The Effect Of Police Body-Worn Cameras On Use Of Force And Citizens’ Complaints Against The Police: A Randomized Controlled Trial

• In Event: Police Complaints: Issues and Challenges

Abstract

Police use-of-force continues to be a major source of international concern, inviting interest by academics and practitioners alike. The exercise of power can tarnish their delicate relationship with the community. Police misconduct can translate into complaints. The question we try to answer is: do body-worn cameras reduce the prevalence of use-of-force and/or citizens’-complaints against the police?
We tested the use of body-worn-cameras by measuring the effect of videotaping police-public encounters on incidents of police use-of-force and complaints, in randomized-controlled-settings. Over 12 months, we randomly-assigned officers to “experimental-shifts” during which they were equipped with body-worn-cameras that recorded all contacts with the public and to “control-shifts” without the cameras (n=988). We defined use-of-force, both unnecessary/excessive and reasonable, as a non-desirable response in police-public encounters. We estimate the causal effect of the use of body-worn-videos on the two outcome variables using both between-group differences as well as before-after estimates.
We found that the likelihood of force being used in control conditions was roughly twice than in experimental conditions. Similarly, a pre/post analysis of use of force and complaints data support this result: the number of complaints filed against officers dropped from 0.7 complaints per 1,000 contacts to 0.07 per 1,000 contacts.

Authors

• Alex Sutherland, University of Cambridge

• Barak Ariel, Cambridge University / Hebrew University

• William Farrar, Rialto Police Department