Preliminary Results from Milwaukee Police Department’s Random Controlled Trial Evaluation of Body Worn Cameras

• In Event: Evaluating Body-Worn Cameras and Smart Policing

Abstract

Following several high-profile events in Ferguson and elsewhere across the country, President Obama requested funds to deploy 50,000 body worn cameras (BWCS) nationwide. With the accelerated adoption of BWCS in police departments across the country, there is an acute need for actionable research to guide practice. Milwaukee, which has the fourth highest violent crime rate in the U.S. and an overall poverty rate of nearly 30 percent, has experienced particularly strained police-community relations in recent years. To address these problems, the Milwaukee Police Department (MPD) joined the Smart Policing Initiative in October, 2015, receiving funding to deploy BWCS to its officers with the goal of increasing transparency and improving policy-community relations. As the research partner on this initiative, the Urban Institute is conducting an impact evaluation of MPD’s BWCS. The evaluation includes focus groups with community members and officers, as well as a randomized controlled trial with 504 officers assigned to treatment (camera) and control (no camera) groups. This presentation offers preliminary findings from the evaluation, including the impact of BWCS on several outcomes (e.g., citizen complaints and use of force incidents), and discusses next steps for the study.

Authors

• Lilly Yu, Urban Institute

• Bryce E. Peterson, Urban Institute

• Daniel Lawrence, RTI International