Annotated Bibliography
Chapman, B. (2018). Body-worn cameras: What the evidence tells us. National Institute of Justice, December.
This article by Chapman explains the impact of body-worn cameras and the pieces of evidence on the application of these cameras. The article is significant to the topic since it provides a clear view of the effects of police wearing body cameras. Recent civil disturbances around the United States have highlighted the continued issues in preserving the public’s views of law enforcement credibility, particularly regarding using force. Body-worn cameras have been proposed as one solution to these problems and enhance law enforcement practice. When used by cops on patrol or other responsibilities that put them in touch with people of the community, the device, which can be installed on an officer’s spectacles or chest region, provides real-time information. Another advantage of body-worn cameras is that they give law enforcement a surveillance device that promotes officer safety and efficiency while preventing crime.
Demir, M., Apel, R., Braga, A. A., Brunson, R. K., & Ariel, B. (2020). Body worn cameras, procedural justice, and police legitimacy: A controlled experimental evaluation of traffic stops. Justice quarterly, 37(1), 53-84.
This story appeared in the November 2014 issue of The Nation. It is still useful in presenting why indicting police personnel is tough. The article includes FBI statistics on police homicide rates, which are not an exhaustive list of all killings because they are based on “voluntary submissions” from police stations. It means that not all killings are reported to the FBI, at least for record-keeping purposes, which is remarkable considering that they occur at the hands of police personnel. This essay also demonstrates that convicting a police officer of a crime (of police brutality) is exceedingly difficult due to the legitimacy of police “subjective snap judgments.” This article will help clarify how police officers are treated unfairly when accused of abusing and violating civil rights.
Demir, M., Braga, A. A., & Apel, R. (2020). Effects of police body‐worn cameras on citizen compliance and cooperation: Findings from a quasi‐randomized controlled trial. Criminology & public policy, 19(3), 855-882.
The source contains information gleaned from the study conducted when a certain city in California disseminated police body cams. They based their decisions on evidence rather than opinion. Yes, their arguments are valid and well-founded. There is no proof in their piece that one may think was false. Their assumptions are logical and unbiased. This source is relevant to my research since it discusses how body cameras affect behavior for the better. It benefits the community and law enforcement, which I feel is critical.
Fan, M. D. (2018). Body cameras, big data, and police accountability. Law & social inquiry, 43(4), 1236-1256.
Although this essay was written several years back, the information it contains regarding police brutality in the United States is still highly pertinent to the current culture. One of the most striking aspects of the essay is a “joint public evaluation” issued by ten urban police chiefs in 1992, which indicates that “the issue of deadly force in American policing is genuine.” The article discusses how difficult it is to make a case against an event of police misconduct due to a lack of evidence and how the current usage of cell phone cameras and social media platforms may have made it easier to submit proof of police misbehaviour or violence.
Hyland, S. (2018). Body-worn cameras in law enforcement agencies, 2016. Washington, DC: US Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, Bureau of Justice Statistics.
The authors adopt a rigorous controlled quasi-experimental design in this study to assess if putting BWCs on cops during traffic stops affects pulled-over motorists’ views of procedural fairness in Turkey’s Eskisehir Province. The Turkish National Police (TNP), like police forces in the United States, experienced a legitimacy problem due to complaints about police officer conduct. The article is significant since it opens a brief survey of police legitimacy and procedural fairness literature. Theoretical perspectives on the mechanisms proposed by BWCs to influence police and civilian behavior during interactions and empirical information on BWC impacts are provided.
Louis, E. S., Saulnier, A., & Walby, K. (2019). Police use of body-worn cameras: Challenges of visibility, procedural justice, and legitimacy. Surveillance & Society, 17(3/4), 305-321.
Recent issues in the United States of America regarding police use of force have focused on police in Western countries. Concerns that police action is discriminatory and procedurally unfair have fueled the popular perception that police accountability must be enforced outside. Body-worn cameras are one such accountability method (BWCs). According to optimistic descriptions of BWCs, the technology will help strengthen community-police interactions. However, BWCs address the outcomes of bad community-police interactions rather than the causes. We contend that the increasing visibility of police-related to BWCs is a double-edged sword and that the use of surveillance technology such as BWCs in the drive to enhance community-police relations will fail unless a concurrent commitment to inclusionary policing tactics is made, such as community policing strategies, community and social development, and local democracy. We propose two strategies that maximize BWCs by encouraging these concurrent commitments.
Lum, C., Koper, C. S., Wilson, D. B., Stoltz, M., Goodier, M., Eggins, E., … & Mazerolle, L. (2020). Body-worn cameras’ effects on police officers and citizen behavior: A systematic review. Campbell Systematic Reviews, 16(3), Article-number.
In the recent decade, law enforcement agencies have swiftly implemented BWCs in the belief that they will enhance police conduct, accountability, and openness, particularly regarding the use of force. Overall, there is much ambiguity regarding whether BWCs may reduce police use of force, although the variance in results shows that BWCs may be helpful in some circumstances. BWCs do not affect other police consistently and civilian behaviours, such as officers’ self-initiated actions or arrest behaviours, sent calls for assistance, or attacks and resistance against police officers. Although BWCs have been shown to lower the frequency of citizen complaints against police officers, it is unclear if this result indicates an increase in the quality of police-citizen interactions or a shift in reporting.
Peterson, B. E., & Lawrence, D. S. (2019). Body cameras and policing. In Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Criminology and Criminal Justice.
BWCs are related to several legal and ethical questions, including their consequences for privacy concerns and public exposure. However, police officers, lawmakers, civil rights organizations, and the general public must continue to balance privacy concerns with the potential for BWCs to improve police accountability and openness. Future research should concentrate on how BWCs may strengthen police-community relations while yielding useful evidence for criminal prosecutions and internal inquiries.
Yokum, D., Ravishankar, A., & Coppock, A. (2019). A randomized control trial evaluating the effects of police body-worn cameras. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 116(21), 10329-10332.
Police body-worn cameras (BWCs) have been extensively touted as a technological method to improve policing and police and judicial institutions’ perceived legitimacy; however, proof of their usefulness is lacking. We performed a randomized controlled experiment with 2,224 Metropolitan Police Service officers in Washington, DC, to determine the impact of BWCs. We show that BWCs have minor and statistically negligible effects on police use of force, citizen complaints, other policing actions, and court results. These findings imply that we should revise our expectations of BWCs’ potential to generate large-scale behaviour patterns in policing, especially in the circumstances comparable to Washington, DC.
Zamoff, M. (2019). Assessing the impact of police body camera evidence on the litigation of excessive force cases. Ga. L. Rev., 54, 1.
Not all force reactions are the same. Is there a reduction in the frequency and intensity of use of force after BWCs are implemented in police operations? This question of the impact of BWCs on the use of force necessitates a thorough examination of the forms of force that officers are more likely, or less likely, to employ when BWCs are present. Variations in outcome are yet unknown. On the one hand, BWCs may impact the degree of force used by the police. It means that BWCs have an impact on all types of force. BWCs, on the other hand, may influence the lower bands of what is known as the “force continuum.” The article describes the impact of police body-worn cameras as an answer to the usage of BWCs.
Outline
Introduction
The introduction section will provide a general view of the paper. The capacity of law enforcement to combat crime effectively is still dependent on the public’s view of the legitimacy of officers’ activities. A series of recent civil disturbances around the United States have highlighted the continued issues in preserving the public’s perceptions of police departments’ legitimacy, especially concerning the use of force (Demir et al., 2020). Body-worn cameras have been proposed as one solution to these problems and enhance law enforcement practice. Therefore, it is crucial to discuss the influence of body-worn cameras on the perception of the public on the police services focusing on police brutality.
The positive Influence of Police Body-worn Cameras
Improved transparency. Body-worn cameras may promote openness and accountability, and hence law enforcement credibility. There is a lack of trust and faith in police enforcement in many areas (Chapman, 2018). This lack of confidence is worsened by questions regarding confrontations between officers and people of the community, which frequently entail the use of fatal or less-lethal force.
Security agencies’ growing usage of body-worn cameras has surpassed the corpus of studies investigating the link between technology and law enforcement results (Fan, 2018). Although early studies of this technology had shortcomings, some significant recent research has helped expand our understanding of the effect of body-worn cameras, as discussed below.
Conclusion
According to current studies, body-worn cameras may be beneficial to police enforcement. However, further study is required to determine the technology’s utility in the area. A series of recent civil disturbances around the United States have highlighted the continued issues in preserving the public’s perceptions of law enforcement legitimacy, particularly regarding the use of force.