Police complaints drop over 90% after deploying body cameras

https://techcrunch.com/2016/10/03/police-complaints-drop-93-percent-after-deploying-body-cameras/

by riqbal • 10 years ago

597 311 10 years ago

techcrunch.com

AstralStorm• 10 years ago

It is trite, but oversight certainly curbs abuse of power.

Kiro2• 10 years ago

And false complaints.

flamedoge• 10 years ago

all in all less bull

willvarfar• 10 years ago

A drop in false complaints could be a factor, but the study tentatively weighs the officer behavior the bigger change:

Specifics on how exactly this is happening are unclear. Is the officer less confrontational to begin with, avoiding escalation? Or are suspects and complainants more wary of their conduct? Is it some combination of the two, or are even more factors involved? To determine these things would be a far more complex and subtle piece of research, but the study does suggest that officer behavior is probably the most affected, and that other effects flow from that.

It would be interesting if they could capture how many complaints there are generally, and how many complaints in areas deploying body cameras are dis/proved due to video evidence.

curiousgal• 10 years ago

Though that might be true, the study didn't look into the falsehood of the complaints.

In the year before the study, 1,539 complaints in total were filed against officers; at the end of the body camera experiment, the year had only yielded 113 complaints.

Search for "false" in the published study [0] yields 0 results.

0.http://cjb.sagepub.com/content/early/2016/09/21/009385481666...

whybroke2• 10 years ago

That too would be a good result although given that complaints remained lower after the cameras were removed, it would seem false complaints weren't the problem.

But either way, it seems to work

mSparks• 10 years ago

Having been arrested for intervening in the UK when a police officer was being totally unnecessarily violent to a young lad about 15 years old.

And then filing a complaint to be told I was never arrested.

All I can say is. Not soon enough.

I'd say the main reason for the change in behaviour is it stops the lying scumbags lying.

Hopefully they don't have direct access to the footage so can't doctor it themselves.

eeZah7Ux• 10 years ago

First you create a problem: make citizens scared of both "terrorists" and the police.

Then you sell the solution: cameras on police, light posts, public transportation.

...profit: asymmetric dragnet surveillance. The devices and recordings can be owned and used (and conveniently redacted) only by the authorities.

krapp• 10 years ago

The devices and recordings can be owned and used (and conveniently redacted) only by the authorities.

I see no reason why that has to be the case. There should be a startup whose entire purpose is gathering and posting surveillance on the police - a Wikileaks of law enforcement. Something that can't be altered or redacted by any government.

When Google Glass came out, people were quick to dismiss the fears people had that it represented a paradigm shift in surveillance, because everyone had a smartphone with a camera and microphone already.

We have the ability to turn the surveillance state against itself, So why aren't we? We should already be recording the police at all times and streaming it to the web. Why even give the state a choice in the matter?

icantdrive55• 10 years ago

Police unions will fight cameras. They will do cute, pilot programs in certain neighborhoods to fool us.

I would like to see all police officers be required to have a cam on(at all times)while on shift. It would just be like carrying a gun.

"If you don't want to carry a gun---you just can't be a police officer. No Andy Griffith's on this force. Times have just changed. We carry guns-- we carry cams! If you do well on the test, and pass the psychological; you're hired. Good Luck. We hope to have the best, brightest, and most ethical on board."

It will never happen because police departments are so scattered across the US, and know one is ultimately in charge.

(On at all times. No covers for cams. One the whole time while on shift. Maybe a bathroom break exclusion, but I feel that would abused.)

jomamaxx5• 10 years ago

Many cops welcome the cameras because it's their vindication and get-out-of-jail ticket for people making false claims.

If I were a cop, I'd want one for sure.

JshWright6• 10 years ago

I know a lot of cops, including many that wear body cameras. They are universally in favor of them, for the very reason you mentioned (they all have stories of times they were accused of misconduct, but had video evidence on their side).

ccvannorman2• 10 years ago

"If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear" applies here. I would definitely want a camera if I was an officer, and I definitely don't want a (gov't always-on) camera if I'm a civilian.

VLM• 10 years ago

Infractions follow a power law graph. The general public and especially journalists are fascinated with video coverage of gory shootings. However, 99.9999% of infractions will be of a lesser nature. Given that unions and mgmt are by nature somewhat argumentative, the primary, almost exclusive use of body camera footage will be for selective enforcement against disliked employees who violated the equivalent of changing a TPS report header.

Of course there will be no "bathroom break exclusion" thats about 99.999% of the point of even having it. Officers who are enemies of management will have regulations exhaustively enforced with video evidence to prove they spent 15 seconds longer than the union negotiated bathroom break time period and so on. Video evidence that the custodial broom was leaned up against the wall of the closet in violation of the earthquake protection regulation to hang the broom from the provided wall mounted earthquake proof hanger. Upon trivialities like this, careers will be destroyed. Careers of the "wrong" people, of course, only. For peculiar and probably corrupt or even illegal definition of "wrong".

There are solutions such as requiring a judge to personally review all the footage before releasing it, or adding anti-witch hunt rules as part of union negotiations. Or maybe it just can't be done at the current level of mgmt ability and skill.

My experience of working in secured camera'd facilities is it'll be sold as "protecting us from terrorists" and so forth but mostly it'll be used to discipline people who put their feet on their desk when they lean back and think, or to discipline employees who take too long to have a #2 in the bathroom. But it'll only be used to discipline enemies of mgmt, and handwaved away for the "good workers". Where "good" means anything from they're objectively skilled to merely being white.

bboreham• 10 years ago

This bit is as interesting as the headline:

there was no significant difference in complaints between officers wearing cameras that week and those going without.

pyre• 10 years ago

IIRC, they rotated the cameras between officers, and postulated that wearing the cameras had some sort of lasting affect on the attitude of the officers (even when there were no cameras). That said, all officers knew that they were part of this study and could have just been on their best behaviour.

peteretep• 10 years ago

    > all officers knew that they were part of this study
    > and could have just been on their best behaviour.

I feel like any explanation that isn't this one has the burden of proof

plopilop2• 10 years ago

I'm shooting in the dark, but can this be explained by the fact that people don't know whether the officer has a body camera or not, but won't take the risk? tbh I don't know how big/noticeable they are,.

Chris204810• 10 years ago

Panopticon. All Police should be fitted with a "camera", some can be dummies for budgeting reasons.

Maybe public should do the same?

7Z7• 10 years ago

Don't you think it's more likely that the police involved - who all knew about and experienced wearing the body cams for a portion of their shifts - modified their overall behaviour, than assume that the unrelated public - who very likely don't know that police are trialling the cameras, were told when they were being recorded, and who probably haven't individually had multiple interactions with police before/during the trial (ie. to learn and modify their behaviour, even when they knew they were not being filmed by body cameras) - all managed to modify their behaviour, without conferring or conspiring, in line with the trial time?

perlgeek• 10 years ago

I wonder how much of the effect comes from the cameras and their perception, and how much comes from the oversight that the study itself provides.

And how long it's going to last.

We are all on our best behavior when somebody's, but it typically doesn't last forever. Eventually the effect wears out.

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for it, I'm just skeptical of long term numbers outside of studies. Still, if it reduces complaints and incidents, it'll well be worth it.

fsloth2• 10 years ago

It's a well known effect that just being aware of being in a study modifies peoples behavior.

reitoei• 10 years ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawthorne_effect

Steeeve• 10 years ago

I've seen similar statistics on several occasions over the last decade or so. I was never given the impression that it was a study, moreso that it was a very basic analysis based on the number of complaints filed for a period after body cameras were implemented.

This is the first time I've read something that actually has an aura of being a study. I'm a little leery of only seven departments being looked at, but that's just a pointer that further study needs to be done. The numbers are promising.

frankosaurus• 10 years ago

Good question.

From TFA:

there was no significant difference in complaints between officers wearing cameras that week and those going without

This suggested to me that it was the study, not the cameras, that caused the reduction in complaints.

cm2187• 10 years ago

The thing is when the novelty aspects wears off, people (policemen and citizen) will tend to forget that they are being recorded. A bit like people are outraged that the NSA is recording them naked on skype. But a year later they would be back at it again and wouldn't even think about it.

That's how many documentaries are made. You follow a guy with a small camcorder, the guy knows he is recorded, behaves, but it is impossible to curb his attitude for too long and after a few weeks you start capturing natural reactions, he sort of forgot the camera.

Smart people will do a better job at keeping in mind that they are watched, but the sort of people involved in confrontations with the police, whichever side is at fault, is more often than not not smart.

So would be curious to see the real long term effect.

alemhnan• 10 years ago

The difference with NSA recording naked people is that we are recording also the police behaviour, so it's a two way factor.

Most likely the police is behaving 'better' and without stirring up the need to complain that much.

As often happens on internet, when anonymous you are a kind of different human being then when you have an identity attach to you.

mikeash• 10 years ago

The NSA recording your Skype calls has no tangible consequences. An official police camera recording an officer's misconduct can cause that officer to lose their job or freedom. I don't think they'll forget, and even if they do, the bad ones will get ejected from the force.

heroprotagonist• 10 years ago

I agree, with the caveat that this will only be effective as long as there's some kind of penalty for the camera getting turned off or 'breaking'. This seems to be a recurring theme, wherever they get deployed. One example is the police killing of O’Neal in Chicago in July. The officer involved there had his camera turned off. This might have been an issue with training the officer with the equipment, but it's hard to truly know.

A separate issue is that these body cameras need to be deployed universally or they lose credibility and effectiveness. One example of this is Korryn Gaines' death in Baltimore in August, where there is some question of whether the police were wearing bodycams during a raid after a 7 hour standoff at the woman's home (she was armed). The police wouldn't confirm there were any bodycams present until a photograph was found which showed a bodycam on one of the officers at the door to the woman's apartment at some point during the standoff. The police claimed then that none were present for the raid, and only a few support officers outside were wearing them.

The problem here isn't whether they were or weren't wearing the cameras in that particular incident, or whether there was anything suspect about the police' performance there. The problem is that it is completely _possible_ for the police to cover up events that the bodycams are supposed to provide accountability for by simply refusing to admit that there was a camera in use until someone shows up with a photograph. I don't believe that's what happened in that case, but I do think it's plausible that some police department will eventually do this to avoid public scrutiny during some embarrassing or controversial event.

I'm not really certain how we could make police accountable, in a fair fashion, for instances where the equipment legitimately fails. I think some penalty here should be on the department instead of individual officers, but I'm not sure what that punishment should be. Equipment failure in the field isn't unheard of, but if checks are performed before going on duty and there is regular maintenance, then it should hopefully become a rare occurrence, and even more rare for it to occur during an event where such a record could provide substantial testimony to the police's behavior during some situation. I'm sure the tech isn't completely stable, yet, but solid reliability needs to be one of the highest priorities for any such program.

ctack2• 10 years ago

I want to see these on politicians.

ctack2• 10 years ago

It's been on my mind for awhile. It's a similar situation: people in positions of power and responsibility which can be and are abused.

The political situation is even more important. The billions that go missing in economies due to corruption likely have a greater affect on poverty and crime than police brutality.

paublyrne• 10 years ago

I welcome anything which reduces the sense of police citizens and non-police citizens being on different sides, or in some sort of opposition.

A similar trial in the UK had similar results recently

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/sep/29/police-with-...

andyjohnson0• 10 years ago

That appears to be the same study referenced in the TechCrunch article.

rikkus• 10 years ago

The TechCrunch article reference a study made in the UK but 'global' (it references several sites), though shows a photograph of a police officer wearing a US flag.

inopinatus• 10 years ago

I think that's actually a report of the same trial.

jcrei• 10 years ago

In many cases, the police doesn't care that they are being filmed. There's this new documentary coming out called Do Not Resist, and there was an article on the WSJ about it with the following quote "The most disturbing thing is that it simply doesn’t occur to the sheriff that the footage might be disturbing. He has no problem letting a film crew show this massive contraption built to withstand roadside bombs in a military convoy lumbering through his small town, because the notion that military vehicles aren’t appropriate for domestic policing is foreign to him." https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-watch/wp/2016/09/30/...

hvidgaard• 10 years ago

That is absolutely terrifying to read!

  The striking thing about the footage is, again, the utter mundanity of the raid.
  A family was just violently raided over an unmeasurable amount of pot. A man was
  arrested over that pot. The money he needed for his business was taken from him.
  Yet there’s no shame or embarrassment from the officers. There’s no panic that
  the whole thing was captured on video. That’s when it hits you.  They don’t think
  they’ve made a mistake. This is what they do. The lead officers later tells the
  camera, matter-of-factly, that the raid turned up “a personal use amount of
  marijuana.” Perhaps realizing that he was also on camera back at the police
  station promising a much larger stash of drugs, he adds, “It happens. Drug
  warrants are, you know, 50-50.”

If they raid a home on the pretense that he has a large stash and is selling, fine. But when it turns out to not be true, they better pay for damage - no matter what else they find.

pjc502• 10 years ago

I wondered what the ethnicity of the person raided was, and of course he's black.

That's why there's no shame or embarrassment from the officers. That's why the Black Lives Matter campaign exists: the police have, in this case, done a substantial amount of damage to someone's life but not killed them. And there's not even an acknowledgement of that.

wcummings2• 10 years ago

If they raid a home on the pretense that he has a large stash and is selling, fine

If you ask the police, anyone who owns a scale (which lots of users do, to verify the weight of what they're buying) is a "drug dealer" with intent to distribute.

rhizome2• 10 years ago

In many jurisdictions the police do have to pay for damage during a search/raid. You do have to file a claim, though.

richmarr12• 10 years ago

Not sure what your point is. Are you contradicting the study? Trying to suggest a different explanation for the findings?

DanBC2• 10 years ago

I think police-worn video will reduce the amount of abusive policing.

But I'm making a big assumption there. I'm assuming that the police know that they're being abusive, and don't want the public to know how they're policing.

What happens if the police are in fact proud of what they do? Convinced that it's the right thing?

For one example see how some police seem to go to maximum escalation at the earliest opportunity. They do this in the name of "officer safety", but ignore the increased danger it poses to members of the public.

thomasz• 10 years ago

"Many cases" does not mean that those are a majority. Or even a significant minority.

mtgx• 10 years ago

He's saying that cameras may reduce complaints by 90%, probably because people think that if there was a camera involved and the cop did something wrong, then he would be punished for it, or alternatively if he didn't do anything wrong, then he wouldn't be. Either way, that person probably thinks it's not necessary to file a complaint.

The issue is that for one, the person may be wrong. Cops rarely get punished. And second, the complaints may drop by 90%, but the abuses may not drop by nearly as much. Let's say maybe they drop by only 20%.

So in practice, this could lead to an overall drop in police abuse, but not by nearly enough to cover all the abuses. However, now it seems the vast majority of people won't even complain about most of the abuses, so those abuses will remain hidden/unpunished, unless you expect the police chiefs or some other oversight body to watch all the videos and then decide for themselves when to punish the cops (which should probably happen - or at least have a "police behavior alert system" that notifies the oversight bodies by scanning the videos).

anotheryou• 10 years ago

but based on the videos you could educate them

stef25• 10 years ago

The trailer looks quite spectacular but here's a comment from Roger Ebert that nuances things a bit

"I have to wonder if a calmer, more reflective tone might have benefited the project in the long run. Anyone who already agrees with the movie's arguments likely won't have any problem with its methods, but a larger opportunity to open minds might've been lost somewhere."

jamestnz• 10 years ago

Just a minor side-note: that quote is actually from a review by Matt Zoller Seitz. Roger Ebert has, sadly, been dead for years.

faitswulff• 10 years ago

Besides the misquote, people of color, and especially black folk, are regularly told to "calm down" to "get the message across better." But what happens when an athlete like Colin Kaepernick calmly and quietly takes a knee in protest? The dialogue explodes around his being disrespectful and not about the issues he is actually protesting.

This comic literally illustrates the hypocrisy of reactions to Black Lives Matter protests: https://www.instagram.com/p/BK8vHj4g1yb/

Besides which, responding to someone's call for help on life and death issues with "calm down" is patronizing to the point of inhumanity.

int_19h4• 10 years ago

If you want a calmer, more reflective treatment of the issue, I would recommend Radley Balko's book "Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America's Police Forces".

Although it's pretty hard to discuss it calmly, precisely because once you start digging into it, there's so much stuff that's plainly damning and disgusting. For example, Balko also collected a significant number of quotes from law enforcement in his book; let me share some:

"Why serve an arrest warrant to some crack dealer with a .38? With full armor, the right shit, and training, you can kick ass and have fun."

"The officers with SWAT and dynamic-entry experience interviewed for this book say raids are orders of magnitude more intoxicating than anything else in police work. Ironically, many cops describe them with language usually used to describe the drugs the raids are conducted to confiscate. “Oh, it’s a huge rush,” Franklin says. “Those times when you do have to kick down a door, it’s just a big shot of adrenaline.” Downing agrees. “It’s a rush. And you have to be careful, because the raids themselves can be habit-forming.” Jamie Haase, a former special agent with Immigration and Customs Enforcement who went on multiple narcotics, money laundering, and human trafficking raids, says the thrill of the raid may factor into why narcotics cops just don’t consider less volatile means of serving search warrants. “The thing is, it’s so much safer to wait the suspect out,” he says. “Waiting people out is just so much better. You’ve done your investigation, so you know their routine. So you wait until the guy leaves, and you do a routine"

"One day, with a big smile on my face, I popped in to tell my deputy chief, Ed Davis, that I thought up an acronym for my special new unit. He was still, as we all were, glued to the classic concepts of policing, which discourage the formation of military-type units. But he realized some changes would have to be made. “It’s SWAT,” I said. “Oh, that’s pretty good. What’s it stand for?” “Special Weapons Attack Teams.” Davis blinked at me. “No.” There was no way, he said dismissively, he would ever use the word “attack.” I went out, crestfallen, but a moment later I was back. “Special Weapons and Tactics,” I said. “Okay?” “No problem. That’s fine,” Davis said. And that was how SWAT was born."

jomamaxx5• 10 years ago

While it is odd that a sheriff might lack some self-awareness on this issue, it's not really an issue WRT police cameras.

That the cops have a 'bullet proof vehicle' is not necessarily a problem in and of itself. It's presence does not violate anyone's rights, moreover - there actually may be circumstances in which such gear might be useful that we are not aware of.

For example : a couple of times a year, a group of officers may be sent to 'take down' some very violent and armed people. Imagine if your 'daily job' required to you to face massively armed and violent bad guys. Wouldn't it make sense that your employer provide you with the basic means to protect yourself.

I'm not entirely justifying it, rather pointing out that 'having an armed vehicle' is largely outside the issue of whether or not cops change their behaviour, or whether civilians change their behaviour - when they know there are cameras present.

soVeryTired• 10 years ago

For example : a couple of times a year, a group of officers may be sent to 'take down' some very violent and armed people. Imagine if your 'daily job' required to you to face massively armed and violent bad guys.

Surely there are special forces to deal with that sort of situation? I know there are in the UK.

throwmenow_0139• 10 years ago

I talked to a police officer in Germany and he told me that police abuse happens even if they wear cameras. He said that those who wear cameras simply don't record their colleagues who are hitting people i.e. looking to another direction deliberately. And I'm sure that if you start to punish them based on those body cameras, you'll see that the police officers will give you biased footage.

Although I can imagine that police officers start to change their behaviour because they're watched (there are studies showing positive changes in behaviour due to surveillance), there must also be more education for the police officers in regards to baseline probabilities so that they realize that black and white people aren't different in behaviour, this could help them to realize that their intuition is not profound. I think helping them to understand cognitive biases is a good way to start a shift.

All of this requires that they aren't doing abuses deliberately, though.

NoGravitas3• 10 years ago

Police officers have started putting their car hoods up when they make stops, to block the dash cams.

gerbilly• 10 years ago

And I'm sure that if you start to punish them based on those body cameras, you'll see that the police officers will give you biased footage.

And in a way this may be worse than no footage, because the biased footage may be used to discredit eyewitness accounts of abuse.

knightofmars• 10 years ago

Humans game every system, it is our nature. Awareness of our behaviors is the first step in taking measures to alter those behaviors. A body camera, while it may be subject to the same human gaming in some regards, provides awareness of police interaction that has previously been unavailable. Additionally, identifying those individuals who are willing to game the system provides value as well.

dragonwriter• 10 years ago

there must also be more education for the police officers in regards to baseline probabilities so that they realize that black and white people aren't different in behavior

Black and white people are different in behavior, on average. There are many reasons for this, among them that black and white people (both directly and through their social networks and family histories) have very different experiences of how the police (and public authorities more generally) act toward them going back in an unbroken chain for several centuries.

clouddrover• 10 years ago

An interview with Craig Atkinson, the film-maker:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bl_XHxrd45I

It's around 37 minutes long. There's some interesting discussion on the making of Do Not Resist and the problems with the way police departments are operated and officers are trained.

ablero• 10 years ago

So the police raid a house and only find barely a gram of weed in a book bag. If the police arrested the kid for possession with intent to distribute based on some other minor factor (e.g. two empty plastic bags) then what will happen is the prosecutor will offer a standardized deal to the public defender.

The public defender will say to the defendant, here's the deal - 1 year in jail, 3 years probation where you lose your 4th amendment right and also these drug classes that are costly and burdensome.

The public defender will encourage the defendant to take the deal. "Or you will lose at trial and you will be sentenced to 3 years in jail."

The point is, the police can arrest anyone for anything. And the prosecutor can add charges that are unrelated 6 months after the fact. Anything goes in a plea deal and it is a terrifying and troubling reality.

nashadelic• 10 years ago

That's fine. This will enable a feedback loop where they can be directly be rewarded/punished for right/wrong actions by investigators as need be. Once they see repercussions, they'll care more and use/abuse this accordingly but the result will be a net improvement.

lazyant• 10 years ago

Thought the same thing when I watched a bit of the Cops tv show, if they had no problem with what was being filmed, what would they do without cameras? (off the top of my head: grabbing by the hair and insulting a drunk who was already in a cell, shoot a guy in the back who was walking with a knife)

kriro• 10 years ago

Since this study is from the UK where (at least in London) it feels like there are cameras pretty much everywhere...I wonder if a citizen concerned with police abuse could get a sort of citizens warrant to tap into these feeds to make their case? Or maybe automatically track police with these cameras with some sort of recognition system and have a review board do sample tests on the material in some way? Are those alternatives that are considered (compared to body cameras)? I like the general psychological notion of "adding extra surveillance of citizens creates extra surveillance of the state forces as well". Might even serve to create some sort of "enough surveillance" balance.

How does access to security cameras generally work? You can get access to the material for court cases to defend yourself, right?

vidarh• 10 years ago

In all of the EU, EU data protection law provides for subject access to recordings. Specifically in the UK, the UK Data Protection Act requires that anyone that operates surveillance cameras have procedures in place to process subject access notices.

In other words: You already can get access to them. No warrant needed. There are exceptions, e.g. recordings can be withheld if subject to an ongoing criminal investigation (but in that case, if you're involved, it will be evidence that your defence have a right to get access to).

This is not limited to government operated cameras, but all operators (and private cameras make up the vast majority of cctv in the UK)

DanBC2• 10 years ago

Yes, you can get access of video of yourself.

> I wonder if a citizen concerned with police abuse could get a sort of citizens warrant to tap into these feeds to make their case?

Can a concerned citizen monitor other footage? Under English law probably not.

Chris204810• 10 years ago

Can you give me details?

I live in Ireland, a member of the EU. I once tried to get footage from a privately owned camera overlooking a public ATM. By the time I got a reply, they stated the footage on the HDD had already been wiped and overwritten...

jon-wood• 10 years ago

You can get access to security cameras, but you'll have to go hunting a bit. Some cameras are operated by local government, but the vast majority are run by privately and you'd need to track down each operator and request the relevant material. Depending how long its been they may or may not still have it, and I imagine despite the legal requirement to provide access a lot of people will initially refuse to go trawling through their CCTV archives to find the relevant material.

Brakenshire• 10 years ago

https://www.gov.uk/request-cctv-footage-of-yourself

However, in practice different operators will have different standards, which makes it more complicated:

https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/sep/22/cctv-cameras-...

CCTV in Britain is not all its cracked up to be, on the negative and the positive side. Even if the operator was competent, and there was coverage of the area, I doubt in a conflict with a police officer that you'd get much out of it, most of the time, you'd need the sound, and higher quality footage, to get much of a sense of the situation.

headmelted4• 10 years ago

I'm a little surprised that in the article, and in the comments here, there's such a presumption of guilt on the part of the police.

I understand that this is a controversial topic in the US, probably moreso than elsewhere, and for very important reasons, but is it really impartial for the study, the article, or the comments here to draw the conclusion that police were "better behaved" because they were being filmed?

Maybe the public were better behaved when they being filmed.

Maybe the police were, in some cases, behaving as they normally do but the public were less inclined to raise complaints that may have been spurious as they knew there was evidence of the actual exchange.

I don't doubt that behaviour of individual officers is a factor and was likely affected in a positive way here, but I'm deeply skeptical that a 93% drop in complaints is solely down to bad police officers playing nice for the cameras.

The presumption of innocence needs to be a two-way street, surely?

Aaargh203186• 10 years ago

The presumption of innocence needs to be a two-way street, surely?

No, the police should be held to a higher standard. They are not citizens when they are out on patrol, they are representatives of the government.

IMHO police officers should be presumed guilty until proven innocent.

danieltillett2• 10 years ago

I don't think anyone should be presumed guilty until proven innocent.

BurningFrog5• 10 years ago

There is, in general, no way to prove you're innocent.

pc863• 10 years ago

Unfortunately your opinion runs contrary to basic jurisprudence.

richmarr12• 10 years ago

...there's such a presumption of guilt

There's a long catalogue of evidence that the police have been insitutionally racist (and other issues). Specifically in the UK, but I suspect the US has a similar catalogue of evidence.

Maybe the public...

The conclusion drawn seems like the most realistic explanation. Your alternatives don't seem credible considering the change also occurred when police weren't wearing cameras.

[Edit: "have been" rather than "are" insitutionally racist, evidence is in the past and will hopefully stay that way)

the-dude4• 10 years ago

Do you mean not investigating rape rings because of fear of being called racist?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotherham_child_sexual_exploit...

hueving14• 10 years ago

Provide citations when you state such loaded things (cops are racist). Otherwise things just degrade people into two sides (each group starting and staying on the side they agree with).

headmelted4• 10 years ago

"The conclusion drawn seems like the most realistic explanation."

I'm not sure I agree. I imagine either of us could find evidence of police corruption, institutional racism, or myriad other issues. There are a lot of police in the world.

I'm not excusing racist or crooked police, I'm suggesting that there could be multiple explanations for the drop in complaints.

"Your alternatives don't seem credible considering the change also occurred when police weren't wearing cameras."

And that would seem to indicate that on average, the officer's in question were behaving better, and I expect that's the case. It could also mean that the public was aware of the cameras too, and that word gets around, which is likely in smaller communities.

If I had to guess, I would guess it's the former. But I'm not a police officer, an ombudsman, or a victim of police abuse, so I would be speaking from zero experience.

There's also a long catalogue of evidence that white people as a group have been institutionally racist.

Your own race (just as an example) is none of my business, and obviously I sincerely hope you're not racist (which I very much doubt you are), but in any case I'm in no rush to jump to conclusions about either, which is kind of my point.

Presumption of innocence exists for more reasons than just protecting citizens from the state (although that's an important one). It's because our gut instincts are most unscientific judges of character.

I will say that I'm glad they've found a strategy that seems to have such a strong positive impact on police-public relations, though.

weberc25• 10 years ago

There's a long catalogue of evidence that the police have been insitutionally racist

At best, the evidence paints an unclear picture in the U.S.: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/256079484_No_eviden...

rndgermandude• 10 years ago

Sure, the presumption of innocence is a two-way street, but it does not always work these days for either party.

But to be fair, the article and the original paper discuss all your points as well. There is no "blame everything on the police" attitude there.

And body cameras help with all of those: They can substantiate claims against misbehaving police officers, but they can also prove their innocence. Also, it may very well be that citizens, when aware of the cameras, are less confrontational and ill-behaving towards officers, not just officers on best behavior. And if an officer OR a citizen behaves badly, with body cameras you get instant video proof, which helps the victim no matter if the victim was the citizen OR the police officer.

mhuffman4• 10 years ago

Spoken like a person who has had limited interaction with police officers.

jomamaxx5• 10 years ago

I have had numerous encounter with police and never, ever had a problem, nor witnesses bad behaviour on the part of police.

Conversely - cops, as a normal part of doing their jobs have to deal with drunk, crazy, wild and violent people quite often.

I'm not making a comment about the article, but about the 'presumption of innocence'. I think 'bad cops' are probably an issue of culture within specific policing stations and groups.

jshevek7• 10 years ago

Assuming that the cause of disagreement must be due to the other party's ignorance is a sign of unjustified, arrogant certainty of one's own position.

thaumasiotes• 10 years ago

The presumption of innocence needs to be a two-way street, surely?

Why? Presumption of innocence is not a feature of any normal human relationships; it's a special restriction we place on the way the government relates to us. What is the benefit of extending the presumption back to the government? The police are allowed to take your money, rough you up, or kill you if they choose. We can't do that to them.

jshevek7• 10 years ago

Among decent, rational people the presumption of innocence is a function of their normal human relationships. There is nothing special about assuming someone is innocent until sufficient evidence is presented.

wnoise2• 10 years ago

The presumption of innocence needs to be a two-way street, surely?

The presumption of innocence is a legal standard to partially offset the immense might of the state. The prosecutors should need to do a very good job establishing that you actually did something before they can put you in a cage.

When it's people talking about statistical measures that don't directly disproportionately impact any given person, no, it doesn't.

hueving14• 10 years ago

Did you even read the whole comment you replied to? The op didn't say the statistics were wrong, he/she just pointed out that they could easily be explained by either side of the confrontation behaving better in the presence of a camera. Which one behaves better is not covered by the stats.

solipsism• 10 years ago

I'm deeply skeptical that a 93% drop in complaints is solely down to bad police officers playing nice for the cameras.

This is easy enough to show. And it is the most obvious and natural conclusion. Your skepticism is fine, but I'm confused why you can't understand my lack of it. In my experience cops are trying to get away with anything they can.

The presumption of innocence needs to be a two-way street, surely

Nonsense! Being a police officer is not a right. I don't have a "presumption of innocence" regarding my job. I have to actively prove I'm doing it well. Same goes for cops.

JshWright6• 10 years ago

Maybe the public were better behaved when they being filmed.

This is very much the case. I'm a paramedic, and the police agency in the area got body cameras a few years back. It is extremely common (in my first-hand experience) for folks who have been treated completely respectfully to threaten a complaint. Once it's pointed out the whole incident was on camera, it's amazing how often they drop it right there...

I have very serious concerns about policing in this country. I think they are trained to jump to lethal force far too quickly, and the militarization we have seen over the past decades has led to an 'us vs them' mentality for many officers.

But you're absolutely right that a large chunk of the drop in complaints is almost certainly folks who don't bother pressing an issue once they find out there is video evidence of what happened.

balfirevic2• 10 years ago

That is not at all obvious. There is a large difference in relative power between a citizen and police officer compared to citizen and paramedic. Due to this, I would expect much fewer frivolous complaints against policemen.

Now, I do not mean to write this as a proof that there were no frivolous complaints against police, only that you cannot derive any conclusions from number of such complaints against paramedics.

HaloZero• 10 years ago

Bu then how does the fact that the drop is on officers with cameras and officers who don't have cameras? The spurious complaints would continue on officers who don't wear them.

headmelted4• 10 years ago

EDIT: when they were being filmed.

whack2• 10 years ago

The article explicitly addresses this question and presents very compelling evidence that the video cameras affect police behavior more so than civilian behavior.

Against all expectations, there was no significant difference in complaints between officers wearing cameras that week and those going without.

Strange, right? It seems logical to expect that when the camera was actually present, it would act, as intended, as an impartial witness, cooling heads on both sides of an encounter. But complaints dropped even when officers weren’t using the cameras.

“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,” explained the study’s lead author, Barak Ariel, in a Cambridge news release. “With a complaints reduction of nearly 100 percent across the board, we find it difficult to consider alternatives, to be honest.”

The researchers dub this effect “contagious accountability” — learning to do the right thing even when no one is watching.

microcolonel2• 10 years ago

The problem with this line of reasoning is that it assumes the public even knows how to tell if police officers are wearing body cameras. Even the police themselves don't make the distinction when they are the ones wearing it.

Why would the public make a distinction when even the one person who should know, can't?

ThomPete• 10 years ago

I am pretty sure that with the police there is 100% knowledge about them wearing a camera, I don't believe the same applies for the public.

nerdponx• 10 years ago

My guess was that it was due to fewer people filing frivolous complaints, knowing that there'd be video evidence.

basseq• 10 years ago

Presuming departments track complaint resolution outcomes, we should see the rate of "legitimate" cases go up.

E.g., if 100 cases were filed, 50 frivolous, and the officer in question was sanctioned in 10 cases, that's a 10% rate. If the number of frivolous cases drops to 0, the "sanction" rate should double to 20%.

weberc25• 10 years ago

I share your surprise. I'm disappointed in the comments here; usually this is where I come to find level-headed conversations based on data and evidence. Instead the top comments are all unsupported and political.

jMyles• 10 years ago

The presumption of innocence needs to be a two-way street, surely?

Historically, the presumption of innocence has two legs: one, the Latin "Ei incumbit probatio qui dicit, (the burden of proof is on the one who declares, not on one who denies). This is something like the theory of knowledge rule that "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence."

The other leg, in the western legal tradition, is that the state (and particularly the prosecution) is always the bearer of the burden of truth.

In this sense, it actually makes sense to presume that the police are "guilty," or at least that they must prove that their actions are legal and comport with the boundaries of state power.

So, in the western tradition, it is only those accused by the state of a crime who enjoy the presumption of innocence; people acting on behalf of the state do not.

wmeredith• 10 years ago

I think a lot of that is that there is a huge power imbalance in the interaction. So the presumption of guilt on the officer's part may have something to do with the fact that they are completely in control of the situation from an authoritative standpoint.

Having said that, all of these police body camera studies I've been exposed to say that ALL parties behave better, and every conversation I've had about this acknowledges the same.

angry_octet• 10 years ago

If only all that footage was available... Then we could use opencv to count the number of donuts consumed in real time!

neximo64• 10 years ago

So people try to get back at cops to deal with their anger of being caught for their menial offences..

ComodoHacker• 10 years ago

I wonder whether body cameras on people would have the same effect?

anovikov• 10 years ago

Maybe another explanation is that many complaints are false and people stop complaining when they know they can be proven lying? Just like proliferation of smartphone cameras virtually eradicated any UFO sightings.

Retric• 10 years ago

I think it's cultural, UFO sightings may be just if not more common with people regularly flying drones. People just care less. I have seen plenty of flying things I can't identify, I just never assumed Aliens.

WalterBright2• 10 years ago

I'd wear a body camera simply to protect myself against false accusations.

Overtonwindow• 10 years ago

It is very sad that we've (had to?) militarize our police force in America to such a degree that there's really no going back. I don't fear the police, only an interaction with them. Despite the cameras it seems no one is safe from escalation and death. Even with cameras we will only see the aftermath. Someone will still be dead.

Chris204810• 10 years ago

I'd like to see this for security in general e.g doormen/security/bouncers

ccvannorman2• 10 years ago

Whether or not you agree with police violence, oversight, or power, body cameras are the best way we have right now to document exactly what is going on.

If the courts decide to change how the police interact with the public, it will probably be on the data of thousands or millions of minutes of body camera footage. At that point the court can make a very clear decision: Do we want this to continue? Because with the footage it will be (more) clear exactly what is going on.

jbmorgado2• 10 years ago

It's quite strange that the article immediately jumps to the conclusion that is (only) the police that is behaving better.

Why don't they even pose the possibility that the people being policed, knowing there is a camera, either behave better or at least, knowing there is a camera, don't make false claims about police mistreatment, knowing that the police now has proof about what really happened?

dbwdyhtbaby• 10 years ago

The article explicitly states that the drastic decline report rates were the same in weeks where they weren't wearing the cameras.

nrclark• 10 years ago

Could the decline be explained by the Hawthorne effect? It's been pretty well proven people behave differently when they know they're being studied.

Being subjects in the study could have affected their behavior far more than the presence/lack of cameras.

jbmorgado2• 10 years ago

Exactly and that only reinforces my point.

The policemen would know when they where using the cameras or not and could react accordingly, the people being arrested or having any interaction with the police wouldn't, so they behaved properly in both occasions and/or didn't make false claims about mistreatment by the police.

asciihacker• 10 years ago

It seems that the body cam often "falls off" just before the cops tase, beat the shit out of, or kill someone.

JshWright6• 10 years ago

Do you have any evidence to support the claim that this happens "often". Your use of scare quotes seems to indicate that this is intentional behavior. Can you back up such an accusation?

javiramos2• 10 years ago

There has been extensive research on recording physicians during patient care. The results almost unanimously conclude that recording physicians improves performance, quality, and compliance [1].

[1] http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=1673991

JoeAltmaier3• 10 years ago

Kind of like traffic cameras? If you know you're being watched, you'll conform to the letter of the law, most of the time.

That link is just about hand washing. I'd hoped 'performance, quality and compliance' meant something more, maybe related to patient outcomes. Got anything else?

javiramos2• 10 years ago

Joe, I recommend Unaccountable by Martin Makary. Martin also has extensive list of academic publications relating to the monitoring of physicians as a way to improve patient outcomes.

https://www.amazon.com/Unaccountable-Hospitals-Transparency-...

nyolfen• 10 years ago

A related headline from this morning: Not One New York Police Officer Has a Body Camera

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/04/nyregion/despite-national-...

SCAQTony• 10 years ago

Along with body cameras better training and specialized units to deal with those suspects who are ostensibly mentally ill would save a lot of time, money and lives.

30 UK police subduing a mentally ill man carrying a big knife: https://youtu.be/cX5CPx4RKWw

njharman• 10 years ago

I wonder how many of those "stopped" complaints would have been frivolous or made in hopes of cash settlement. Even if only a few percent, body cameras seem like a no brainer, good for everyone. Except to corrupt people (on both side of badge).

losteverything• 10 years ago

My inner statistics alarm goes off when I read such a high percent ( 90+ ) change. If this were my study I'd really need more data? Etc

austincheney• 10 years ago

  Specifics on how exactly this is happening are unclear.
  Is the officer less confrontational to begin with,
  avoiding escalation? Or are suspects and complainants
  more wary of their conduct? Is it some combination of the
  two, or are even more factors involved? To determine
  these things would be a far more complex and subtle piece
  of research, but the study does suggest that officer
  behavior is probably the most affected, and that other
  effects flow from that.

Clearly the brilliant researchers of Cambridge don't have teenage children. The answer is simple. People in emotional need of attention will act out (and escalate) as necessary so long as there remains feedback (whether positive or negative, healthy or harmful).

I suspect this sort of irrational behavior is most frequently displayed against the police officer, but in some cases can be caused by officers (they are people too). The only distinction between officers and non-officers being frequency of experience dealing with confrontation.

Despite the behavior being completely irrational (often out of control) there remains a fear of accountability. Will video evidence go out to your parents, spouse, coworkers? How embarrassing, right? The magic is that this fear of accountability is immediately present. The irrational behavior has to ramp up, similar to rage, and so is not spontaneous. This indicates the accountability fear is a constant reminder to not embarrass yourself, particularly when there is evidence that will appear on YouTube.

losvedir• 10 years ago

Against all expectations, there was no significant difference in complaints between officers wearing cameras that week and those going without.

Is no one else alarmed by this? Maybe I'm jaded by A/B testing, but if the A doesn't win or lose to the B, then I generally chalk up the effect as exogenous. Could it not be something else - anything else - that changed the number of police complaints from one year to the next?

devindotcom• 10 years ago

They mention this in the paper. The chance of all 7 depts changing their reporting simultaneously is pretty vanishing. Much of the paper is dedicated to understanding the cause of the lack of difference between experimental groups, check it out.

foolinaround• 10 years ago

We really should have body cameras on our politicians.

turc1656• 10 years ago

Oh gee, you mean to tell me the criminals in uniform out there to "serve and protect" us suddenly stop violating our rights when they MIGHT be held accountable? I say "might" because there is still no guarantee since the blue wall of bullshit is quite dense.

93% is an absolutely staggering statistic. No other change to police policy even comes close. And the beauty of it is that in addition to hopefully clamping down on bad cops, it also has the delightful use of protecting and exonerating the good ones who receive knowingly false complaints from people who are just being spiteful against cops that arrested them.

93% is a number that cannot be ignored. This, alone, is reason enough to justify the cost to get every single cop in this country suited up with a camera. It keeps everyone in check and acts as expert testimony that produces (in most cases) crystal clear memory of events for everyone to examine.

As a white male growing up in a very diverse area with a fairly high percentage of minorities, I never really believed those who claimed seemingly unbelievable stories of police mistreatment and excessive force. I had never personally experienced it, nor even bore witness to it at any time. I thought they were all lying through their teeth to stick to a claim of innocence and how the police steamrolled them. Now, looking back, I am left wondering how many of those stories were true. And I grew up in the 90's! I can't even imagine what really went on in the 60's and 70's.

Far too often we see videos detailing out horrible acts by law enforcement. Acts that if anyone without a badge were commit, EVEN IN SELF-DEFENSE, would in many cases land us in jail for a very, very long time. I wonder how many people I grew up with have criminal records today simply because they weren't the correct skin color.

Police complaints drop over 90% after deploying body cameras

Related Stories