Research Question: What is the appropriate use of body worn cameras by police and other law enforcement personnel in the United States?
Body Worn Cameras-Issues, Importance and Correct Practices
Body worn cameras are most recent in surveillance technology and have been developed with the objective of enforcing better order and security in society and public places. The companies who manufacture the device include names of conglomerates like Panasonic Vievu, Taser International, Watch Guard and Wolfcom Enterprise. Body worn cameras can be worn on the body and can be used to capture interactions with the public in audio and video form in a more detailed and one to one form.
The Need for Surveillance Technology and Body Worn Cameras
Incidences of terrorism, mass killings, shoot outs can raise severe questions on public and social security. The community depends on the police to provide them security in communities and social places. The common public is always on the edge while on the move. The world outside homes has thieves, snatchers, killers, terrorists and anti social elements who can harm people and community. The anti social elements can mix in the crowd and nabbing them is a difficult task as without evidence it is not possible to detain any suspect for a committed crime.
Public Demand for Unbiased Security Measures
The US public has been rallying for increase in security measures more so since the time of twin tower blast by terrorists. People have also raised concerns and issues of misuse of authority by police to deal with whom they might suspect. On the basis of suspicion police has been known to take the law into their own hands. Several incidents of unaccountable behavior by police have been reported in the recent past. One such incident was the shooting of Michael Brown, a black teenaged boy of eighteen by white police officer Ferguson Missouri in the absence of clear evidence of guilt (L.Buchanan et al, 2015). Such incidents have enraged the public and immense public pressure was created in favor of police wearing body cameras for collecting better evidence and refraining from taking the law into their own hands. The Barrack Obama government came under public pressure to increase the budget for body worn cameras for the police. As a result of the rally the then president of USA announced $ 263 million for purchase of BWCs and training of officers on how to use the device (Justice Sink, 2014). It is for this reason that proponents of surveillance technology support the use of body worn cameras by police to prevent the police from adopting inhuman and brutal techniques just to clear suspicion as well as to equip them with an enhanced tool for collecting evidence.
As per IACP, National Law Enforcement Police Center, Virginia USA , “Recordings made at crime and incident scenes are a tangible benefit of BWCs and can provide investigators, prosecutors and juries with far more detailed, accurate and compelling evidence”(IACP, 2014).
According to study conducted by Barak Ariel and et al Citizens complaints against police dropped with a ‘contagious effect’ upon the adoption of body worn camera in the test region (Barak Ariel et al) .
Body Worn Cameras as Complements to Surveillance Devices
According to Mathew Wills et al, CCTV cameras is not enough a deterrent for crime doers to abstain from crime (Mathew Wills et al, 2017). Committers of crime may find means to evade the CCTV by hiding their faces or through some disguise. Crime doers may evade places where CCTV are installed and start committing crimes in places where there are no surveillance technologies installed. More over installing CCTV at all public places can pose difficulties or may not be possible at all.
Body worn cameras can be worn on body of officers in plain clothes or in uniform or can even be placed on a table or desk. Should investigations require a one to one investigation then body worn cameras can be put on during the investigation, the audio video data obtained from the body worn cameras of officers incharge of the case can prove to be of substantial aid to nail down the offender or to validate the actions of the officer incharge towards a third person or suspect during the interrogation or investigation.
Body worn cameras and reporting ease
Body worn cameras are digital devices and their data can be streamed into smart phones and devices like laptops and notepads. The data of body worn cameras can also be stored on the cloud. Officers who have been issued body worn cameras can stream investigation scene audio visual data through the BWCs from devices as well as the cloud while writing reports. The data from BWCs can serve as concrete evidence in support of claims and findings of the report.
Police Perception and Body Worn Cameras
According to Obasi, body worn cameras need to be adopted by maximum number of policemen and responsible and authorized policemen who wear body worn cameras should guide other policemen to also do the same (Obasi, 2018). Obasi further states that at present only 25 % of sworn in police force support the use of body worn cameras while the rest are reluctant to use them due to several reasons. As per Obassi if these reasons are suitably addressed then maximum number of police staff will agree to use the body worn cameras as a regular part of body uniform. The major reasons that police staff is reluctant to wear body worn cameras mentioned by Obasi include :
How and when to use body worn cameras?
Most police officers may suffer the Ferguson effect. That is they may have fear of using recording devices and as such refrain from performing their assigned duties. There is another issue of how to use the body worn cameras and how often. Noisy sensory output signals may be retrieved from body worn cameras and sense has to be made out of data. When should the body worn cameras be turned on or off?
Supporters of surveillance technology are of the opinion that responsible and authorized policemen should be given the task of surveillance and they should put to use the available surveillance technology to ensure security as far as possible. Police officers should always respect the objective for which they are equipped with surveillance technology and keep the moto of security of the public above all. Police should refrain from using inhuman tactics just on the basis of suspicion.
How to wear body worn cameras?
Another issue concerning the adoption of body worn cameras is regarding ease of use. Most policemen are of the perception that body worn cameras can be cumbersome to handle. Quite contrary to this notion, body worn cameras come in several sizes and can be worn on hats, shirt lapels and sunglasses. Body worn cameras can be worn easily as part of the uniform.
Possible Misuse of Body Worn Cameras
According to Karson Kampee in the absence of a well structured policy regarding use of BWCs there can be possibilities of misuse of body worn cameras by the officers who use them (K. Kampee, 2016). Kampee’s paper discusses the following issues related to misuse of body worn cameras by the police department:
Impingement on Privacy: In the absence of clarity, the use of body worn cameras may be used for capturing scenes in private domains like house or offices. Such recordings may become accessible for all to view through the medium of internet. Police may come to question suspects in their private domains equipped with BWCs and data may be captured and presented in the wrong way and bring individuals without any proven guilt under the public gaze.
Indiscriminate Use: in the absence of guidelines, instructions and training police officers may end up using the BWCs indiscriminately without regard to severity of offence. Thus people stopped for minor infringements of law like breaking traffic rule may suddenly find themselves included among the records of more serious offenders and their data open to public access.
Data Storage Requirements: Un intelligent use of the body worn cameras would create voluminous amounts of data of noisy signals. Storing such data would pose a problem. Officer may hesitate to delete data as s/he may be unsure about future use. Indiscriminate data capturing would require vast data storage capacity requirements.
Financial Concerns: Indiscriminate and non planned usage of BWCs may prove to be a drain of public money without any significant improvement in police capabilities of safeguarding the society against the more dangerous and shrewd crime doers.
Legal Concerns: the law provides protection to citizen against wiretapping. As per the law the consent of all parties is required to record any conversation. Indiscriminate use of BWC by police officer may lead to wire tapping issues and protests if people feel that their rights are being violated by police without any substantial lawful grounds and requirements.
The Present Use of Body Worn Cameras
The issue of body worn cameras has both the brighter as well as the darker side. In such a scenario it is best to consider and learn from past success realized in the use of body worn cameras by the police staff including police staff in other countries.
Body worn cameras first started being put to use in police departments of Europe during the early part of the twenty first century. By 2007, United Kingdom decided to provide all forty two police departments of the country the body camera equipments (NBC News, 2007). The use of the device was centrally controlled by the UK government so as to ensure the usage of the devices in accordance with stipulated policies and guidelines of the government. After gaining six years of experience of police staff usage of body worn cameras, the UK government decided to equip all its police officers with the BWC device (Daily Mail, 2013).
In comparison to the UK the adoption of BWCs by police staff of US was slow (www.bjs.gov, 2015) . As per 2013 estimates only one third of the US police departments were using BWCs and that too not to its full potential but in a very limited way. However a spate of events like shooting of Michael Brown led to public rallies with the public demanding objective handling of cases by the police department. The public pressurized for equipments with superior evidence collection features. As a result of public pressure and government intervention the demand for the use of body worn cameras by the US police force rose exponentially. As per recent estimates US police departments with 50 or more officers would be using BWC equipments by 2018. Yet most departments are still fumbling with the technology and do not have any uniform clear cut policy guidelines regarding the appropriate use of the BWC equipments. Once the policies are put in place, US is expected to show complete adoption of body worn cameras and appropriate extensive use (www.bloomberg.com, 2014).
Conclusion
Police worn body cameras are the new age surveillance devices and being used now almost all over the world in varying capacities. The equipment has been adopted successfully to its full rightful potential in UK and European countries backed by well framed policy guidelines.
Use of body worn cameras by the US police force is now seeing an extensive growth due to public and government demand for the same.
A policy paper needs to be framed by the lawmaking professionals and veterans that would guide the rightful use of the BWC equipment by the police force. Training would also need to be imparted on use of BWCs as per stipulated policy guidelines. Policy makers would have enough base to frame policy guidelines taking into consideration successful adoption in other countries and US experience with the technology in gathering and recording evidence. In this matter the reports of trusted officers who have used BWC with success can be a great source of reference. The policy guidelines would need to adequately address and resolve issues mentioned earlier in this report.
References
Associated Press, Britain Straps Video Cameras to Police Helmets, NBC NEWS (July 13, 2007) [hereinafter Britain Cameras], http://www.nbcnews.com/id/19750278/ns/ world_news-europe/t/britain-straps-video-cameras-police-helmets/#.VcphPyT1KHq
Barak, A et al. “Contagious accountability” A Global Multisite Randomized Controlled Trial on the Effect of Police Body-Worn Cameras on Citizens’ Complaints against the Police. Accessed May 21, 2018 from https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/bitstream/handle/1810/260710/Ariel_et_al-Journal_of_Criminal_Justice_and_Behavior-AM.pdf?sequence=1.
Brian A. Reaves, U.S. Dep’t of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics, local police departments, 2013: equipment and technology 4 (July 2015), http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/lpd13et.pdf [http://perma.cc/FK96-4CZE
Body Worn Cameras (2014). IACP National Law Enforcement Policy Center. Accessed May 21, 2018 from http://www.theiacp.org/model-policy/wp-content/uploads/sites/6/2017/07/BodyWornCamerasPaper.pdf
Jack Doyle, Body Camera on Every PC’s Lapel: Force Equips Officers Because Video Footage Is More Effective in Securing Convictions, DAILY MAIL (Oct. 14, 2013), http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2459991/Police-force-equip-officers-body-wornvideo-cameras.html [http://perma.cc/8WA5-RBBT]
Justin Sink, Obama to Provide Funding for 50,000 Police Body Cameras, HILL (Dec. 1, 2014), http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/225583-obama-to-providefunding-for-50000-police-body-cameras
Joshua Brustein, With Obama’s Support, Police Body Cameras Could Become the New Normal, BLOOMBERG (Dec. 2, 2014), http://www.bloomberg.com/bw/articles/2014- 12-02/obamas-plan-would-almost-double-use-of-police-body-cams [http://perma.cc/8P72- KWHP]
Kampee, K. (2016). Police-Worn Body Cameras: Balancing Privacy and Accountability through State and Police Department Action. Accessed May 21, 2018 from http://www.ohiostatelawjournal.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/Vol.-76_5-1153-1200-Kampfe-Note.pdf.
Larry Buchanan et al., What Happened in Ferguson?, N.Y. TIMES (Aug. 10, 2015), http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/08/13/us/ferguson-missouri-town-under-siege-afterpolice-shooting.html?_r=0 [http://perma.cc/558D-4583].
Obasi, J.E. (2018). Police Officers' Perceptions of Body-Worn Camera Technology. Accessed May 21, 2018 from https://scholarworks.waldenu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=5648"context=dissertations.
Wills, M et al. (2017). Police detainee perspectives on CCTV. Accessed May 21, 2018 from https://aic.gov.au/file/6498/download?token=PS6anct7.
1.
