The Achilles Heel of Police Body-Worn Cameras: Understanding the Factors That Influence Variation in Body-Worn Camera Activation

Abstract

While body-worn cameras (BWCs) are increasingly becoming commonplace in police organizations, researchers and policymakers still know little about their implementation in the field and the factors related to their actual use. Using data collected from 146,601 incidents in Phoenix, Arizona, the present study examines the prevalence and correlates of BWC activation. In doing so, we examine the impact of incident-level factors, officer characteristics, neighborhood context, and changes in BWC activation policy on whether an officer who is assigned to wear a BWC activates their camera during a police-citizen contact. Cross-classified models are used to simultaneously assess the influence of factors at multiple levels of explanation. Our analysis suggests that a wide variety of individual, situational, organizational, and neighborhood factors are related to an officer’s decision to activate their camera. BWC policy that confines, structures, and checks officer activation has a robust impact on an officer’s decision to activate their BWC.

Keywords:

• Police
• body-worn camera
• BWC
• activation
• compliance

Acknowledgments

The views and conclusions contained in this document are those of the authors and should not be interpreted as necessarily representing the official policies, either expressed or implied, of the Bureau of Justice Assistance. All procedures performed were conducted in accordance with the ethical standards of Arizona State University (approved ASU IRB study 00005277).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 A consent decree “is a police reform that results from a federal law suit and are supervised by a federal judge who can punish the police department if it does not implement the required reforms” (Walker & Katz, 2022: 584). Under a federal consent decree, NOPD was required to implement BWCs and ensure officers activated those cameras. Given the additional federal oversight in ensuring the required reform was implemented we might expect that activation rates would be higher among agencies operating under such a consent decree.

2 See the Methodological Appendix (supplementary materials) for further coding details.

3 It is also worth noting that Ariel et al. (2016b) identified activation non-compliance due to supervision direction against a research protocol as a potential reason their earlier study found BWC’s increased odds of assault against officers.

Additional information

Funding

The authors disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this article: This research was supported by the Bureau of Justice Assistance under Award No. 2015-WY-BX-0004.

Notes on contributors

Charles M. Katz

Charles M. Katz is a professor in the School of Criminology and Criminal Justice and Watts Family Director of the Center for Violence Prevention and Community Safety at Arizona State University. His research involves collaborating with agencies to increase their organizational capacity to identify and respond to crime effecting local communities. He currently serves as a research partner to the Phoenix Police Department to evaluate their BJA sponsored projects related to SMART policing and a Crime Gun Intelligence Center. He served as one of the two primary authors of the U.S. Department of Justice Body-Worn Camera Toolkit and currently serves as a senior advisor to the Bureau of Justice Assistance on its Body-Worn Camera Training and Technical Assistance Team. He recently completed sponsored research evaluating the impact of body worn cameras in the Phoenix Police Department.

Jessica Huff

Jessica Huff is an Assistant Professor in the School of Criminology and Criminal Justice at the University of Nebraska at Omaha. She has additionally been selected as a National Institute of Justice LEADS Academic. Her research revolves around evaluating police programs and policies in order to improve police effectiveness and the equitable administration of justice. She has partnered on several projects with police agencies across the US, including randomized-controlled trials of body-worn cameras and violence reduction strategies. Her research has been funded through sources such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Bureau of Justice Assistance. She has published in outlets including the Journal of Criminal Justice, Journal of Experimental Criminology, and Police Quarterly.