https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4590-2054
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ABSTRACT
This study compared police perceptions of BWCs in terms of officers’ perceptions of BWCs acceptance (police support for BWCs, citizen support of BWCs, and comfort with the use of BWCs), the effect of BWCs on police (transparency, accountability, respectful treatment, use of force, and officer safety), the effect of BWCs on citizens (general perceptions of police, perceptions of police trustworthiness, respect toward police, satisfaction with police, and citizen safety), officer activity (response to calls for service and enforcement of the law), and complaints (internal and citizen complaints) among different types of police agencies. The data were collected from a survey administered to 131 police officers from the State Police (SP), City Police (CP), and University Police (UP). The results of bivariate and multivariate analysis showed that CP officers have the most positive views of BWCs, followed by UP officers, and SP officers. The multivariate analyses also showed that a significant difference was found between CP and SP officers for BWCs acceptance, effect of BWCs on police and citizens, and complaints, between CP and UP officers for effect of BWCs on citizens, while no significant difference was found between SP and UP officers. The results and policy implications are discussed.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank to the following people for their great support to conduct the study: Levi J. Ritter, Chief of Plattsburgh City Police Department; Brent Davison, Zone Commander at New York State Police; Paul C. Burlingame, Chief of University Police Department at SUNY Albany; Jerry Lottie, former Chief of University Police Department at SUNY Plattsburgh; Patrick Rascoe, Chief of University Police Department at SUNY Plattsburgh; and all officers working at the departments. I would also like to thank Dr. Wesley G. Jennings for allowing to use some of the survey items published in their article.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 A few studies have examined the effect of BWCs on citizen satisfaction with police encounters (Demir & Kule, Citation2020; White et al., Citation2017, Citation2018) and general perceptions of the police (Demir & Kule, Citation2020) from a citizen perspective, but no such studies have been examined from a police perspective.
2 G*Power, a free-to-use software that calculates statistical power (Faul, Erdfelder, Lang, & Buchner, Citation2007) was used to estimate the a priori for the one-way ANOVA test and the multiple regression test. The results showed that the sample size (N = 131), with alpha at .05 and power at .80 would enable the detection of an effect size of 0.28 (large effect size) for the one-way ANOVA test with 3 groups and an effect size of 0.12 (medium effect size) for a linear multiple regression test with 8 predictors and the sample size was adequate for both the one-way ANOVA test and multiple regression test (see Green, Citation1991, p. 503; Cohen, Citation1992, pp. 157–158; Norman, Citation2010).
3 Note that years of service was originally measured as a categorical variable, not a continuous variable: 1 = 1–5 years of service; 2 = 6–10 years of service; 3 = 11–15 years of service; 4 = 16–20 years of service; 5 = 21–25 years of service; 6 = 26–30 years of service; 7 = 31–35 years of service; 8 = 36 years of service and more. Years of service was dummy coded for the current study.
4 The first author's permission was obtained to use the items and the items were slightly modified. The other items were significantly modified for the study.
5 Before conducting the OLS regression test, numerical and/or graphical methods (including linearity, normality, homoscedasticity, and collinearity; see Fox, Citation1991) were used for each model to test whether the data satisfied the assumptions of the OLS regression. While the distribution of BWC acceptance, officer activity, and reducing complaints slightly deviated from normality, the assumptions for normality were met for the other latent variables (i.e. perceived effect on police and perceived effect on citizen). In addition, except for BWC acceptance, perceived effect on police, and officer activity, the assumption for homoscedasticity also was met for the other latent variables. Linearity was not an issue because all of the independent variables were binary variables (see Fox, Citation1991). Regarding the individual dependent variables, the amount by which the models met the normality assumption for police respectful treatment, officer safety, citizen general perceptions of police, citizen trustworthiness, satisfaction with police, citizen safety, and internal complaints, but failed to meet homoscedasticity for comfort of use of BWCs, citizen support for BWCs, accountability, enforce laws, and citizen respect. Regarding noncollinearity, Variation Inflation Factors (VIF) and correlation matrices indicated that year of completion of the survey was highly correlated with experience with BWC (VIF = 6.0; r = 0.78), and therefore excluded from the analyses. The results are not shown.