Body camera footage leads to lower judgments of intent than dash camera footage

Now more than ever, body cameras, surveillance footage, dash-cam footage, and bystanders with phones enable people to see for themselves officer and civilian behavior and determine the justifiability of officers' actions. This paper examines whether the camera perspective from which people watch police encounters influences the conclusions that people draw. Consistent with recent findings showing that body camera footage leads people to perceive officers' actions as less intentional (Turner, Caruso, Dilich, & Roese, 2019), our first study demonstrates that participants who watched body-camera footage, compared with people who watched surveillance footage of the same encounter, perceived the officer's behavior as being more justified and made more lenient punishment decisions. In our second study, only one of the four police encounters that participants watched led participants to perceive the officer more favorably when they watched body-camera footage compared with bystander footage. Our results demonstrate that some body-camera footage-specifically videos that capture an officer using his or her body to apprehend a civilian-can lead to biased perceptions of police encounters that benefit the officer. Our findings suggest that this occurs because:(i) in body-camera footage, the civilian is the more easily visible figure, thus making less salient the officer's role in the encounter; and (ii) the body camera-attached to an officer's uniform-is unable to adequately capture certain use of force movements that are important in determining an officer's intent.

Section: Discussioncontrasting

confidence: 99%

Section: Discussioncontrasting

confidence: 99%

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 93%

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 84%

Section: Resultssupporting

confidence: 75%

See 3 more Smart Citations

Look there! The effect of perspective, attention, and instructions on how people understand recorded police encounters

Jones

Crozier

Strange

2019

The effects of body‐worn camera footage and eyewitness race on jurors' perceptions of police use of force

Saulnier

Burke

Bottoms

2019

Police use of body‐worn cameras (BWCs) is increasingly common in the USA. This article reports the results of one of the first experimental examinations of the effects of three BWC status conditions (absent, transcribed, viewed) and eyewitness race (Black, White) on mock jurors' case judgments, in a case in which a community member (defendant) was charged with resisting arrest but where the officer's use of force in conducting the arrest was controversial. Results provide evidence of significant main effects of both eyewitness race and BWC status. When the eyewitness supporting the defendant was White, mock jurors were less likely to vote the defendant guilty of resisting arrest, as well as more likely to consider the defendant credible and the officer culpable for the incident. In addition, when BWC footage of the arrest was viewed, compared with transcribed or absent, participants were less likely to vote the defendant guilty of resisting arrest, and also rated the officer's use of force less justifiable, and the officer more culpable and less credible. Follow‐up analyses demonstrated that these relationships between BWC condition and case judgments were all mediated by moral outrage toward the officer.

What do you see? Understanding perceptions of police use of force videos as a function of the camera perspective

Korva

Bennell

Lalumière

et al. 2022

Some research suggests that video-recorded police incidents may be subject to a camera perspective bias. This study examined whether the camera angle of a recorded police use of force encounter influenced interpretation of the video. Participants (n = 330) viewed a video-recorded simulated use of force scenario in one of four camera angle conditions (body worn camera, bystander camera, security camera, all three camera angles), and then rated the conduct of the police officer and the subject. Participants' attitudes towards the police and legal system were also examined.Results indicated that camera angle did not directly impact viewers' judgment of the scenario, but pre-existing biases about the police guided their interpretations of certain camera angles. Importantly, however, this was not the case for those who viewed the body worn camera angle. These results help us understand the implications of relying on video recordings of police incidents.