Pros and cons of Police body-cams

On July 19, 2015, in Cincinnati, Ohio, USA, Samuel DuBose, an unarmed 43-year-old black rapper, got fatally shot by Ray Tensing, a 25-year-old white police officer of the University of Cincinnati, for a moving violation and failure to produce a driving licence. The Body Worn Camera (BWC) on Tensing recorded the incident. Tensing alleged that DuBose on being stopped continued driving his car dragging him. Prosecutors alleged that the footage from Tensing's body cam showed that he was not being dragged, and a grand jury indicted him on charges of murder and voluntary manslaughter. Authorities fired him from the police department. Tensing here was wearing a BWC because a year earlier, Officer Darren Wilson shot and killed an unarmed teenager, Michael Brown, in Ferguson, Missouri. Amid calls for increased police accountability, a prominent reform that took root in the USA was BWCs for officers.

BWCs are small cameras, which are the most often worn on policeman's chest or head. It has a microphone to record audio and a data card or memory to store recorded video footage. Modern police body cameras were first introduced by the UK in 2005.

Body-worn cameras (BWCs) today have become standard and mandatory policing equipment for law enforcement agencies in the UK, Europe, USA and in several countries around the world. In India, police body cameras are being used only in a few cities like Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Chandigarh, Kolkata, etc. mostly by traffic police personnel.

These initiatives, however, are random and not backed by any legislation. In contrast, law enforcement agencies in 45 states in the USA have introduced BWCs with 35 of them having specific legislation covering their use, by spending over $58 million between 2015 and 2017.

BWCs since their introduction have made police accountable, reduced misconduct and exonerated them from false allegations. For instance, in Baltimore, Maryland, USA, the authorities placed a police officer under suspension and two colleagues on leave after their body-worn cameras (BWC's) caught them planting fake evidence at a crime scene. In Texas, the authorities dismissed a police officer and charged him with murder after BWC footage contradicted his initial statement in the shooting of an unarmed youth. In San Diego, CA, USA, the use of body cameras provided the evidence to exonerate police officers falsely accused of misconduct.

BWCs are also being used in military, healthcare, and sports. BWCs in armies may be capable of storing footage or streaming it back to a command center or military outpost.

There is a general belief that the operations carried out at Osama Bin Laden's home by the commandos was live streamed to the White House all the way from Pakistan. A British Court convicted a British Marine Soldier in 2013 for shooting to death an unarmed and injured Afghan insurgent, for acting in a manner contrary to the Geneva Convention. Officers used images and sounds recorded from the helmet of the soldier as evidence in the court to convict the soldier. In 2016, a helmet recovered from a dead fighter revealed contrasting stories about the battle of Kurdish Peshmerga.

On the positive side, body cameras may bring about transparency, make police accountable and reduce police misconduct. Body cameras facilitate more accurate criminal investigations, protection against miscarriage of justice for both public and police officers. Body cameras may not be a quick fix solution to cure policing of its public trust deficit but evidence got from the footage of the BWCs has helped prove or disprove police misconduct. On the negative side, BWCs put police officers under enormous stress as they are under constant video surveillance. The University of Oklahoma Professor of Law Stephen E. Henderson, JD, says that the use of police body cameras can be psychologically damaging to police officers as "nobody does well under constant surveillance." It also puts victims and witnesses under a tremendous risk of being exposed. The cameras besides being expensive are unreliable. Video recorded from police body cameras can help train new and existing officers in how to perform during difficult encounters with the public. The Miami Police Department has been using body cameras for training since 2012.

Body cameras raise privacy concerns as each police officer could become a roving surveillance camera. The possibility of large-scale data collection with such tools in combination with facial recognition technology and other technologies could create ways of tracking people. They could also give rise to algorithms that not only infringe on privacy rights but also introduce ethical bias. Police officers across China would soon wear panoramic-view body cameras that come loaded with facial and gesture recognition technology, allowing them to identify wanted suspects in real time.

People have a tendency to behave differently when they know they are being watched and police are not an exception. Policemen wearing body cameras are less aggressive and not use force unless it is necessary to protect themselves or the public.
They may also be more polite and respectful towards the public when they interact with them. In jurisdictions where the police wore BWCs, the number of incidents where the police resorted to use of force dropped substantially. A study in Rialto, CA, the first US city to trial police body cameras, found an over 50% reduction in the total number of use of force incidents by police officers who wore body cameras; complaints against officers fell from 28 in the year prior to the study to 3 during the year of the trial.

A pilot program in Edmonton, Canada, found that 35% of officers with body-worn cameras observed a decrease in physical aggression by members of the public; and a study on the Isle of Wight, UK, found a 36% decrease in assaults on police when officers were wearing cameras.When police officers wore cameras, researchers found public starting every incident of physical contact rather than police but the reverse became true when the police did not have cameras on them. There is twice the likelihood of use of force by the officers not wearing body cameras. Although early studies overwhelmingly showed positive results, replications have led to mixed findings.

Just as the adoption of body cameras by the police departments has elicited a mixed reaction from the police officers, similarly the research into the use of body cameras by officers is also mixed, since no study has studied citizen views of the technology.  There is no evidence for this conclusion.

Studies show a reduction in citizen complaints of police officers and use-of-force cases by the police, but we are yet to know whether this is because police officers act differently wearing the cameras, or is it because citizens act differently when being filmed, or it is a combination of the two. Videos can mislead too if the cameras get blocked or if the angle is not right. Cameras do not see like a human eye; sometimes cameras video graphing the same incident has thrown different versions. Increasing adoption of BWCs could cripple the data storage because of the enormous amount of data BWCs would generate making storing and handling of data expensive. Besides, fishing out the required footage when needed might feel akin to tracing a needle in a haystack. Knowing that police are in possession of video data, there is the likelihood of police being besieged with requests of public disclosure of incident data available with them. Then there is also the problem of preserving and protecting the data.

Body cameras are helping judges decide in thousands of cases of excessive use of force by police. For instance, in one criminal case in Chicago, the police officers swore under oath they had pulled a suspect over, after he did not use a turn signal.

They also told the judge that during the search of the car they found a pound of marijuana in the back seat of his car. The version testified by the suspect before the judge was different. He swore that he had used the turn signal, and that marijuana was not in his back seat but hidden under the seat of the car. When the judge saw the footage from the body cameras, she found that all the police officers on the scene had lied. Without the video it would have been difficult for the judge to know that the police officers had lied under oath.

Body-worn-video has the potential to improve police legitimacy and enhance democracy. The knowledge that incidents are being recorded creates self-awareness amongst all parties present at the spot. This turns BWCs into a "preventative tool" causing individuals to change their behaviour in response to the third party surveillance by cameras acting as eyes for the legal courts and public opinion in case any illegal behaviour or act takes place. The presence of the police officer with BWC delivers a straightforward message to all present at the spot that they are all being watched, videotaped and hence expected to follow the rules.

Cameras curb the illegitimate force responses of the police subcultures as the police misconduct gets captured by the cameras. It becomes easy to unveil the silence that protects a misconduct as the cameras don't hide the truth.

Policing repeatedly deals with horrific crime scenes, severe injury and death. All of which takes a toll on the police personnel. Police organisations emphasise the physical and mental wellbeing of police personnel but neglect their spiritual wellbeing. Spiritual dimension if highlighted, can provide police personnel with a bedrock of moral belief, that relieves stress and keeps them moral, besides enabling police to see criminals even the most heinous as human beings.

(Dr Jayanth Murali, IPS, is ADGP (law & Order) Tamil Nadu)