Will putting cameras on police reduce polarization?

• Author: Sommers, Roseanna
• Position: Introduction through III. Study Two: Is Video Evidence Less Susceptible than Nonvideo Evidence to the Influence of Prior Attitudes? A. Method, p. 1304-1334

NOTE CONTENTS INTRODUCTION I. THE PSYCHOLOGICAL ROOTS OF POLARIZATION II. STUDY ONE: DO PRIOR ATTITUDES TOWARD POLICE INFLUENCE HOW FACT FINDERS PERCEIVE VIDEO EVIDENCE? A. Method B. Study Results C. Discussion and Implications III. STUDY TWO: IS VIDEO EVIDENCE LESS SUSCEPTIBLE THAN NONVIDEO EVIDENCE TO THE INFLUENCE OF PRIOR ATTITUDES? A. Method 1. Stimuli for Four Conditions a. Video Footage b. Dueling Accounts c. Neutral Perspective d. Single Police Account 2. Study Procedure B. Study Results 1. Factual Judgments 2. Subjective Judgments 3. Fairness Judgments 4. Global Judgments 5. Certitude C. Discussion and Implications IV. GENERAL DISCUSSION A. Why Is Video Evidence Inconclusive? B. Directions for Further Research C. Policy Implications CONCLUSION APPENDIX I: FULL TABLES OF STUDY DATA APPENDIX II: DISAGGREGATING NEUTRAL PERSPECTIVE INTO EYEWITNESS ACCOUNTS A AND B A. Factual Judgments Favoring Police B. Subjective Judgments Favoring Police C. Fairness Judgments Favoring Police D. Global Judgments Favoring Police E. Certitude INTRODUCTION

In December 2014, President Obama announced the Body Worn Camera Partnership Program, a new initiative to purchase fifty thousand body cameras for use by police officers across the country. (1) The proposal was a response to the fatal police shooting of Michael Brown, an unarmed African American teenager. Brown's death in Ferguson, Missouri, at the hands of Darren Wilson, a Caucasian police officer, sparked weeks of protests decrying police misconduct and racial profiling. (2) The disputed circumstances surrounding Brown's death polarized the nation. (3) A poll administered in Ferguson three months after the shooting found that 71% of Caucasian respondents believed that Wilson was seriously injured before he shot Brown, whereas only 9% of African American respondents agreed. (4) A nationwide poll found that Democrats were over three times more likely than Republicans to say that Wilson was at fault and deserved punishment. (5)

A grand jury decision not to indict Wilson sparked further protests and further polarization. A Washington Post poll conducted after the non-indictment found that nearly 60% of Caucasian respondents approved of the grand jury's decision not to indict Wilson, whereas fewer than 10% of African American respondents approved. (6) Additionally, more than 75% of conservative Republicans approved of the decision, compared to 24% of liberal Democrats. (7) Overall, 48% of the respondents approved of the decision and 45% disapproved. (8)

Many commentators lamented that if only the incident had been captured on camera, we could have known what happened and could have avoided the wrenching societal conflict over the shooting. (9) A writer for Time magazine observed, "To many, a camera on Wilson's uniform would have ended the uncertainty and potentially avoided the subsequent tumult that engulfed the St. Louis suburb." (10)

As the country grappled with how to move forward, the months following Brown's death brought a steady drumbeat of high-profile police killings of African American citizens. In July, Staten Island resident Eric Garner was killed by New York Police Department (NYPD) officer Daniel Pantaleo, who sought to arrest Garner for allegedly selling untaxed cigarettes. (11) A video recorded by a bystander showed that Pantaleo put Garner in a chokehold, a maneuver banned by the NYPD, and ignored repeated pleas from Garner that he was unable to breathe. (12) In November, twelve-year-old Tamir Rice was shot by Cleveland police officers who mistook the boy's pellet gun for a real firearm. (13) Surveillance videos captured the shooting as well as the officers' failure to administer timely first aid to the boy, who died the following day. (14) In April 2015, Walter Scott was shot eight times in the back while fleeing from officer Michael Slager of the North Charleston Police Department, who had pulled Scott over for a broken taillight. (15) Slager initially claimed that he had feared for his life, but an amateur video later surfaced showing that Scott was running away when Slager fired. (16)

As the list of African American men and boys killed by police grows steadily longer, fueling the Black Lives Matter protest movement, advocates for reform have enthusiastically embraced the idea of putting cameras on police officers. (17) Reformers plainly expect that more video footage will lead to more indictments against officers who use excessive force. Indeed, advocates calling for all state and local police to be required to wear cameras have seen fit to name their proposal the "Mike Brown Law." (18)

It was perhaps natural for the White House, in the wake of Brown's death, to turn to body cameras as a solution. In a policy realm with few areas of agreement, body cameras are widely popular. A Pew Research Center poll conducted in December 2014 found that 87% of respondents thought body cameras were a good idea. (19) The support was bipartisan: 79% of Republicans, 90% of Democrats, and 88% of Independents favor the reform. (20) The numbers are similarly high among African American (90%), Hispanic (89%), and Caucasian (85%) respondents. (21) Notably, these figures come from a survey conducted in the days following the Staten Island grand jury's decision not to indict Daniel Pantaleo in Eric Garner's death, even though the episode was captured on video. Following the non-indictment, Garner's father told reporters that the White House's initiative was "[t]hrowing money away. Video didn't matter here." (22) But even after such a high-profile instance of video footage failing to secure an indictment, support for the body camera reform remained high. A poll conducted five months after Pantaleo's non-indictment found that 93% of Caucasian respondents and 93% of African American respondents favor putting video cameras on police officers. (23)

To those who feel that police officers too often get away with murder, body cameras promise to collect the evidence needed to hold police officers accountable. To those who feel that civil rights activists have jumped to conclusions too quickly in ambiguous cases, body cameras offer hard facts that could potentially exonerate officers falsely accused of misconduct. Indeed, despite initial resistance from police departments, (24) precincts that have adopted lapel cameras have largely come to embrace them as a much-needed deterrent to frivolous lawsuits. (25) Even the American Civil Liberties Union, normally an opponent of increased government surveillance, sees body cameras as a "win win." (26)

The current policy debate over body-worn cameras has highlighted numerous advantages and disadvantages of putting cameras on police officers. (27) Many proponents support body cameras because they believe the police will use unnecessary force less often if they know they are being recorded. (28) Indeed, promising results from a pilot program in Rialto, California found that body cameras were associated with a decrease in use of force. (29) In addition, footage from body-worn cameras provides new opportunities for police training and feedback. (30) Moreover, to law enforcement authorities who fear a growing crisis of legitimacy in their communities, body-worn cameras offer transparency and a way to restore public trust in the police. (31) The other side of the ledger, however, contains concerns about how body cameras will affect citizens' privacy; how the footage will be stored and maintained; and under what conditions the public will have access to the evidence. (32)

This Note does not attempt to provide an all-things-considered recommendation about whether body cameras amount to sound public policy. Rather, it assesses one salient argument that is frequently made in favor of body cameras: that they will reduce societal conflict and polarization by offering definitive proof of what happened.

Proponents of body cameras often argue that video footage can provide unambiguous records of police-civilian encounters. (33) For instance, when the New Jersey legislature approved a bill requiring local police to be filmed by in-car or body-worn cameras, the sponsor of the bill touted video footage as providing "an unbiased, accurate record [of] what transpired." (34) Video recordings of police interrogations of suspects, for their part, have been hailed as "ready and available as an objective offer of proof." (35) As Philadelphia Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey explained, "Everybody's got their version of a story, but when it's on tape, it's on tape.... It is what it is." (36)

But the assumption that video evidence will help resolve disputes over whether misconduct occurred will bear out only if fact finders reviewing the footage can agree on what it shows. (37) If they cannot agree--if, for example, they conform their perceptions of facts to their expectations or preferred outcomes--then cameras may fail to deliver on the promise of definitively resolving polarizing disputes.

This Note examines the potential for fact finders to evaluate even hard video evidence in biased ways while simultaneously becoming more confident that their judgments are unbiased. It argues that, in at least some cases, psychological factors can conspire to produce biased factual findings, even among viewers who are sincerely trying to evaluate the evidence fairly and impartially. In particular, it finds that video evidence remains susceptible to significant viewer bias and simultaneously causes some fact finders--namely those who feel a strong affinity with police officers--to become more certain of their judgments and more resistant to persuasion by others who disagree. It concludes that while...