Use of Performance Information and External Accountability: The Role of Citizen Oversight in Mitigating the Motivated Evaluation of Body-Worn Camera Evidence

• Published date: 01 August 2024
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/02750740241229998
• Author: Mir Usman Ali,James E. Wright
• Date: 01 August 2024

Use of Performance Information

and External Accountability: The Role

of Citizen Oversight in Mitigating the

Motivated Evaluation of Body-Worn

Camera Evidence

Mir Usman Ali

1

and James E. Wright II

2

Abstract

Despite being touted as a game-changing technology, studies on the inf‌luence of body-worn cameras (BWCs) on policing out-

comes have produced mixed results, with the underlying reasons for such f‌indings unclear. Drawing on the sociology of cul-

ture and organizational theory, we argue that BWCs often have mixed impacts due to deeply ingrained, valued occupational

assumptions and practices shaped by the structural and organizational context. These assumptions and practices, collectively

known as the police métier, are not politically neutral and can lead to motivated decisions rather than accurate ones. We

suggest that such motivated reasoning can be mitigated by changing the structural or organizational context, such as estab-

lishing a citizen oversight agency (COA), which could decrease racial disparities in policing outcomes. To test these arguments,

we examined the impact of BWCs on racial disparities in two types of policing outcomes: police homicides of citizens and

disorderly conduct arrests (DCAs). Our f‌indings indicate that while the adoption of BWCs does not impact racial disparities

in DCAs or police homicides of citizens, there is a signif‌icant decrease in racial disparity in DCAs when BWCs and COAs are

used in conjunction. Additionally, while the racial disparity in police homicides of Blacks and Whites does not decrease when

BWCs and COAs are used together, thereis an overall decrease in police homicides across both racial groups. Overall, our

study demonstrates that technology’s impact on bureaucratic performance is inf‌luenced by occupationalassumptions and

practices, which can be altered by external accountability mechanismssuch as COAs.

Keywords

body-worn cameras, motivated reasoning, police métier, citizen oversight, sociology ofculture, racial disparitiesin law

enforcement outcomes

Police agencies across America have come under renewed

scrutiny amidst allegations of excessive force and racially

disparate law enforcement. Moreover, in the aftermath of

the killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, policy-

makers have increasingly sought insight into the eff‌icacy of

a range of reforms intended to reduce the incidence of exces-

sive force by police. Amidst this context, body-worn cameras

(BWCs) represent a technology that has enjoyed rapid uptake

in police agencies nationwide (e.g., Campeau, 2015;

Manning, 2008, 2015; Terrill & Ingram, 2016). Heralded

as a means of obtaining performance information of police

interactions with citizens, BWCs were introduced with the

expectation that they would have a civilizing effect on

police off‌icers as well as citizens during police-citizen

encounters, which would reduce the likelihood of police

encounters escalating and turning violent (Chapman, 2018).

However, recent studies and reviews of BWC offer mixed

results (Lum et al., 2019; Wright & Headley, 2021). In a

review of the studies examining BWC impacts, Lum et al.

(2019) conclude that “…BWCs have not had statistically sig-

nif‌icant or consistent effects on most measures of off‌icer and

citizen behavior or citizens’views of the police. Expectations

and concerns surrounding BWCs among police leaders and

citizens have not been realized by and large in the ways

anticipated by each.”Furthermore, the reasons why BWCs

cause behavioral change among off‌icers under certain

1

School of Public Policy, University of Maryland-Baltimore County,Baltimore,

MD, USA

2

Askew School of Public Administration and Policy, Florida State University,

Tallahassee, FL, USA

Corresponding Author:

Mir Usman Ali, School of Public Policy, University of Maryland-Baltimore

County, Baltimore, MD, USA.

Email: miruali@umbc.edu

Article

American Review of Public Administration

2024, Vol. 54(6) 590–616

© The Author(s) 2024

Article reuse guidelines:

sagepub.com/journals-permissions

DOI: 10.1177/02750740241229998

journals.sagepub.com/home/arp

circumstances while having no impact under others are not

well understood (Lum et al., 2019).

Given the above f‌indings, we make two arguments in the

current study. First, we argue that the f‌indings on BWC

impacts are mixed because the prior literature construes

police agencies as politically neutral organizations that

respond to accountability mechanisms in straightforward,

predictable ways (Headley et al., 2017; Pyo, 2020). Such a

view minimizes the role of valued practices, which are

based on assumptions about the nature of the work; how it

can be best performed; the resources required; and the risks

and obstacles to performance. Anchored by the structural

and organizational context, the preceding practices are con-

stitutive of the occupational culture of patrol off‌icers. They

are meaningful insofar as off‌icers assume them necessary

for deterring crime, asserting autonomy, showing productiv-

ity, preserving safety, and avoiding supervisor scrutiny.

The above assumptions and practices—collectively termed

the police métier—are essential for off‌icers to organize social

reality and navigate their work lives (Manning, 2010). We

argue that absent changes in the structural and organizational

contextthat shift the above métier, off‌icerswill tend to use tech-

nologies (such as BWCs) in ways that reproduce the above

assumptions and practices. Thus, if technology is viewed as

irrelevantto deterring crime, encroachingon off‌icer autonomy,

or interfering with the eff‌icient enactment of duties, it will be

resisted, turned off, seldom used, or perhaps even sabotaged

(Manning, 2008). In essence, we suggest that the métier

serves as a lens through which police off‌icers engage in moti-

vated reasoning, that is, reasoning that leads to desired rather

than accurate decisions (Kunda, 1990).

Consequently, we argue that if the control of and authority

to review BWC evidence is vested solely within police agen-

cies, then the métier will lead police supervisors to adjudicate

BWC evidence in ways that absolve off‌icers alleged to have

committed misconduct. For instance, supervisors may reason

that an off‌icer’s actions cannot be easily judged because

“You had to be there”to understand why the off‌icer acted

in a particular way in a specif‌ic situation (Manning, 2010).

Alternatively, supervisors may reason that disciplining the

off‌icer might ref‌lect poorly on police agency leadership or

make the agency the target of unwanted media attention.

Thus, motivated reasoning will tend to encourage self-

serving decisions, thereby frustrating the intent of BWCs to

inject alternative logics into policing practices.

On the other hand, we argue that if citizen oversightof

BWC evidence exists, motivated reasoning will likely be mit-

igated. This is because citizen oversight would decrease the

insularitynecessary for members of the police agencyto repro-

duce routinized practices and assumptions. Thus, if BWC evi-

dence is subject to review by a citizen oversight agency

(COA), off‌icerswouldbemorelikelytoadheretoconstitu-

tional standards when dealing with racialized minorities,

which, in turn, would decrease the racial disparity in policing

outcomes.

Second, we argue that even if a COA can review BWC evi-

dence, the latter’s impact on policing outcomes will depend on

situational exigencies during citizen-police encounters, such as

an off‌icer’s intuitive grasp of danger, and the consequent dis-

cretion off‌icers can exercise (Lipsky, 1980; Manning, 2010).

Thus, police behavior will be more susceptible to change

during encounters that involve little danger (e.g., disorderly

conduct arrests [DCAs]; Skolnick, 1966) because such encoun-

ters afford police off‌icers broad discretion. On the other hand,

off‌icer behavior during encounters that are likely to involve

danger (e.g., encounters that result in a police homicide of a

citizen) would be less likely to change because such encounters

afford relatively narrow discretion to police off‌icers.

In this study, we examine whether BWCs are associated

with a reduction in either racial disparities in DCAs or

police homicides of citizens. In support of the argument

above, we f‌ind that merely adopting BWCs does not impact

either outcome. However, when a COA accompanies BWC

adoption, racial disparity in DCAs decreases. Furthermore,

while police homicides of Blacks and Whites decline when

BWCs are accompanied by COAs, racial disparityin police

homicides remains unchanged because the declines in police

homicides of Blacks and Whites offset each other.

Literature Review

There have been several studies in recent years in which

scholars have sought to highlight the phenomenon of moti-

vated use of performance information and performance man-

agement systems more generally. These studies have

demonstrated the phenomenon of motivated reasoning in

experimental settings (Baekgaard & Serritzlew, 2016;

Belardinelli et al., 2018), in policing (Campeau, 2015;

Manning, 2008, 2010; Terrill & Ingram, 2016), medicine

(Kerpershoek et al., 2016), and probation services (Sabbe

et al., 2021). Building upon ideas whose pedigree can be

traced back to the concept of bounded rationality (Simon,

1957), these studies suggest that despite the intent of intro-

ducing greater rationality in decision-making, technological

innovations are not likely to be used in a politically neutral

fashion. Instead, individuals’use of technologies and inter-

pretation of the information they produce will be driven by

deeply ingrained, valued occupational assumptions and prac-

tices, which, in turn, are shaped by the structural and organi-

zational context (also see Kraft et al., 2015). The upshot is

that unless the structural or organizational context shifts

which, in turn, leads to a change in the valued assumptions

and practices, organizational routines and the outcomes

they produce are not likely to change.

An illustration of the motivated use of technology is found

in a study conductedby police organizational scholarManning

(2008), who assessed the implementation and operational

impact of crime analysis and crime mapping (CA/CM) in

three police agencies. While the three cities implemented

CA/CM technology to encourage rational problem solving,

Ali and Wright591