Policing
Study Finds
Body Cameras Decrease Police’s Use of Force
A police body camera is seen on an officer
during a news conference on the pilot program involving 60 NYPD officers dubbed
'Big Brother' at the NYPD police academy in the Queens borough of New York,
December 3, 2014.SHANNON STAPLETON/REUTERS
2014 saw intense protests against
excessive police force and heightened tensions between police and communities
across the United States, and debate raged over how the use of police force can
be managed while still allowing officers to do their jobs.
Some see body-worn cameras as a solution,
allowing interactions to be filmed and later be available for review if unfair
treatment or use of force is alleged. But the use of this technology raises a
host of questions, including the impact on privacy rights and police-community
relations.
One study set out to explore the impact of
body worn cameras, and its initial findings were that they do, in fact,
decrease police use of force.
The Journal of Quantitative Criminology recently
published the study, which detailed the first controlled and much-discussed
experiment to ask whether body-worn cameras could reduce the prevalence of
police use-of-force or the number of complaints filed against police.
Conducted by the University of Cambridge’s
Institute of Criminology, the study, based on a 12-month trial in Rialto,
California, found that body-worn cameras reduced the use of force by roughly 50
percent, says Dr. Barak Ariel, the lead author. Complaints against police also
fell 90 percent during the study period compared with the previous year.
“This is a promising tool for police
officers, which is likely to be a game changer not only for the
professionalization of policing, but in terms of police-public relations,” says
Ariel, an assistant professor at the Institute of Criminology at Hebrew
University in Jerusalem and a lecturer in Experimental Criminology at the
University of Cambridge in England.
The use of force by police officers has
come under intense scrutiny this year. The police shooting of unarmed black
teenager Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo. and the death of Eric Garner following
a police chokehold in Staten Island over the summer sparked protests and unrest
in communities across the country. These were compounded when a grand jury in
each case declined to indict the officers involved. In Garner’s case, the
decision came despite the fact that a bystander had captured the incident on a
cell phone video camera.
Read more at: http://www.newsweek.com/amidst-debate-study-finds-body-cameras-decrease-polices-use-force-295315
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