Why did the use of force go up? Investigating the unexpected impact of a body-worn camera program on a use of force time series
Introduction
The high-profile deaths of several unarmed people of color by police officers have placed a national spotlight on the use of excessive force and accountability for these actions. These incidents have provided a tragic catalyst for a contemporary crisis in police legitimacy (Kochel, 2019a, Kochel, 2019b; Madon, Murphy, & Sargeant, 2017; Sparrow, 2016). One of the leading policy proposals in the United States to provide increased accountability for use of force incidents was the adoption of body worn cameras (BWCs) (see President's Task Force on 21st Century Policing, 2015). The ambiguity surrounding police-civilian encounters presents challenges to providing clear accounts of these incidents and BWCs could help make sense of what happened from a more objective perspective. BWCs were presented as a tool to not just provide increased accountability in cases of use of force, but also broader transparency of policing practices in communities (Sousa, Miethe, & Sakiyama, 2018). This strategy was quickly embraced by several agencies in the United States, whereby almost half of general-purpose law enforcement agencies had adopted BWCs in the United States by 2016 (Hyland, 2018). In general, both the public and police officers hold positive perceptions of BWC technology (Ready & Young, 2015; Saulnier, Lahay, McCarty, & Sanders, 2020).
Despite the large amount of research which followed the implementation of these programs, there still is much to learn about the impact of BWCs (see Miller & Toliver, 2014). The most consistent findings surround the impact of BWCs on civilian complaints. Most studies suggest BWCs provide a statistically significant reduction of civilian complaints (see e.g., Ariel, Farrar, & Sutherland, 2015; Braga, Sousa, Coldren Jr, & Rodriguez, 2018; Katz, Kurtenbach, Choate, & White, 2015). Research on use of force incidents is more mixed with some evaluations observing reductions and others noting no effect (Lum et al., 2020). Therefore, continued investigation of these programs is necessary to further understand the impacts of BWCs, especially the nuances of how BWC programs develop over extended periods of time. With BWCs becoming a more commonplace technology in jurisdictions there is a possibility individual's behavior adjusts over time with this increased familiarity. In addition, there is little understanding of how both use of force and civilian complaint trends were impacted by the rapid succession of major social disruptions and civil unrest which occurred at the start of the 2020s. These events most notably include the COVID-19 pandemic and international protests surrounding the death of George Floyd. This presents a unique confluence of factors where some agencies deployed BWC programs not too long before these historic events.
This study provides another evaluation to the broader literature on BWC with a focus on understanding the long-term effects of BWC programs and the general impact of this disruptive period on these trends. We use an interrupted time series research design to determine the impact of the implementation of a BWC program on both use of force and civilian complaints trends. These time series were composed of 105 observations of monthly counts from January 2013 to September 2021 for a large southeastern police department. Our findings indicate an increase in the use of force after BWC implementation. This increase is not observed with civilian complaints and remains statistically significant after controlling for other confounding factors. These results are outliers compared to the broader literature on BWC. The BWC-intervention effect was robust after accounting for observations from the final 16 months of the time series which were characterized by pronounced social and civil disruptions. This period was associated with another statistically significant increase in use of force incidents above and beyond the program effect. Overall, this study presents a distinct contribution which expands the possibilities regarding the impact of BWC on use of force and provides preliminary insight into the influence of these current events on use of force trends. Why did the use of force go up? These unique findings lead to an extended discussion on the possible explanations for this mystery and the implications for the broader literature on the police use of force.
Section snippets
Theoretical perspectives
In general, scholars often draw upon the theoretical traditions of self-awareness (Wicklund, 1975), socially desirable responding (Paulhus, 1984), and deterrence theory (Nagin, 2013a) to explore the effects of BWCs on individual's behavior. From the officer's perspective, these theories explain why BWCs could reduce the use of force due to the increase of officers perceived risk of detection (Ariel et al., 2015). Officers may behave more compassionately towards civilians since they are being
Research design
We used an interrupted time series design to evaluate the long-term impact of a BWC program on use of force and civilian complaint trends. Specifically, this research design is a one group, quasi-experimental time series (Shadish, Cook, & Campbell, 2002). The police department we studied decided to deploy body-worn cameras to all patrol officers at once. This provided a distinct break within the time series which is critical for interrupted time series research design to demarcate a pre- and
Findings
Fig. 1 presents the use of force trend over the 105-month observation period. The first vertical line represents the interruption of the BWC program. Based upon a visual inspection there is a noticeable increase in the number of use-of-force incidents after the implementation of the BWC program. Specifically, a sharp increase during the first year which remained consistent across the next two years until the early 2020. There is also a precipitous increase towards the end of the period. This
Discussion
The findings from our interrupted time series analyses suggest we can believe our own eyes regarding the increase in use of force incidents over the observation period. These results indicate the increase in use of force incidents over the second half of the observation period was not the byproduct of other confounding influences but instead a unique pattern (see Fig. 1). We found the implementation of a BWC program was associated with a statistically significant increase in use of force
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