President Barack Obama is calling for $75 million in federal spending to ensure 50,000 more police officers are equipped with body cameras. This decision, announced at the White House on December 1st, comes in the wake of protests across the country after the decision not to indict the police officer Darren Wilson, who killed an unarmed teenager named Michael Brown.
President Obama is proposing a $263 million package over three years to increase the use of body cameras by police, expand law enforcement training, and enable other law enforcement reforms. However, the President does not plan on decreasing the federal programs which supply local police forces with military-grade weapons, reports the Associated Press.
The failure to indict the New York police officer whose chokehold killed Eric Garner and which was caught on video tape two days after President Obama’s announcement has led critics to question the effectiveness body cameras would potentially have.
“In the Garner case, the cellphone video provided a far superior view of what happened than a body camera would have, and still police suffered no criminal consequences,” Justin Hansford from the Washington Post writes “It’s not the first time this has happened”.
In September, a grand jury failed to indict the police officers who killed John Crawford, a man who was shot in Wal-Mart for picking a rifle from the shelf. In this case, surveillance footage was available which showed Crawford holding the gun by his side while talking on a cell phone. Earlier this year, a man stopped breathing in Oklahoma after police officers forced him to the ground in a movie theater parking lot after refusing to show his ID. His wife filmed the incident on her cellphone, but yet, the officers’ actions were ruled as justified.
It is important to note, however, that police officers are held to a different standards than civilians are under the law. The Supreme Court decided in Graham v Connor in 1989 “that a police officer’s use of force should be analyzed under the Fourth Amendment’s ‘objective reasonableness’ standard, rather than under a substantive due process standard,” under which the average American’s actions would be gauged.
Further, juries are asked to consider whether an officer’s actions were ‘objectively reasonable’ in light of the facts and circumstances confronting them, without regard to their underlying intent or motivation. It also demands juries consider that a ‘reasonable officer’ is ‘forced to make split-second decisions about the amount of force necessary in a particular situation. Also, advocates of body cameras argue that despite how courts may choose to interpret footage captured by police body cameras, the access to more evidence is always an advantage when attempting to reach justice.
“There’s nothing like video to allow people to believe something they might otherwise not be able to accept as possible,” said Donna Lieberman, executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union.
Despite the levity of President Obama’s proposal–with body cameras costing around $800 to $1,000 each–there seems to be little empirical research which supports or denies the effectiveness of police body cameras in reducing police brutality. In one of the most notable studies, researches conducted a 12 month study in Rialto, California and found that police officers who were not wearing body cameras were twice as likely to use force as those who were, according to Uri Friedman from The Atlantic.
However, despite the positive results from this study, researcher Barack Ariel, in charge of the study cautions from reading too much into the results. Researchers are not certain, for instance, if the presence of the cameras impacted the subjects’ behavior, thus allowing police officers to not need to use force, or if the cameras themselves affected the conduct of officers.
In a similar study conducted for the Department of Justice by Michael White, after reviewing five studies, including Ariel’s, which represent the “entire body of evidence on body-worn cameras”, White found a similar lack of evidence charge of the study cautions from reading too much into the results. Researchers are not certain, for instance, if the presence of the cameras impacted the subjects’ behavior, thus allowing police officers to not need to use force, or if the cameras themselves affected the conduct of officers.
In a similar study conducted for the Department of Justice by Michael White, after reviewing five different studies, including Ariel’s, which represent the “entire body of evidence on body-worn cameras”, White found a similar lack of evidence that body cameras actually contribute to a decrease in force by police officers, according to The Atlantic. Citing a lack of “Rigorous, independent studies using experimental methods,” White concluded that “There is not enough evidence to offer a definitive recommendation regarding the adoption of body-worn cameras by police,” and that “Most of the claims made about the technology are untested”
“There’s an appeal to [the camera] because it makes logical sense,” said Ariel. “Now, between logical sense and evidence that actually supports it, there’s quite a difference.”
Despite this, police forces across the country have already instituted the use of body cameras. Most notably, Mayor DeBlasio announced on December 3rd that New York City will join the ranks of cities like Los Angeles, Phoenix and Washington D.C. in rolling out the use of body cameras to be worn by police officers.
Mayor DeBlasio’s, predecessor Mayor Bloomberg had very different views , regarding the ethics of body cameras, and resisted the installation of them, calling them a “nightmare,” according to the New York Times.
“We can’t have your cameraman follow you around and film things without people questioning whether they deliberately chose an angle, whether they got the whole picture in,” said Mayor Bloomberg earlier in 2013.
Human rights groups expressed similar concerns to Bloomberg regarding the wide-spread use of body cameras.
“We don’t like the networks of police-run video cameras that are being set up in an increasing number of cities,” said Jay Stanley, a senior policy analyst at the American Civil Liberties Union, “We don’t think the government should be watching over the population en masse.”
Despite the hesitation from critics, body cameras seem to be here to stay. The addition of the 500,000 cameras from President Obama’s plan will almost double the existing amount. Body cameras have been implemented in all 50 states, and in 13 major cities.
“Within the next five years or so, body-worn cameras will be as ubiquitous in the world of policing as handcuffs, the police radio, the gun,” said Jim Buerrmann, President of the Police Foundation.
Whether body cameras actually have an effect in reducing police force will only be evident with time.