BODY‐WORN CAMERAS AS A POTENTIAL SOURCE OF DEPOLICING: TESTING FOR CAMERA‐INDUCED PASSIVITY

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/1745-9125.12179
• Author: DANIELLE WALLACE,NATALIE TODAK,MICHAEL D. WHITE,JANNE E. GAUB
• Date: 01 August 2018
• Published date: 01 August 2018

BODY-WORN CAMERAS AS A POTENTIAL SOURCE

OF DEPOLICING: TESTING FOR CAMERA-INDUCED

PASSIVITY∗

DANIELLE WALLACE,1MICHAEL D. WHITE,1

JANNE E. GAUB,2and NATALIE TODAK3

1School of Criminology and Criminal Justice, Arizona State University

2Department of Criminal Justice, East Carolina University

3Department of Criminal Justice, University of Alabama at Birmingham

KEYWORDS: body-worn cameras, depolicing, Ferguson effect, camera-induced

passivity, employee motivation

Contentious debate is currently taking place regarding the extent to which public

scrutiny of the police post-Ferguson has led to depolicing or to a decrease in proactive

police work. Advocates of the “Ferguson effect” claim the decline in proactive policing

increased violent crime and assaults on the police. Although police body-worn cameras

(BWCs) are touted as a police reform that can generate numerous benefits, they also

represent a form of internal and public surveillance on the police. The surveillance

aspect of BWCs suggests that BWCs may generate depolicing through camera-induced

passivity. We test this question with data from a randomized controlled trial of BWCs

in Spokane (WA) by assessing the impact of BWCs on four measures: officer-initiated

calls, arrests, response time, and time on scene. We employ hierarchical linear and

cross-classified models to test for between- and within-group differences in outcomes

before and after the randomized BWC rollout. Our results demonstrate no evidence

of statistically significant camera-induced passivity across any of the four outcomes. In

fact, self-initiated calls increased for officers assigned to treatment during the RCT. We

discuss the theoretical and policy implications of the findings for the ongoing dialogue

in policing.

Nobody says it on the record, nobody says it in public, but police and elected officials

are quietly saying it to themselves. And they’re saying it to me, and I’m going to say

it to you. And it is the one explanation that does explain the calendar and the map

and that makes the most sense to me. Maybe something in policing has changed. In

today’s YouTube world, are officers reluctant to get out of their cars and do the work

that controls violent crime? Are officers answering 911 calls but avoiding the informal

contact that keeps bad guys from standing around, especially with guns?

—Former FBI Director James Comey, October 23, 2015

∗The authors would like to thank the Spokane Police Department for its assistance and coopera-

tion. This research was funded by the Laura and John Arnold Foundation (LJAF). The opinions

expressed here are those of the authors and are not necessarily those of LJAF.

Direct correspondence to Danielle Wallace, School of Criminology and Criminal Justice, Arizona

State University, 411 N Central Ave, Suite 600, mail code 4420, Phoenix, AZ 85004-0685 (e-mail:

danielle.wallace@asu.edu).

C2018 American Society of Criminology doi: 10.1111/1745-9125.12179

CRIMINOLOGY Volume 56 Number 3 481–509 2018 481

482 WALLACE ET AL.

Since the summer of 2014, there has been a series of high-profile, controversial police

killings of citizens resulting in public protest, civil disorder, and a national movement de-

manding police reform (i.e., Black Lives Matter). The deaths of Michael Brown, Freddie

Gray, Eric Garner, Tamir Rice, Walter Scott, and others have highlighted a current crisis

in police legitimacy (White and Fradella, 2016). In response to public demand for police

reform, the White House created the President’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing

in late 2014, and former President Obama “charged the task force with identifying best

practices and offering recommendations” to build community trust and enhance police

accountability. The final report of the Task Force (2015) includes dozens of recommen-

dations for change, and police body-worn cameras (BWCs) are highlighted as a tool that

may be able to help alleviate the current crisis in police legitimacy.

BWCs have been diffused widely in law enforcement over the last few years in part

because of significant federal support through funding and technical assistance (Bureau

of Justice Assistance, 2016; Department of Justice, 2016). Moreover, the findings from

a rapidly growing body of research show that BWCs can produce a range of positive

outcomes, including reductions in use of force and citizen complaints (e.g., Ariel, Farrar,

and Sutherland, 2015; Hedberg, Katz, and Choate, 2017), enhanced prosecution outcomes

(Morrow, Katz, and Choate, 2016; Owens, Mann, and McKenna, 2014), and increased

perceptions of procedural justice (White, Todak, and Gaub, 2017).

At the same time, several concerns have been raised about BWCs, including officer

and citizen privacy, policy questions, and cost/resource requirements. Some critics view

BWCs as part of a larger technological movement to scrutinize police publicly. In this

sense, their criticism is valid: Advocacy groups support BWCs because of their poten-

tial to monitor police officer behavior (Stanley, 2015). Recording the actions of the po-

lice is certainly not new; BWCs, however, come at a time in policing history that is dif-

ferent from past eras. Social media, smartphones, smartphone apps (e.g., the ACLU’s

Mobile Justice app for recording police conduct), and other common technology makes

filming police actions—both good and bad—exceedingly easy. Surveillance comes from

both within police organizations and the public and has the potential to lead to attitudinal

and behavioral changes among police. For example, BWCs have not been univerally em-

braced, and in some jurisdictions, police officers have adamantly opposed cameras (Allen,

2016).

More generally, some have speculated that this increased public scrutiny of officers

has led to “depolicing” or to an intentional reduction in police officer activity (Rushin

and Edwards, 2017). Former FBI Director James Comey has repeatedly linked the

intense focus on police with less aggressive police tactics, suggesting that the “viral

video effect” reduces officer proactivity (Lichtblau, 2016, paragraph 2). Comey’s (2015)

quote at the beginning of the article underscores the point. Mac Donald (2016b) as-

serted that public scrutiny of police has led to increases in violent crime and attacks

on police officers via a “Ferguson effect.” The allegations from Director Comey, Mac

Donald (2016a), and others suggest that surveillance technologies are part of the rea-

son for the current crisis in policing as the increased scrutiny of police causes officers

to pull back from the more discretionary aspects of their job. Findings from a few re-

cent studies have demonstrated decreases in officer activity post-Ferguson (Shjarback

et al., 2017). Moreover, some researchers have suggested that the potential for depolic-

ing may vary depending on local conditions (Wolfe and Nix, 2016). There is also a

body of psychological research in which enhanced surveillance of employees has been