Activation of Body-Worn Cameras: Variation by Officer, Over Time, and by Policing Activity

• DOI: 10.1177/0734016819846228
• Author: Daniel S. Lawrence,David McClure,Mathew Lynch,Nancy La Vigne,Aili Malm
• Published date: 01 September 2019
• Date: 01 September 2019
• Subject Matter: Articles

Article

Activation of Body-Worn

Cameras: Variation

by Officer, Over Time,

and by Policing Activity

Daniel S. Lawrence

1

, David McClure

2

, Aili Malm

3

, Mathew Lynch

4

,

and Nancy La Vigne

1

Abstract

This study assessed the early deployment of the Anaheim Police Department’s body-worn camera

(BWC) program in 2015 by examining camera activations across officers, trends in activations over

time, and how different police–community contacts predict BWC activations. These were assessed

with correlational analyses among 40 BWC-equipped officers in the first 6 months of their use.

Activation of the BWCs among officers varied widely, with 6-month average activations ranging

from 0% to 72%. Average activation rates increased over time from 3% to 54%. Officers dis-

proportionately activated their cameras for events related to crimes; for example, activation rates

for other categories were significantly lower compared to violent crimes, with odds ratios ranging

from 0.148 to 0.663. The article concludes with a discussion on how the failure to activate a BWC

limits the potential benefits of the technology. While officers have considerable discretion on when

to activate their BWCs, law enforcement agencies must not only train and deploy BWCs among

their officers but also audit and supervise individual use to ensure successful BWC programs.

Keywords

police, body-worn cameras, BWC, activation

Police departments’ use of body-worn cameras (BWCs) has received considerable attention in recent

years. Despite being a relatively new tool for the police, there has been a steady increase in the use of

BWCs, prompted in large part by police shootings of community members and public demand for

transparency, as well as sizable federal investment in grants to local police agencies. BWCs are one of

the fastest technologies adopted by departments in recent decades, and as a result, the field is still

identifying how to best implement this tool and how it impacts officer activity and behavior in the field.

1

Urban Institute, Washington, DC, USA

2

Police Executive Research Forum, Washington, DC, USA

3

California State University, Long Beach, Long Beach, CA, USA

4

New York City Department of Probation, New York, NY, USA

Corresponding Author:

Daniel S. Lawrence, Urban Institute, 500 L’Enfant Plaza SW, Washington, DC 20024, USA.

Email: dlawrence2@urban.org

Criminal Justice Review

2019, Vol. 44(3) 339-355

ª2019 Georgia State University

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DOI: 10.1177/0734016819846228

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Agencies are in the midst of developing new policies and procedures to ensure successful BWC

programs. For example, BWCs do not record on a continual basis, both because the storage space

required to house that volume of footage would be prohibitive and because officers require a degree

of privacy during their shifts. While many agencies have policies prescribing when officers should

start recording, officers still have wide discretion on when to record, may forget to turn the camera

on, or simply choose not to activate their cameras under certain circumstances. While perhaps

unintentional, many of these events are violations of policy, albeit of minor consequence given

there are typically no official consequences for violators. As a result, questions are raised about what

type of community encounters officers are more likely to activate their cameras and how policies

and practices can be changed to ensure that BWCs are activated as required.

The failure to activate a BWC severely limits the potential benefits of the technology. If imple-

mented and used as designed, BWCs could affect citizen behav iors (i.e., the civilizing effect),

improve case processing and complaint investigations (i.e., evidentiary value), and influence officer

behaviors that may result in less use of force and citizen complaints (White, 2014). The purpose of

this article is to examine variations in officers’ BWC activation compliance by examining data from

Anaheim, CA. Specifically, the current study examines the frequency of and reason for officer BWC

activations, the change in the number of BWC activations over time, and how different police–

community contacts are associated with such activations. Results are discussed in detail, and policy

recommendations are offered to ensure that current and future law enforcement agencies can better

address some of the challenges identified as part of this research.

Background and Problem Statement

Prior to the many rigorous studies currently available, BWCs were originally thought to improve

interactions between officers and community members by reducing an officer’s offensive language

(Floyd, 2013), increasing officer compliance with provisions governing search and seizures (Harris,

2010), and increasing other displays of police professionalism (White, 2014). As a result of these

improved practices and behaviors, it was hypothesized that community complaints toward officers

and officers’ levels of use of force would reduce. Early studies examining the relations BWCs had on

complaints and use of force events found remarkable changes. In one of the earliest U.S. studies,

Ariel, Farrar, and Sutherland (2015) found that complaints in Rialto, CA, were reduced by 88%and

use of force incidents by 60%during shifts where officers were wearing a BWC. Jennings, Lynch,

and Fridell’s (2015) randomized controlled trial (RCT) of Orlando, FL, police officers found that use

of force (referred to as response to resistance) incidents were 53.4%lower among BWC-wearing

officers, and their external complaints were 65.4%lower compared to the control officers. Gros-

smith et al. (2015) found lower rates of complaints among officers with BWCs within 6 of 10

boroughs in the greater metropolitan area in London. These differences were found nonsignificant

once multivariate analyses were conducted to rule out other explanatory factors; however, more in-

depth analyses found that officers without a BWC were 2.55 times more likely to receive an

oppressive behavior complaint, while no difference was found for incivility complaints (Grossmith

et al., 2015).

While the results from these early studies certainly brought BWCs to the forefront of the media

and communities’ attention for police reform, the results of the effects of BWCs on complaints and

use of force events from more recent and methodologically rigorous studies are mixed. An RCT with

416 officers from the Las Vegas, NV, Police Department found a 12.5%reduction of use of force

incidents in favor of officers with BWCs and found significant differences in favor of BWCs on the

share of officers with at least one complaint between the treatment and control groups over the

preintervention and intervention periods (Braga, Coldren, Sousa, Rodriguez, & Alper, 2017). The

Orlando Police Department saw an 8.4%reduction among BWC-equipped officers compared to a

340 Criminal Justice Review 44(3)