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Police Complaints Drop 93 Percent After Deploying Body Cameras (techcrunch.com)
An anonymous reader writes:A study from Cambridge University documents an immense drop in complaints against police officers when their departments began using body cameras. But even more surprising is that the data suggests everyone is on their best behavior whether the cameras are present or not. The data was collected in seven police departments, and represents over 1.4 million hours logged by 1,847 officers in 2014 and 2015; the researchers published their data last week in the journal Criminal Justice and Behavior. Officers were randomly assigned to wear or not wear cameras week by week (about half would be wearing them any given week), and had to keep them on during all encounters. The authors used complaints against police as a metric because they're easy to measure, an established practice in most police forces and give a good ballpark of the frequency of problematic behavior. 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.
So you don't think that just perhaps the officers wearing cameras were behaving better knowing they were being recorded?
It seems to me that to place all of the blame on one side is rather narrow minded of you.
Warning: Teh poster of this messaeg is lysdexic
- Stupid behavior by the public
- Stupid behavior by the police force
- Stupid and frivolous complaints
- Random appearances of Big Foot
- Slowing down the implementation of police state where all activity is monitored
- Non-compliance with Privacy Laws
Police don't want to be filmed doing dumb shit.
Citizens stop acting like jackasses when they too are being filmed.
Situations don't escalate as frequently.
While I'll grant you that the data can be explained by competing theories, in this case only half the officers had cameras on. That certainly suggests that it's not limited to officer behavior.
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I think you mean "Oh, Science..."
The majority of studies show that accident rates go up, not down, when red-light cameras are put in place. Eliminating red-light cameras is the logical response.
This study shows that complaints go down, not up, when police use body cameras. The logical response would be to continue using body cameras and continue studying the results to verify that the effect isn't temporary or isolated.
Too many folks are treating this problem as though it were binary; it's all the cops fault, or it's all the suspect's faults.
The problem is more nuanced than that. In part it's an ignorant and entitled public who think they can act like little shits and endanger others because of feelings. On the other, you have officers trained in what seem to be brutal methods but are, in fact are designed to minimize harm by controlling the situation. This works out mostly in the public's favor, although they'll never realize it.
You do have a few bad eggs, as with any profession. The untrained, the illsuited or the downright malicious. However, I'd suggest that these folks account for a small percentage of officers.
If it were just the first two factors, the problem could be relatively simply solved. The problem is that politicians get involved, folks who have a vested interest in making sure that the problem never gets solved. Thus, we end up where we are.
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We've put cameras everywhere. People now routinely carry them in their pockets. We have not photographed Bigfoot. We have no video of aliens. The existence of the Loch Ness monster is not a proven fact.
We have hours and hours of video of corrupt cops. We have video of cops shooting unarmed people. We have video of cops beating unarmed people. We have video of people being arrested and phones being smashed simply because cops believed they were being filmed.
Yes, when cops carry cameras, and their activities are recorded, and they know this, and they can not turn them off, their behavior changes. For the better.
Usually it is brutality causing a feedback of intensity. The police man stops a guy, he is tense, that makes the policeman tense, which makes the guy defensive, which make the policeman to be more aggressive, that makes the guy feeling like he will need to fight to protect himself, which causes the policeman to fight back... With this feedback loop someone will cross the line first.
Having the camera, makes the guy less defensive, as he knows if something does happen to him there will be evidence, and the same with the policeman. Which desculates the feedback loop, as it puts a gap in the emotional response, knowing whoever crosses the line first will be the one who loses.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
The behavior already changed radically and virtually overnight. The only matter up for debate is why.
I find it difficult to attribute a preponderance of the change onto the public. The individuals who might have normally filed a complaint would have no inclination to not file a complaint when the officer in question was not wearing a camera.
If the reduction in complaints matched the likely hood that a camera was involved, sure, I'd agree that the numbers track. I find it far more likely that the officers, knowing there's a chance that someone is recording (themselves, their partner, or another unit that shows up) are acting on their best behavior in all cases and thsi have a larger impact on the overall results.
The two factors together are likely what is influencing the outcomes.
Warning: Teh poster of this messaeg is lysdexic
Actually, both of them make sense together, given what you said. Citizens (particularly those likely to misbehave or file complaints) may have heard that officers in their district are wearing cameras, but don't know which cops are wearing them, so they behave as if all cops they encounter are. The cops, OTOH, always know when they are wearing a camera, so such a great drop in complaints makes less sense from their side. Most likely, of course, it's a combination of factors.
"None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
The behavior change stays when off camera for a simple reason: knowledge that data comparison can be used against you.
Officer john wears the camera one week and gets 3 complaints. Next week he doesn't wear the camera and gets 30 complaints. It's safe to infer he behaves like an asshole when off-camera, so, to counter that, he is NOT an asshole even when not wearing the camera.
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
Easy to verify: give randomly fake cameras to policemen where they know it's fake but people could not see it. If you still see the drop, then it's people stopping stupid behavior, if not then it's policemen behaving better.
Sounds great until you have a sensitive case where bystanders saw the cop had a camera but guess what, no footage. Conspiracy theorists will love that one, if you're wearing a camera it better be filming. If it's defective or off it's better that you phsyically remove it.
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While we're basking in the glow of the decrease in complaints against police, let's not lose sight of the fact that the paternalistic hand of body-cam surveillance is simply treating a symptom, not the disease that causes it. If our society's overall psychological health were such that citizens weren't routinely afraid of and/or abusive of police, and police didn't routinely brutalize minor criminals and even innocent citizens, then body cameras wouldn't be necessary. When good behaviour, respect, and mutual tolerance can only be guaranteed when "someone's watching", then we live in an immature and ailing culture. We need to address that problem; police body cameras are a dirty band-aid on a wound that ultimately requires disinfectant, stitches, antibiotics, and time to heal.
'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.
Blacks are shot by police in excess when compared to their % of population, but less than would be expected based on their % of violent criminal population.
Now is where SJWs yell that % of criminal population is a 'racist statistic'.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Alternately: while being polite for the week with the camera on, he realized there is a better way to interact with people, and it gets better results.
I doubt many police like getting tons of complaints, so he was happier when his complaint count went down.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Officer john wears the camera one week and gets 3 complaints. Next week he doesn't wear the camera and gets 30 complaints. It's safe to infer he behaves like an asshole when off-camera, so, to counter that, he is NOT an asshole even when not wearing the camera.
An alternate explanation would be that people don't make as many false complaints when there's video evidence available.
I'm sure there's a fair amount of people out there who also made spurious complaints against the police, and if recorded wouldn't make that complaint as well.
I don't think the bad behaviour leading to complaints is entirely on one side - I'm fairly certain that the cameras cut down on naughty police behaviour and also on false claims by the non-police.
To be honest - there are some pretty strong arguments to wear the camera by "good" cops, in that it serves to protect them from bad people.
..........FULL STOP.
Likely, but complaints dropped even when the officer wasn't wearing a camera: "But even more surprising is that the data suggests everyone is on their best behavior whether the cameras are present or not... Officers were randomly assigned to wear or not wear cameras week by week (about half would be wearing them any given week), and had to keep them on during all encounters."
It is also possible that even though an officer was not wearing a camera, they were on their best behavior for fear that another officer who was wearing a camera might show up to assist and capture their bad behavior.
WTB [sig], PST!!!
Likely, but complaints dropped even when the officer wasn't wearing a camera: "But even more surprising is that the data suggests everyone is on their best behavior whether the cameras are present or not... Officers were randomly assigned to wear or not wear cameras week by week (about half would be wearing them any given week), and had to keep them on during all encounters."
So... how exactly does the average perp (who isn't exactly a cyberpunk hacker-type dude) actually know if there was or wasn't a camera present? Probably wouldn't.
It's also highly likely that once reaching jail, said perp would likely try to lodge a complaint, whereupon the jailer would simply say "you know they're wearing body cameras nowadays, right?" This would cause said perp to drop the complaint, knowing that if it were all recorded, his story would most likely carry little-to-no water.
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Does this really matter? Isn't it good enough that using body cameras results in a 93% drop in complaints? The only people who care why are those sensitive about having their pre-conceived notions invalidated (that police officers are bad, or that certain citizens like to file false complaints).
Why should we conduct an experiment which risks more police abuse or false complaints resulting in possible unjust deaths or unjust suspensions, just so people with a political axe to grind can say "I told you so"?