Police body cameras are coming; here’s a way to make them work

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 26/01/2024 (619 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

On Jan. 18, it was confirmed by Acting Chief Randy Lewis of the Brandon Police Service that police body-worn cameras are expected to arrive in Manitoba’s second largest city sometime in the late summer.

Acting Chief Lewis reported to Brandon City Council that body cameras are “a commonplace tool in policing in North America,” and he is correct. However, just because the devices are commonly used by police does not mean that they are necessarily effective.

Body cameras are being rolled out across police services largely based on beliefs and assumptions about what the technology ought to do, rather than what it does do.

The two most tested outcomes concerning body cameras are police use of force and citizen complaints. The research findings are inconsistent. In some jurisdictions, police body cameras correlate to reductions in police force and civilian complaints. Some research has shown that police force increases in the presence of body cameras, while other research finds that the cameras have no effect on use of force.

There is a widespread belief that body cameras will somehow improve transparency and accountability. However, there is little to no evidence in support of such beliefs as these terms are not typically tested in the scientific research. There also remains no universal consensus over what these terms mean when they are used by police, politicians or community members.

Transparency is characterized by visibility, and body cameras bring much less transparency in a Canadian context than elsewhere, such as in some U.S. jurisdictions.

Privacy regulations in Canada drastically limit the sharing of body-camera footage, which is why Canadians see very little of their own body-camera footage on television news or on sites like YouTube, whereas footage from U.S. jurisdictions is quite plentiful online. Further, when body-camera footage is shared in Canada, it is typically in courtrooms. In such circumstances, video is edited and redacted by police, a process that complicates transparency concerns.

Additionally, Canadians who have been recorded on a police body camera must file a freedom of information request to access their own footage, a process that is subject to lengthy delays, further stifling transparency.

Then there is the matter of accountability.

Accountability concerns are seriously undermined by the very fact that police can decide to switch their body cameras off, sometimes simply based on their discretion. The ability to turn body cameras on or off invalidates accountability claims. How the public can expect to hold police accountable for bad behaviour if they can turn their body cameras off remains unclear.

Police agencies have different guidelines regarding activation and deactivation of cameras.

Vancouver Police Department policy, for instance, allows officers to deactivate their body cameras if they have “a reasonable belief” that recording an interaction could compromise police work. Whereas RCMP regulations dictate that an officer can turn off their cameras when “they determine that safety is no longer a concern and further action no longer benefits the investigation.” In Edmonton, policy stipulates that police can turn off their camera “when the officer determines that continuous recording is no longer serving its intended purposes.”

Any police body camera program should have a clear statement on the consequences for failure to activate a camera when required or for deactivation with intent to conceal police misdeeds.

The consequences for failing to use a body camera properly can sometimes either be vague or less serious than the punishment for the misdeed that might have otherwise been recorded. RCMP officers who fail to turn on their camera “may be subject to internal disciplinary processes.” As another example, consider the consequences for intentional deactivation of a body camera in the largest police department in the U.S., the New York City Police Department (NYPD).

According to NYPD policy, the penalty for officers found to have intentionally or recklessly failed to record an event or having terminated a body camera at an “improper time” ranges from 10 to 30 “penalty days,” or a day’s suspension without pay. Whereas, engaging in excessive force, when captured on body camera, might result in criminal charges, such as it did when NYPD Officer Juan Perez was indicted in 2023 for brutally beating a homeless man unconscious. Surely Officer Perez would have preferred the penalty days.

In other words, negligible consequences, relatively speaking, for failure to record incentivize officers who wish to engage in forms of serious misconduct to just switch their cameras off.

Police body cameras are funded by taxpaying citizens and therefore must, first and foremost, principally work to the benefit of the members of the public.

Brandonites may not be able to do much about the Canadian privacy regulations with respect to transparency concerns, but could help to develop accountability policies that govern the use of body cameras to include serious penalties for improper police use of the devices.

Ensuring officer termination as a minimum consequence for intentionally failing to record an event would be a good place to start.

» Christopher Schneider is Professor of Sociology at Brandon University and author of “Policing and Social Media: Social Control in an Era of New Media” (Lexington Books, 2016).