While body-worn cameras for law enforcement have been pushed as a way to reduce police use-of-force as well as assaults against officers, a new study suggests that the opposite may be true.

 

The largest to date analysis of body camera use by officers in the U.S. and the UK -- published this week in both the European Journal of Criminology and the Journal of Experimental Criminology -- found that the devices actually increased the instances of violence on police.

 

Researchers found that rates of assaults against officers equipped with cameras were 15 percent higher on average compared to when they weren’t wearing the cameras.

 

Study: Body Cameras Increase Assaults Against Officers | Officer.com

One would expect the presence of video to make LEOs less likely to use force but the measured result of there being more violence against LEOs is counterintuitive.

This is only one study and others may produce different findings but this does suggest that the use of body cams needs to be studied and perhaps abandoned if it continues to place Law Enforcement at greater risk of assault.

 

The report doesn't provide a firm conclusion as to why the rate of violence against LEOs increased by 15% when a body cam was present but it did offer some speculative reasons (see below). The most likely explanations, IMO, are a) that the existence of the video provides evidence of the assault and therefore the police officer is more likely to report the incident; or b) the presence of the body cam makes the officer less likely to act with a show of force that would discourage the suspect from acting violently and the suspect is emboldened by the perceived timidity of the LEO.

 

I have no Law Enforcement experience, either myself or from a family member. I am interested to know what others may think, esp those with Law Enforcement background. But to me, it shows that the use of a body cam needs further study and if it places LEO's at greater risk, then the body cam needs to be eliminated. Especially, since the same study showed that the rate of the use of force by LEOs remained unchanged when the body cam was present or not.

 

Taken from pp. 9-10 of the study:

 

First, (yet unevidenced)

is the idea that with an ‘objective’ record of events, officers feel more able (or

compelled) to report instances when they are assaulted. Second, officers may be less

assertive (‘toned down’) because of monitoring, and this could make them more vulnerable

to assault. (Officers sometimes deal with people who would very much like to do

Downloaded from euc.sagepub.com by guest on May 19, 2016

10 European Journal of Criminology

them – and others – harm.) Third, the strongest results for assaults against police came

from the smallest studies – these may be atypical results driven by small sample variation.

Fourth, the role of officer discretion is not clear and we will explore this further in

a subsequent article. Finally, increased assaults against police may also be a corollary of

the decreased use of force in some instances. Whereas police may have taken a tit-for-tat

approach – using force when assaulted as a form of ‘natural justice’ – cameras may

inhibit the reactive use of force and give officers the impetus and/or confidence to report

the incident. The question about the reason for the increased assaults is not something

that can be left to debate and must be scrutinised empirically

Interesting

It's important to read the "discussion" section. You also have "correlation" vs "causality."

 

I'd say the implication that body cameras cause more attacks is potentially specious.

It could just be that attacks on police in general are up.

Didn't read the article, but what are they using as the baseline, when they say that there's an increase in violence against LEO's? Are they using the same department/officers from the year(s) before they had the cameras? Or are they comparing departments against departments? (Basically, the haves vs. the have nots)

It could just be that attacks on police in general are up.

 

I haven't seen any reports to show that to be the case. Police deaths in 2014 were about the same as 2012 when both years were 50% higher than 2013. Deaths dropped in 2015 from what I've read.

 

I don't think assaults show any spiked either.

I haven't seen any reports to show that to be the case. Police deaths in 2014 were about the same as 2012 when both years were 50% higher than 2013. Deaths dropped in 2015 from what I've read.

 

I don't think assaults show any spiked either.

Seems that I read that while deaths didn't increase actual attacks had...but I could be wrong on that.

The conclusions are counterintuitive, which raises an eyebrow. Looking through the study my (and their) takeaway is "this should be researched more."

 

It looks like the way they did it was through an arrangement with eight police departments in the UK and California (I don't know why they lumped both together), treated each officer's shift as a case, arranged to have some shifts require body cameras while other shifts would not use them at all, then they compiled the data for comparison.

 

They found that across 4,915 shifts that there were 196 assaults against officers wearing body cameras and 177 assaults against officers not wearing body cameras and that there were 785 instances of officers using force while wearing body cameras and 761 instances of officers using force while not wearing body cameras. They do some fancy statistics to show the differences are unlikely to be random.

 

So, it's interesting, but without knowing more it's hard to drill down the "why," especially when they point out that previous studies had shown the opposite results. They didn't go into laborious detail on how the study was conducted, but I would be curious to know how they determined which shifts wore the cameras, whether each shift did a run with cameras and one without, and whether the officers knew they were participating in a study or not.

Those conducting the study made a modest claim: this one limited study showed a 15% increase in assaults on officers equipped with a body cam; they don't know why the test showed that LEOs were assualted more when wearing a body cam but they have their theories; and their findings only indicate a need for more extensive study.

 

This will be the first of many studies (let's hope) but it is important because it raised the question of whether video is good for the suspect and/or the LEO. The fact that this first study showed a negative effect for Law Enforcement should raise concern and be a motivating factor to run more comprehensive studies. I think this study should pique the interest of police unions, and families of officers', at the very least.

 

BTW, the study indicated that rates of force used by officers was the same whether one wore a body cam or not. Perhaps Law Enforcement training is effective in establishing patterns of behavior in a "real world" situation.