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Body Camera Study Shows No Effect On Police Use of Force Or Citizen Complaints (npr.org)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from NPR: Having police officers wear little cameras seems to have no discernible impact on citizen complaints or officers' use of force, at least in the nation's capital. That's the conclusion of a study performed as Washington, D.C., rolled out its huge camera program. The city has one of the largest forces in the country, with some 2,600 officers now wearing cameras on their collars or shirts. In the wake of high-profile shootings, many police departments have been rapidly adopting body-worn cameras, despite a dearth of solid research on how the technology can change policing. "We need science, rather than our speculations about it, to try to answer and understand what impacts the cameras are having," says David Yokum, director of the Lab @ DC. His group worked with local police officials to make sure that cameras were handed out in a way that let the researchers carefully compare officers who were randomly assigned to get cameras with those who were not. The study ran from June 2015 to last December. It's to be expected that these cameras might have little impact on the behavior of police officers in Washington, D.C., he says, because this particular force went through about a decade of federal oversight to help improve the department.
It's to be expected that these cameras might have little impact on the behavior of police officers in Washington, D.C., he says, because this particular force went through about a decade of federal oversight to help improve the department.
I don't think this is the real cause. What happens is that people get used to cameras, just like celebrities or people on reality TV shows forget to keep a poker face after a while because the cameras are always there.
lucm, indeed.
Because most district attorneys are too chickenshit to bring charges against a cop. If a DA does bring charges all the cops turn into instant crybabies and threaten to stop doing their jobs. Also notice how the charges are rarely direct, mostly its a grand jury who decides and the DA can influence how its run. Then you have the police unions.
Ever read about how Jeffrey Dahmer was almost caught? A naked and intoxicated 14 year old boy ran out of Dahmer's apartment and the police were called. All the black neighbors said the boy was underage and didn't belong there. The cops didn't listen and gave the boy back to Dahmer to be murdered. Google his name John Balcerzak.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
Because police officers will happily turn off the cameras whenever they know they'll get in situations where they'll look bad. And given that there are no consequences for doing so, this will continue to be the status quo.
Crime Privacy Police Complaints Drop 93 Percent After Deploying Body Cameras https://yro.slashdot.org/story...
Fuck you. Privatized police would be incentivized to do whatever maximized profit, which is likely increased incarceration when the prison system is privatized but publicly funded. Privatize the funding of prisons then maybe.
The point, as I understood it, is that we have footage that shows what really happened, as opposed to when cops lie about the mortal danger of a black person running away from them,
Those who do not learn from commit history are doomed to regress it.
"We're hoping to run another study, this time with the cameras turned on."
Could be both are right, thanks to this gem from the article you just posted:
"Against all expectations, there was no significant difference in complaints between officers wearing cameras that week and those going without."
Yep, that quote came straight out of the article (and, in fact, the summary) that claimed the 93 percent drop.
The difference in claims is subtle, yet significant. The 93 percent drop is a before and after comparison. The "no difference" is a with and without comparison. Put simply, once the cameras were rolled out, ALL officers started behaving better, whether they were wearing cameras or not. So there was a huge drop from before, but no difference between officers during.
The more recent publication does not make it clear whether they are comparing before-and-after or with-and-without. Though the wording definitely suggests they may just be comparing with-and-without.
Furthermore, there is this statement "because this particular force went through about a decade of federal oversight to help improve the department." So the officers were already in the spotlight before the cameras were rolled out, receiving oversight that would, presumably, be keeping them on their best behavior. If that oversight was effective, we would expect a drop in complaints when that oversight began, and no drop in complaints when the cameras were rolled out (since everyone just stayed on their best behavior).
To be useful, they need to do a study where police misconduct is rampant.
Like St. Louis, or Baltimore.
At least the mayor of Cleveland had the guts to fire the cop caught on video.
NPR's studied a topic which needs some study - "What are the affects of body cameras?" Then it presumes the correct question is, "Does this affect police behavior?" Of course, that question in the end does not matter. What matters is whether citizens unjustly treated by police offered a better final outcome for police brutality cases and whether police officers unjustly accused by citizens with whom they interacted also provided a better final outcome in their cases. It's a shame NPR didn't seem to ask THAT question. (Or the person posting here didn't suppressed this portion of the question...)
{^_^}
To be useful, they need to do a study where police misconduct is rampant.
No, they just need a study where they can prove that all footage was recorded and processed. Can they turn off cameras?
What was the percentage of damaged recording (audio or video)?
Chicago Police Hid Mics, Destroyed Dashcams To Block Audio, Records Show
The conclusion was that it did not reduce complaints. That's different than reducing unreported abuse. It's possible that these cameras did in fact reduce real and actual police abuse when the victims did not report the crime.
I'll hear stories of police beating people after they've been cuffed. It will go something like an accused child abuser will be cuffed and then "trip" down the stairs on the way to the police cruiser. How do you catch that? Even if on camera it can be difficult to tell if it's really a misstep on the staircase, police pushing the accused, or the accused trying to get the police in trouble by intentionally falling down the stairs.
Even though the study concluded no change in officer behavior the DC police intend to keep the cameras. It must be that they see value in the cameras outside of the potential to reduce police abuse.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
When this country was founded there were only private 'police' forces. You could hire a night watchmen, or a locality might pay for one. It's one of the reasons for our adversarial justice system: the idea is not that the government was tracking down evildoers, but that you personally would go to a magistrate with sworn evidence, obtain a warrant, and if necessary obtain the bunch of thugs necessary to arrest the person who wronged you (dueling was also an accepted alternative). It does have a certain libertarian appeal to it, but as law enforcement is a service which is required to be universal, [1] privatizing it amounts to a private tax, and [2] it's less efficient. Police forces were introduced originally (in London, by one Robert Peel, from whence they derived the nickname 'bobbies') as a cost-saving measure.
Anyone wishing to return to the days of private police is an idiot, an anarchist, or more frequently both.
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
It's a shit explanation in the first place, having read their theory data they've ignored the methods of policing and criminology beliefs that were long-held. The police officers weren't straightened out by the feds, it's a shift in policing as old police officers retire and newer policing methods come into play. The US is around 20 years behind community oriented policing compared to other western countries. COP is based on "ground level" officers doing what needs to be done without oversight of someone higher up the chain. Rather then "down on high" telling the ground level how to deal with a problem.
ex: You have a gang problem and a drug problem. The old method is to crack down on both, arrest everybody especially pushers. Fuck everyone, they're all going to jail. COP would pick the pushers and the people without jobs out, make them informants, get the people higher up the chain and break the gang. Officers would also create and push opportunities for the low level people into actual jobs instead of crime, whether it be getting them to build their own businesses and gentrifying the area, or helping them pass under the bar for military service.
Om, nomnomnom...
That's what I don't get about this conspiracy theory of a private police and prison industry putting people in prison to make money. Everyone in prison must have a trial, often before a jury. If people want to see this system short circuited then demand everyone be put before a jury. Even if there is a claim of a judge being paid off then the jury should stop this short.
I have a couple of questions for you.
1. Which country has the largest proportion of private prisons?
2. Which country puts most more of its citizens in prison than any other country?
If your answer is "USA" then congratulations you win. You are about 7 times as likely to be thrown in gaol in the land of the free than in China.
There are many wonderful things about America (like e.g. NM) but your justice system isn't one of them. And until you collectively stop believing you're the best at everything and look at the cold hard facts it will not improve.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
I have to wonder about anything from a government agency looking after another government agency. I do believe that we need government agencies keeping an eye on other government agencies, but I won't place too much trust in such reports without something backing it up. What we have is an agency created by the mayor to do what they claim to be independent and scientific observations on other city agencies. Just how much corruption, abuse, fraud, and so forth is such an agency willing to find? If they find something wrong then the mayor looks bad, and I'm pretty sure these people have an innate tendency to not bite the hand that feeds them.
So they claim to do a scientific and statistical analysis of the data they collect. Well, statistics can tell you anything if tortured enough. So they discovered no decrease in complaints of misconduct against the police after body cameras were deployed. There's so many things that can be veiled in this conclusion. Perhaps a lot of police misconduct simply went unreported. Were the cameras always on when they should have been? Was there any punishment of officers based on the footage from these cameras?
If the city of DC wants to keep crime down then I'd like to see them do a study on their weapons laws. They had what was an effective ban on the ownership of firearms struck down a decade ago, and the ban on issuing concealed carry licenses struck down in the courts fairly recently. The DC government seems to think that keeping firearms from the city was an effective crime control method. Did they do a study on that? I suspect that they did but they didn't like the results so they kept it to themselves.
I'll have some faith in this government department actually doing their job of keeping the government in check when they release a report that is critical of how the government is performing.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
People seem to ignore the fact that a decade of oversight actually creates an organizational culture where doing shit that makes the whole force look bad isn't tolerated.
In cities where oversight is lax, you end up with an organizational culture that works to sweep things under the rug, stonewall journalists trying to find information about incidents, etc. The community stops trusting the police force to protect them because it isn't.
Threads like this are why I read comments first, article second. I come here because there is always a good chance someone has already debunked or analyzed the article before me. Good job, thanks.
would resolve most cases of police brutality almost instantly.
Unfortunately it is usually resolved in favor of the police. When evidence goes missing, it is treated as missing, no matter how questionable the circumstances. Take this case for example, when a Baltimore police officer allegedly raped a woman, the condom vanished from the evidence locker, and the prosecutors moved to continue the case without the DNA evidence. This stuff is scary!
I brought up china as a stark example: a notoriously repressive regime has one seventh the incarceration rate. You're not free if you're in prison and an awful lot of you are.
You think I can snap my fingers and fix the problem? That's assuming that this is s problem. Maybe those people belong there.
Of course not, but until you and others like you admit there is a problem, it'll never be fixed. It's interesting though that you still entertain American exceptionalism to such a degree. If indeed they all deserve to be there, then that makes the average American much more crooked than the average, well, anyone else.
I've lived in America, and that's bull.
It's funny that you think those things will fix stuff though (well apart from drug law reform, that's sorely needed).
You're not going to see much digging for coal or nuclear because there are much cheaper alternatives. Natural gas fracking more than anything else has done in coal. Nuclear in the current climate, especially in the USA where there are abundant renewable resources is also more expensive than the alternatives.
Gun laws won't help either. You have some of the most permissive gun laws in the world and the highest incarceration rate, so there's no evidence that making them even more permissive will lower the rate.
And the wall, lol that's just funny.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
If the cameras show no difference in the number of complaints against police even when there are now video records of what happened, this could mean that the police were not doing anything wrong before, and the cameras are just proving that. Would that be so surprising? The police have undergone endless training programs and public scrutiny for accusations of overly-violent behavior for many years now. Maybe their accusers are just not telling the truth.
Or perhaps there was nothing broken with police procedures and the whole thing was overblown. Now they have video evidence to back it up.
Speaking of Robert Peel, his principles of policing by consent are pretty damned enlightened and we could really benefit from paying attention to them today.
If you want a vision of the future, imagine a youtube comments section scrolling - forever.