The use of cameras by police departments — whether body-mounted or on automobile dashboards — has become much more common in just the past few years. Now, some cities and towns — including Williams, Arizona — are testing gun-mounted cameras as an innovation.Will they be more effective? What are the concerns and possible pitfalls? Listen as Michael White, professor in the School of Criminology and Criminal Justice at ASU, talks about these questions.
With the implementation of BWCs across the country increasing rapidly, there has been little attention devoted to the deployment of BWCs by small agencies, and as a result, our understanding of the challenges of cameras in the small agency context is limited. In order to better understand how BWCs affect small agencies, researchers at Arizona State University conducted a multi-state survey of small law enforcement agency executives. The survey, which was administered via the online survey platform Qualtrics, was sent to all jurisdictions with a population of 8,000 or more in 26 states.
Many community stakeholders and criminal justice leaders have suggested placing body-worn cameras (BWCs) on police officers improves the civility of police-citizen encounters and enhances citizen perceptions of police transparency and legitimacy. In response, many police departments have adopted this technology to improve the quality of policing in their communities. However, the existing evaluation evidence on the intended and unintended consequences of outfitting police officers with BWCs is still developing.
On June 25, 2017, Cheif Ed Book of Santa Fe College and First Sergeant Robert Bleyle of Syracuse University, delivered a presentation on the implementation of body-worn cameras at the IACLEA 59th Annual Conference & Exposition in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The presentation shared the ins and outs of how to implement a BWC program, including a focus on grant application, policy, equipment, and storage. The speakers also highlighted the resources and sample documents to help ensure alignment with best federal practices.
The Center for Violence Prevention and Community Safety at Arizona State University (ASU) has developed this facilitator’s guide and accompanying training slides as a resource for law enforcement agencies seeking to develop or modify their body‐worn camera (BWC) training programs. These training materials should be used only as reference documents for agencies developing and deploying BWCs. They are intended to provide guidance and are not designed for yearly continuing training or academy use.
Implementing body-worn cameras in a police agency has an impact on virtually every key aspect of police operations, including training, investigations, community relations, resource allocation, and more. With the growing adoption of body-worn cameras, the need for effective law enforcement training is paramount to help ensure that officers have the necessary knowledge and tools to confront the difficult tasks they encounter on a daily basis. The following considerations and resources will serve as helpful information in support of this challenge.
This article provides a commentary of Northamptonshire Police’s 10 year body-worn video (BWV) journey from a small pilot in 2006 to a highly developed position whereby BWV is culturally accepted and embedded across the force (with the exception of firearms officers). The availability of digital evidence is increasing and is growing in significance, and this brings with it a number of challenges.
Research on body-worn cameras (BWC) has tended, through evaluations or randomized controlled trials, to look to demonstrate some assumed benefit or consequence of the use of BWC. This article is concerned with the ways in which police officers use and talk about BWC and draw on ethnographic research over the past 30 months in one force as it rolled out the use of cameras. BWC have become a useful tool in the array of those available to officers. At the same time, they come with some downsides.
This document is an updated version of CAST’s Body-Worn Video Technical Guidance published in May 2014. It not only reflects the improvements in BWV technology, but is also influenced by the experience of UK police forces committed to large scale deployment of BWV devices and through consultation with industry. Not only is this guidance designed to assist police forces when procuring and deploying BWV devices, but also to enable industry in understanding the often unique technical functionality required by the police.
The aim of this document is to provide a practical understanding on the wide range of information that Body Worn Video (BWV) devices are able to capture and what safeguards can be implemented to avoid losing this data.
