Research Summary In this article, we provide the most comprehensive narrative review to date of the research evidence base for body‐worn cameras (BWCs). Seventy empirical studies of BWCs were examined covering the impact of cameras on officer behavior, officer perceptions, citizen behavior, citizen perceptions, police investigations, and police organizations. Although officers and citizens are generally supportive of BWC use, BWCs have not had statistically significant or consistent effects on most measures of officer and citizen behavior or citizens’ views of police. Expectations and concerns surrounding BWCs among police leaders and citizens have not yet been realized by and large in the ways anticipated by each. Additionally, despite the large growth in BWC research, there continues to be a lacuna of knowledge on the impact that BWCs have on police organizations and police–citizen relationships more generally. Policy Implications Regardless of the evidence‐base, BWCs have already rapidly diffused into law enforcement, and many agencies will continue to adopt them. Policy implications from available evidence are not clear‐cut, but most likely BWCs will not be an easy panacea for improving police performance, accountability, and relationships with citizens. To maximize the positive impacts of BWCs, police and researchers will need to give more attention to the ways and contexts (organizational and community) in which BWCs are most beneficial or harmful. They will also need to address how BWCs can be used in police training, management, and internal investigations to achieve more fundamental organizational changes with the long‐term potential to improve police performance, accountability, and legitimacy in the community.

What is the aim of this review? This Campbell systematic summarizes the evidence from 30 studies of the effects of BWCs on several officer and citizen behaviors. The majority of studies are from the United States. 1.2 | What is this review about? The last decade has been marked by the rapid adoption of BWCs by the police and a growing body of evaluation research on the technology's effects. Spurred on by high-profile officer-involved shooting incidents and protests, many citizens and community groups have supported the adoption of BWCs, hoping that this technology will deter police misconduct, better capture use-of-force events, and increase police accountability and transparency. At the same time, some police officers and community members have expressed concerns that BWCs might discourage citizens from reporting crimes or cause officers to pull back on preventative or proactive activities that may help prevent offending. This Campbell

We report the results of the only multi-wave survey of a large and geographically diverse sample of police agencies across the United States to understand the immediate impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on law enforcement. Findings indicate an unprecedented and sustained shift in both the supply of and demand for police services during that time. While overall calls for service (demand) tended to decline in most agencies, some experienced increases in specific categories of calls. During the early months of COVID, agencies also reduced their in-person response to calls for service, arrests, proactive policing, and community policing activities (supply). These findings indicate a substantial change in the public safety landscape during that time, which was experienced by agencies of all sizes and from all types of jurisdictions. We explore how public health pandemics can lead to substantial, immediate, and potentially sustained changes to police deployment and police-community interactions that may impact public safety goals.

The 2017 National Academies of Sciences (NAS) Committee and Report on Proactive Policing highlighted what we know about the effects of proactive policing practices on crime prevention and police–community relations. However, the evaluation evidence reviewed by the NAS, which largely comes from case studies of carefully managed proactive initiatives, does not provide a basis for estimating how extensively these practices are used or whether they are used in the most effective ways. Accordingly, it is unclear whether police proactivity as practiced on an everyday basis reflects optimal strategies and implementation methods as recommended by the NAS. This study addresses this knowledge gap by analyzing almost 2 million computer-aided dispatch records from four agencies and systematically observing 84 officers for more than 180 hours to better understand the empirical realities of police proactivity. The findings indicate a major difference between the types of proactive interventions supported by research and the practice of everyday police proactivity. Specifically, proactive policing practices are limited in scope and are often implemented in less than optimal ways. A large proportion of proactive activities are also not recorded, rewarded, or supervised, indicating that patrol commanders may have little control over, or awareness of, proactive deployment. From an evidence-based policing perspective, much more effort is needed to record and track proactivity to measure its impacts (both positive and negative) and align it with what we now know about effective proactive activity from research.

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