When Will Police Executives Release Footage From Body-Worn Cameras? A National Experiment

• In Event: The Use of Police Body Worn Cameras

Abstract

Police agencies increasingly are outfitting their officers with body-worn cameras (BWCs), at least in part in the interest of public transparency. Yet, emerging evidence suggests police executives sometimes decline to release BWC footage capturing critical incidents to the public. This is true even for fatal police shootings. A recent analysis of the Washington Post’s “Fatal Force” data found that although BWCs captured footage of 105 fatal police shootings in 2017, the footage was released for only 65 of those shootings (as of March 2018). Unfortunately, research has given insufficient attention to the factors that might influence executives’ willingness to be transparent with the public following shootings captured on BWC. To address this gap in the literature, we conducted a nationwide mail survey of 2,496 municipal police chiefs, using a generalized randomized block design and factorial vignettes. We examine the situational predictors of executives’ willingness to release BWC footage of a specific fatal shooting incident. We also consider their global attitudes toward releasing BWC footage upon request as public information, as well as transparency regarding other matters including ongoing investigations, allegations of misconduct, and incidents when officers use fatal or nonfatal force against civilians.

Authors

• Brandon Tregle, University of Nebraska - Omaha

• Justin Nix, University of Nebraska at Omaha

• Justin Tyler Pickett, University at Albany, SUNY

• Scott Wolfe, Michigan State University