Police Officers’ Perceptions of Body-Worn Video Cameras in Beijing

• DOI: 10.1177/1057567720919913
• Published date: 01 September 2021
• Date: 01 September 2021
• Author: Chuanyu Xie,Feng Jiang,Tom Ellis
• Subject Matter: Additional Articles on Police

Additional Article on Police

Police Officers’ Perceptions

of Body-Worn Video

Cameras in Beijing

Feng Jiang

1

, Chuanyu Xie

1

, and Tom Ellis

2

Abstract

The Chinese police started using body-worn video cameras (BWVCs) from 2010 in some cities and

provinces. On July 1, 2016, shortly after the death of Lei Yang during arrest by police, the Ministry

of Public Security (Gong’anbu) introduced BWVCs as mandatory for all the Chinese frontline police

officers through issuing Regulations on Audio and Video Recording of Onsite Law Enforcement for Public

Security Units (RAVR). However, despite the nationwide use of BWVCs, the research literature on

BWVCs in China remains sparse. Studies from the United States and the United Kingdom provide

evidence of the importance of officers’ buy-in to the new technology. It is, therefore, essential to

know Chinese officers’ views and evaluations of using BWVCs. Using an anonymized online

questionnaire, adapted from published international prior studies, this article reports and evaluates

the views of 255 Beijing officers of the Beijing Police Department. Our analysis suggests that,

overall, there was a high level of support and a high level of self-reported use for BWVCs among

respondents not only because they are required to use them but also because they wanted to.

Officers perceived more benefits than disadvantages of using BWVCs and most thought BWVCs

would help them in their daily work without reducing their enthusiasm for law enforcement. Some

differences were found between officers from different working units and between male and female

officers. There were also weak negative correlations between length of service as a police officer

and supportive attitudes toward BWVCs. Most criticisms were about technical issues such as

higher expectations on the battery life and BWVC reliability.

Keywords

China, Beijing, body-worn video cameras, police attitudes

This article first provides the background context to the mandatory introduction and use of body-

worn video cameras (BWVCs) in China generally and then specifically to the Beijing Police

Department. It then summarizes the research findings from the key international studies that were

1

School of Public Order, People’s Public Security University of China, Beijing, China

2

Institute of Criminal Justice Studies, University of Portsmouth, Hampshire, UK

Corresponding Author:

Chuanyu Xie, School of Public Order, People’s Public Security University of China, No.1 Muxidi South, Xicheng District,

Beijing 100038, China.

Email: xiechuanyu@ppsuc.edu.cn

International CriminalJustice Review

2021, Vol. 31(3) 286-303

ª2020 Georgia State University

Article reuse guidelines:

sagepub.com/journals-permissions

DOI: 10.1177/1057567720919913

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used to formulate the questionnaire for this Chinese project before moving on to cover how these were

used in constructing the Beijing officer questionnaire. Next, it outlines how the respondents were

recruited before summarizing the results of descriptive analysis of officers’general perceptions and

attitudes to BWVCs in relation to gender, work units, and officers’length of service. This article con-

cludes witha discussion of the implicationsof the key findings alongwith the limitations to thestudy and

the associated i dentification of future resea rch requirements for Chinese p olice use of BWVCs.

Background Context to the Introduction of BWVCs in China

Although internal policy developments had ensured that BWVCs had been in use from 2010

onward in some Chinese police departments (S. Li & Huang, 2010), a catalyst event on May 7,

2016, resulted in the rapid and mandatory requirement for all Chinese frontline officers to use

BWVCs. A 29-year-old man, Lei Yang (雷洋), died unexpectedly during his arrest for suspected

soliciting of prostitution in a massage parlor in the Changping District in northwest Beijing (Fei,

2016). Lei Yang had a master’s degree, was a new father, and worked for a government-linked

environmental organization (Wen, 2016). The arresting officers described Lei as violently unco-

operative. They restrained him, and he was loaded into a police vehicle. He collapsed inside and was

taken to the nearest hospital at 22:15 but was declared dead at 22:55 (Wen, 2016).

Lei’s death sparked huge controversy in Chinese society. An angry public demanded to see video

footage, but the police responded that no closed circuit television or BWVC was used at the scene.

One officer had attempted to record with a mobile phone instead, but this reportedly fell to the

ground and captured nothing (Huang & Horwitz, 2017). Lei’s incident fueled public disquiet about

suspected excessive use of force by police officers, building on an earlier high-profile case in 2014

(the Qing’an shooting), in which a railway police officer shot a 45-year-old man and argued that his

issued BWVC was broken and sent for repair on the eve of the case (CNTV News, 2015; Hu, 2015).

In June 2016, 54 days after the Lei Yang incident, the Ministry of Public Security (Gong’anbu)

introduced the Regulations on Audio and Video Recording of Onsite Law Enforcement for Public

Security Units (RAVR)

1

that resulted in a mandatory requirement for all Chinese frontline officers to

use BWVCs (Gong’anbu, 2016).

There are parallels here with similar situations in the United States. In 2 014, after Michael

Brown, an unarmed Black teenager, was killed by the police, President Obama funded the nation-

wide adoption of BWVC and associated training (Dann & Rafferty, 2014). However, while it is

down to individual police departments in the United States to decide whether to equip their officers

with BWVCs, through Gong’anbu/RAVR, BWVC use was made mandatory immediately through-

out China for frontline officers with the aims of improving police behavior (echoing the United

States’general emphasis for BWVCs; see Ellis et al., 2015) and public confidence. Further, RAVR

stipulate that “all law enforcement activities must be recorded with BWVCs.”

Both Chinese high-profile cases shared the fact that BWVCs were claimed to be either broken or

absent during the police encounter. Some argued that these were simply poor excuses to avoid

accountability and that the police officers involved had used BWVCs selectively (Cui, 2016).

These criticisms, and perceived public opinion, provoked questions that had previously never

been discussed or even taken seriously: what was the police attitude to the use of BWVCs and were

police officers using BWVCs willingly? Neither officers nor their departments are likely to openly

deny or challenge the mandated policy introduced by Gong’anbu, which is the highest central power

over the police in China.

It is also important to note that, even before the introduction of RAVR, no official or academic

research had been released on how many officers were actually using BWVCs for law enforcement,

how many of them were in favor of it, and so on. As such, perception issues remained an unan-

swered question.

Jiang et al. 287