Body-Worn Cameras and Adjudication of Citizen Complaints of Police Misconduct

Çubukçu, Suat; Sahin, Nusret M.; Tekin, Erdal; Topalli, Volkan

doi:10.3386/w29019

Cited by 5 publications

(1 citation statement)

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“…By contrast, when an agency acquires bodycams to attain procedural accountability, officers are likely to become more careful and cautious when taking actions (Headley et al., 2017; Wallace et al., 2018), such as to avoid legal disputes in the future (Hedberg et al., 2017). This is reasonable since video recordings produce less controvertible, objective documentation of officer misconduct (Çubukçu et al., 2021). For many agencies, in practice, these opposing rationales may coexist and compete in similar terms, which makes it difficult to hypothesize the behavioral effects of body‐worn cameras.…”

Section: Dichotomous Demands Over Street‐level Behaviors: An Applicat...mentioning

confidence: 99%

How does technology‐based monitoring affect street‐level bureaucrats' behavior? An analysis of body‐worn cameras and police actions

Kang

2023

J Policy Anal Manage

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Body‐worn cameras may produce varying effects on police behavior, depending on the agency‐specific accountability context in which the technology adoption is embedded. The cameras may encourage coercive police actions when acquired to incentivize performance, such as by protecting officers from false complaints. By contrast, when acquired to enhance procedural accountability, such as by enabling closer scrutiny of officer misconduct, the cameras may discourage coercive police actions. Based on this framework, this study examined the case of the New Orleans Police Department, an agency that implemented a body‐worn camera program to enhance both performance and procedural accountability. Results of Bayesian structural time‐series modeling with synthetic control show that the program increased the number of investigatory stops and follow‐up measures (i.e., frisk, search, citation, arrest) while decreasing the ratio of more‐to‐less coercive measures during stops (i.e., arrest/citation‐to‐warning ratio and search‐to‐frisk ratio). However, the program had a null effect on the minority‐to‐White suspect ratio, despite the agency's bias‐free policing initiative. The percentage of frisks and searches detecting drugs or weapons also declined. A broader implication of the findings is that technology‐based monitoring mechanisms are important, but not a silver bullet for improving the behavior of street‐level bureaucrats.

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