An Officer-Level Examination of the Prevalence and Correlates of Police Body-Worn Camera Activation

• Published date: 01 March 2025
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/10986111241241751
• Author: Jessica Huff,Michael D. White,Aili E. Malm,Charles M. Katz
• Date: 01 March 2025

Article

Police Quarterly

2025, Vol. 28(1) 45–77

© The Author(s) 2024

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DOI: 10.1177/10986111241241751

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An Officer-Level Examination

of the Prevalence and

Correlates of Police

Body-Worn Camera

Activation

Jessica Huff

1

, Michael D. White

2

, Aili E. Malm

3

, and

Charles M. Katz

2



Abstract

Body-worn cameras (BWCs) are intended to promote transparency and account-

ability. However, officer failure to activate BWCs remains a concern. Research has

identified types of incidents associated with activation failure, but has not examined

activation as a measure of performance. We examine BWC activation as an officer-

level decision-making process, assessing the influence of demographics, assignments,

and performance (e.g., proactivity) on activation rates over time. Negative binominal

and multinomial logistic regression were used to analyze data from 149 officers as-

signed to wear BWCs during a randomized-controlled trial. Activation rates ranged

from 0–88% of calls-for-service. Group-based trajectory modeling identified three

activation trends: decreased, increased then decreased, and increased and tapered off.

Limited relationships between officer-level predictors and activation were identified.

Findings suggest officer characteristics and performance are not primary drivers of

1

School of Criminal Justice, University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, OH, USA

2

Center for Violence Prevention and Community Safety, School ofCriminology and Criminal Justice, Arizona

State University, Phoenix, AZ, USA

3

School of Criminology, Criminal Justice and Emergency Management, California State University, Long

Beach, CA, USA

Corresponding Author:

Jessica Huff, School of Criminal Justice, University of Cincinnati, 2610 University Cir, Cincinnati, OH 45221,

USA.

Email: jessiehuff@unomaha.edu

BWC activation. Departments should use supervision, retraining, and policy inter-

vention to ensure BWCs are implemented as intended.

Keywords

body-worn cameras, officer performance, activation

Over the last decade, thousands of law enforcement agencies in the U.S. have adopted

police body-worn cameras (BWCs) to increase officer accountability, enhance com-

munity trust, and facilitate police reform (Hyland, 2018;Lum et al., 2019). By 2020,

62% of U.S. law enforcement agencies had deployed cameras to at least some officers,

including 87% of large agencies (i.e., over 500 sworn; United States Department of

Justice, 2023). At the same time, a rapidly growing body of research has shown that

BWCs have generated positive benefits for many police departments, from reducing

complaints and use of force to providing evidentiary value and enhancing procedural

justice (Ariel et al., 2015;McCluskey et al., 2019;White & Malm, 2020).

As BWCs have spread in law enforcement, many departments have struggled with

their officers’failure to activate the devices (Boivin et al., 2022;Hedberg et al., 2017;

Lawrence et al., 2019). Numerous cases have occurred where officers did not activate

their BWC during an encounter with a community member where force was used. In

July 2017, a Minneapolis police officer failed to activate his BWC before killing Justine

Damond (Berman, 2017). A recent investigation by the Los Angeles Police Depart-

ment’s Inspector General’sOffice found that “nearly a fourth of Los Angeles police

officers involved in incidents where serious force was used failed to activate their body

cameras in a timely manner (Rector, 2021, p. 1).”

An officer’s failure to activate can undermine all the benefits generated by BWCs

(Martain et al., 2021). The most obvious consequence is a loss of evidence, but low

activation rates can also short-circuit BWCs’hypothesized “civilizing effect”and

compromise a department’s accountability efforts (Patterson & White, 2021). In some

cases, years of progress in building community trust can be undercut by one failure to

activate in a critical incident (White & Malm, 2020). More generally, low activation

compliance is a form of implementation failure, and any intervention or program –

including BWCs –will not be effective if it is not appropriately implemented

(Lawrence et al., 2019).

Despite the issue’s importance, only a handful of studies have sought to identify

factors that affect officers’decision to activate a BWC. Katz and Huff (2023) identified

a range of variables significantly associated with BWC activation, especially char-

acteristics of the specific incident (e.g., dispatched call, call outcome). Boivin et al.

(2022) and Lawrence et al. (2019) similarly reported a greater likelihood of activation

given certain incident-level (e.g., call type) and officer characteristics (e.g., experience,

gender). Though these studies have extended our understanding of the factors influ-

encing officers’decision to activate during a specific call, researchers have yet to

46 Police Quarterly 28(1)

investigate activation on a larger scale as an officer-level decision-making process

across multiple citizen interactions: that is, activation rates over time as an officer-level

performance measure. Essentially, research has not examined the extent to which we

can identify correlates of low and high BWC activators, or officer change in activation

patterns over time. Moreover, it is unknown whether officers’BWC activation rates

align with other measures of police officer performance, such as proactivity, arrests, use

of force, and complaints. This research gap is troubling, given the widespread adoption

of BWCs and the potential severe and long-term consequences of persistently low

activation rates.

The current study seeks to fill this gap by examining BWC activation rates among

officers in the Phoenix Police Department. Our first dependent variable is each officer’s

activation rate over 18 months (rather than a no/yes activation decision in a single

encounter). Our second dependent variable measures the change in officer activation as

they gain experience wearing a BWC using group-based trajectory modeling to identify

common patterns in activation levels over time. More specifically, we employ bivariate

correlations and multivariate regression to identify relationships between BWC acti-

vation among officer demographic characteristics (race, sex, education), features of

work assignment (length of service, precinct, shift), and other measures of performance

(self-initiated activity, arrests, use of force, citizen complaints). Weseek to answerfour

research questions:

1.Do officer trajectories in activation change over time?

2.Is there notable variation in BWC activation rates or trends across officer

characteristics?

3.Is there notable variation in BWC activation rates or trends across aspects of

officers’assignments?

4.Do BWC activation rates or trends align with other indicators of police officer

performance?

Overall, the current study seeks to improve our understanding of the factors as-

sociated with officer-level BWC activation decision-making, which can inform de-

partments’efforts to improve officer compliance and, more generally, enhance the

potential for BWCs to serve as effective tools for police reform. As such, we take a step

back from focusing on activation in specific encounters. Rather, we examine BWC

activation as a performance measure of the officers who are responsible for im-

plementing this technology.

Prior Research

The Rapid Diffusion of BWCs

Law enforcement and scholarly interest in BWCs is barely a decade old. In fall 2013,

the Police Executive Research Forum (PERF) and COPS Office held a conference to

Huff et al.47