A year-long study of almost 2000 police officers in UK and US forces shows introduction of wearable cameras led to a 93 per cent drop in complaints made against police by the public. Academics are suggesting the cameras result in behavioural changes that ‘cool down’ potentially volatile encounters.
Body-worn cameras are say the researchers seen as a technological ‘fix’ for what some see as a crisis of police legitimacy. Evidence of effectiveness has, however, been limited in its scope. Now, new results from one of the largest randomised-controlled experiments in the history of criminal justice research, led by the University of Cambridge’s Institute of Criminology, show that the use by officers of body-worn cameras is associated with that 93pc reduction in citizen complaints against police.
Researchers say this may be down to wearable cameras modifying behaviour through an ‘observer effect’: the awareness that encounters are recorded improves both suspect demeanour and police procedural compliance. Essentially, the “digital witness” of the camera encourages cooler heads to prevail.
The experiment, across seven sites during 2014 and early 2015, included police from areas such as the UK Midlands and the Californian coast, and took in 1,429,868 officer hours across 4,264 shifts in jurisdictions that cover a total population of two million citizens. The findings are published in the journal Criminal Justice and Behaviour.
West Midlands
In the West Midlands, the force is rolling out body worn video (BWV) to all 1,261 response officers after a pilot, earlier this year, on Birmingham South and Wolverhampton LPUs. That found the video devices helped secure an increase in charges, early guilty pleas, as well as a reduction in officer complaints, the use of force and the length of case durations. The project lead Chief Supt Chris Todd said: “As well as the clear evidential benefit provided by the cameras, this is very much about providing a tool to support and protect our frontline officers.
“In the past, minor assaults, such as spitting or pushing, have often been very difficult to prove – it was one word against another. Now with the cameras, officers have visual evidence of these types of assault and therefore the full confidence to report and bring these offenders to justice.”
Police Federation view
Che Donald, spokesperson for body worn video for the rank and file body the Police Federation of England and Wales, said the federation was very supportive of officers having access to body worn video. “This is a vital tool for officers that provides a valuable layer of both accountability and transparency. It can assist officers in everyday duties, including gathering evidence. The footage offers an opportunity to show the professionalism, honesty and integrity of officers by offering a glimpse of activity in an open, transparent and accountable way.”
Mr Donald said the study’s results were impressive, and were in line with comments from ranks who said using BWV was particularly useful around frivolous or vexatious complaints.
According to a Welfare Survey done by the Federation earlier this year, 18pc of officers said they have regular access to body worn video. “Sadly, there are a lot of complaints made against police that are not always completely accurate. Our members work hard, coming face to face with difficult people, and BWV can often help to diffuse situations. It is a fantastic tool, but it’s not the overall solution to solving problems with police complaints.”
Researchers
The researchers write that, if levels of complaints offer at least some guide to standards of police conduct – and misconduct – these findings suggest that use of body-worn cameras are a “profound sea change in modern policing”.
Cambridge criminologist and lead author Dr Barak Ariel said: “Cooling down potentially volatile police-public interactions to the point where official grievances against the police have virtually vanished may well lead to the conclusion that the use of body-worn cameras represents a turning point in policing. There can be no doubt that body-worn cameras increase the transparency of frontline policing. Anything that has been recorded can be subsequently reviewed, scrutinised and submitted as evidence.
“Individual officers become more accountable, and modify their behaviour accordingly, while the more disingenuous complaints from the public fall by the wayside once footage is likely to reveal them as frivolous. The cameras create an equilibrium between the account of the officer and the account of the suspect about the same event – increasing accountability on both sides.”
However, Ariel cautions that one innovation, no matter how positive, is unlikely to provide a panacea for a deeply rooted issue such as police legitimacy.
Complaints against police are costly: both financially and in terms of public trust, say researchers. In the US, complaints can be hugely expense – not least through multimillion-dollar lawsuits. In the UK last year, the IPCC reported a continuous rise in complaints across the majority of forces.
Ariel worked with colleagues from the think-tank RAND Europe and six police forces: West Midlands, Cambridgeshire, West Yorkshire, the Police Service of Northern Ireland; and Rialto and Ventura in California, to conduct the vast experiment.
Each trial was managed by a local point of contact, either an officer or civilian staff member – all graduates of the Cambridge University Police Executive Programme.
Every week for a year, the researchers randomly assigned each officer shift as either with cameras (treatment) or without (control), with all officers experiencing both conditions.
Across all seven trial sites during the 12 months preceding the study, a total of 1,539 complaints were lodged against police, amounting to 1.2 complaints per officer. By the end of the experiment, complaints had dropped to 113 for the year across all sites – just 0.08 complaints per officer – making that total reduction of 93pc.
Surprisingly, the difference between the treatment and control groups once the experiment began was not statistically significant; nor was the variations between the different sites.
Yet the before/after difference caused by the overall experimental conditions across all forces was enormous. While only around half the officers were wearing cameras at any one time, complaints against police right across all shifts in all participating forces almost disappeared.
Researchers say this may be an example of “contagious accountability”: with large scale behavioural change – in officers but also perhaps in the public – seeping into almost all interactions, even during camera-less control shifts, once the experiment had introduced camera protocols to participating forces.
A co-author, Dr Alex Sutherland of RAND Europe, said: “It may be that, by repeated exposure to the surveillance of the cameras, officers changed their reactive behaviour on the streets – changes that proved more effective and so stuck. With a complaints reduction of nearly 100% across the board, we find it difficult to consider alternatives to be honest.”
Critically, researchers say these behaviour changes rely on cameras recording entire encounters, and officers issuing an early warning that the camera is on – reminding all parties that the ‘digital witness’ is in play right from the start, and triggering the observer effect. In fact, results from the same experiment, published earlier this year, suggest that police use-of-force and assaults on officers actually increase if a camera is switched on in the middle of an interaction, as this can be taken as an escalation of the situation by both officer and suspect.
Dr Barak Ariel said: “The jolt of issuing a verbal reminder of filming at the start of an encounter nudges everyone to think about their actions more consciously. This might mean that officers begin encounters with more awareness of rules of conduct, and members of the public are less inclined to respond aggressively. We suspect that this is the ‘treatment’ that body-worn cameras provide, and the mechanism behind the dramatic reduction in complaints against police we have observed in our research.”
Drs Barak Ariel and Alex Sutherland will be giving a public talk on this research and the future of policing at the Cambridge Festival of Ideas on Monday, October 17.
Comments
Geoff Barrall, CTO, Nexsan said: “Research from the University of Cambridge has revealed that using body worn video reduces the number of police complaints. The research also showed that over 2000 officers recorded almost 1.5 million hours of police work, which begs further questions of how this data will be stored and retained. Not only will this information need to be accessible, but departments will need to ensure data is safe and secure. Complaints can be made months after an event so ensuring departments have long term access to data is imperative. If this technology is to be rolled out as standard, opting for a cost effective, secure archive solution which can retain this level of data will be critical.”
And Zak Doffman, CEO at product company Digital Barriers said: “We welcome the roll-out of body-worn cameras and their role in dramatically reducing the number of complaints against police officers. However, it should also be noted that the Cambridge University study found that assaults against officers actually increased by 15 per cent when they were wearing a body-worn camera. The current generation of body-worn cameras are useful for allocating liability and modifying public and staff behaviours. However, they do absolutely nothing to improve officer safety or enhance situational awareness. That requires the ability to stream the footage in real time to a nearby colleague or command and control centre. Members of the public can already stream live to the likes of Facebook and Periscope, so why are we equipping law-enforcement with a “black box” that is already outdated?
“We have worked with intelligence, defence and law enforcement to develop a secure video transmission technology that uses 60pc less bandwidth than standard technologies, making the addition of live streaming to a body-worn camera both technically and financially viable for police forces. The technology is called EdgeVis and has been widely deployed in every conceivable remote and hostile location from jungle borders to desert battlefields, as well as across major cities around the world.”
