Police culture and officers' receptivity to body-worn cameras: a panel study

Abstract

PurposeThe objectives of this research were to examine how officer perspectives on body-worn cameras (BWCs) are patterned by broader occupational attitudes, and to analyze stability and change in officers' attitudes toward BWCs before and after the deployment of the technology.Design/methodology/approachThe authors analyze panel survey data on individual officers in the Albany (New York) Police Department (APD).FindingsPre-BWC deployment, officers varied in their occupational attitudes and BWC perspectives, and the officers' BWC outlooks bore relationships to several occupational attitudes. BWC outlooks were largely stable following deployment. Individual changes in BWC perspectives were related to officers' assignments and unrelated to officers' occupational attitudes.Originality/valueThe authors use panel survey data to test hypotheses about the effect of broad occupational attitudes on officers' receptivity to BWCs and to analyze change pre-/post-BWC deployment.

Guest editorial: Reexamining the police culture

“…department fairness, job satisfaction). At the same time, the documented variation in the attitudes across the police hierarchy and types of assignments (Cochran and Worden, 2023) reaffirms the argument that police culture is not monolithic (e.g. Manning, 1995;Paoline and Terrill, 2014;Reuss-Ianni, 1983;Walker and Katz, 2018).…”

“…Nalla et al (2023) report that officers’ self-legitimacy—police officers’ confidence in their own authority—is positively associated with a greater severity of COVID-19 punishments. Like Cochran and Worden (2023), Nalla et al (2023) find that the police officers’ attitudes, in this case about punishment severity, varied by their assignment type. In sync with the COVID-19 extant literature (Kutnjak Ivković et al ., 2022), the analyses in the paper by Nalla et al (2023) reveal that the concern for family members’ health has a stronger influence on their attitudes than the concern for their own health.…”

“…National Institute of Justice, 2022), learning about the factors influencing officer receptivity to their deployment is critical. The results of the Cochran and Worden’s study (2023) indicate that the introduction of body-worn cameras did not seriously affect police officers’ occupational attitudes (e.g. department fairness, job satisfaction).…”

“…On the topic of technology, another paper in this special issue by Cochran and Worden (2023) examines the degree to which police officers’ attitudes changed after the body-worn cameras were introduced in a US police agency. At the time at which about one-half of the state and local police agencies in the USA already have body-worn cameras (Heyland, 2018) and the evidence on their effectiveness is mixed (e.g.…”

“…Donner and Maskály, 2023), that the internal environment matters (e.g. Cochran and Worden, 2023; Hacin and Meško, 2022; Nam, 2023; Orosco and Gaub, 2023; Paoline and Gau, 2023; Patterson and King, 2023; Peacock et al ., 2023a; Wu et al ., 2023), and that external environments matter as well (e.g. Amagnya, 2023; Peacock et al ., 2023b; Wu, 2023; Wu et al ., 2023).…”