does, particularly how they handle suspects and evidence from scenes of crime. In a report by Jennings W.G., Lynch M.D & Fridell L.A, (2015: Pp483-484) it is evident that the performance of police officers when they have the BWC is significantly different from when they do not have the cameras on. In this report, the group that belonged to the intervention arm and had BWC over a given period of time reported much lesser incidences of external complaints, lower response to resistance. Indeed, within the same report (Pp484) three out of four officers who were in the intervention arm and her kitted with BWC agreed that the cameras need to be introduced as a daily user in the agency, and another one of these four agreed that they changed their behavior within the community when wearing the cameras. The BWCs have also been seen to greatly improve the evidence collection process of the officers, their collection of events and further minimized the errors they made while making their reports. Generally the BWCs can be taken to significantly improve the professional performance of the police officers, as well as creating an environment that makes the citizens to approach the work of the police officer with more caution and professionalism.
Citizen complaints
This is yet another variable that would easily indicate the effectiveness of the BWC in enhancing the safety of the public. The police officers wearing the cameras would capture the events as they happen in the presence of the officer. In this manner, there would be a template from where confirmations and verification of the citizen complains can be made. This will be a proper and objective way protecting both the police officer and the citizen from undue victimization. White M.D, Gaub J.E and Natalie T. (2017: Pp 9) indicate that when the police officers switched on their BWC at the beginning of the Citizen-officer encounter and informed the citizen of the BWC then the events of violent confrontation reduced significantly and also the citizen complains went down significantly. The BWCs in this case are seen to significantly contribute to lowering of violent encounters between the police and citizens, an indication that the BWCs should be adopted more in the daily operations of the police officers. They are seen to have the civilizing effect whereby the camera causes better behavior in both the citizen and the police officers.
Use-of-force
This the central motivation that most agencies use to facilitate their police with BWCs. It has been the hope of most police departments across the USA to reduce the use of force among their members of staff, make the police departments more friendly to citizens and uphold the rights of the suspects as much as is practicable. In most incidences of police officer shooting, there is clamed us of excessive force, and in almost all complaints from citizens forwarded to the police departments, there is the accusation of the police having used excessive force. It is always hoped that the use of the BWCs will streamline the work of the police officers and significantly reduce the incidences of use of excessive force. In the events that the use of force would be inevitable, then the cameras would capture sufficient details that would occasion or justify the use of force as the officer might have used. From the study carried out by Ariel B., Farrar W.A & Sutherland A. (2015), they concluded, from data collected among the member of Rialto police who participated in the research, that the police body worn cameras reduced the prevalence of the use-of-force by the police as well as the incidences of citizen complaints against the police.
Precautions on the use of BWCs
While it is a step forward in ensuring the efficiency of the police in maintaining law and order, there are various precautions and care to be observed in the use of the BWCs. It is important for the police officer to understand that in the use of these system, almost all conversations and interactions will be recorded and could be used for evidentiary purposes in the court of law. The authorities however need to be aware and cautious that these images captured can be edited, unfortunately, ending up giving just part of the story. Precaution needs to be taken to ensure that the BWC play the neutral part of telling the entire story. Before any police agency or department adopts the BWCs, there is need for them to understand the deployment life cycle of the of the BWCs, the hidden costs, the need storage specifications, the best practices as well as the standard operating procedures. These will help particularly when it comes to the legal utility of the footages from the BWCs in court.
Even in the beauty of its application among many police departments, the BWCs have disadvantages that the police departments have to deal with or be ready to deal with over the period they will be using the technology. The cost of purchasing and running or maintenance of the equipment is often high. There is also the cost of storage of the footages and processing them for use in cases that may require they be produced. The other aspect is the technical aspect of using the BWCs which include
Storage, required equipment, hardware and software support; subscription of the application services, maintenance, licensing, security, archiving, and disaster recovery just to name a few. There is also the legal aspect which includes catering for the individual privacy and use of the footages there after.
Generally, the BWC system was and still remains to be a great leap forward for the law enforcement agencies. It helps make the work of the police easier and more convenient, the processing of court evidence more reliable and fast and the safety of the individual police officers and the citizens more assured than in areas where the BWCs are yet to be embraced.
References
Ariel B., Farrar W.A & Sutherland A. (2015). The Effect of Police Body-Worn Cameras on Use
of Force and Citizens’ Complaints Against the Police: A Randomized Controlled Trial. Quaint Criminol. Springer Science & Business Media. New York.
Halac Y, (2016). Body Worn Video: Looking Beyong the Device. Security Technology Executive.
Headley A.M, Guerette R.T & Shariati A., (2017). A field experiment of the impact of body-worn cameras (BWCs) on police officer behavior and perceptions. Journal of Criminal Justice 53. Elsvier.
Jennings W.G., Lynch M.D & Fridell L.A,(2015). Evaluating the impact of police officer body-worn cameras (BWCs) on response-to-resistance and serious external complaints: Evidence from the Orlando police department (OPD) experience utilizing a randomized controlled experiment. Journal of Criminal Justice 43.
Young J.T & Ready J.T (2015). The impact of on-officer video cameras on police–citizen
contacts: findings from a controlled experiment in Mesa, AZ. Journal Exp Criminol Springer Sciences and Business Media. Dordrecth
White M.D, Gaub J.E and Natalie T. (2017). Exploring the Potential for Body-Worn Cameras to Reduce Violence in Police–Citizen Encounters. Retrieved April 21, 2018 from https://www.bja.gov/bwc/pdfs/2017-Policing-Spokane-Force-and-Complaints.pdf