Police Body-Worn Cameras: A Synthesis of the Literature

On August 9, 2014, in Ferguson, Missouri, police officer Darren Wilson encountered unarmed 18-year-old Michael Brown. Within two minutes, Brown was dead from multiple gunshots fired by Wilson. An initial witness statement reported that Wilson first shot Brown in the back while Brown was running away. Different reports say that Brown was then fatally shot with his hands in the air, or while on his knees surrendering, or while Wilson stood over him execution-style. However, Wilson’s statement was completely different; he said he shot Brown because he feared for his own life. Others corroborated Wilson’s account. Both the United States Department of Justice and the St. Louis County Police Department conducted thorough investigations and declared the shooting justifiable. Since 2014, activist and lawmakers have emphatically pushed for police reform, especially regarding the use of deadly force. Police departments, police reform activists, and then-President Barack Obama, among others, called for police officers to be outfitted with body-worn cameras, or “body cameras”. Body cameras have been touted as the answer to “How do we police the police?” Brucato (2015) documents several activists, legal scholars, journalists, and academic researchers who expect body cameras to increase the visibility of police action and thereby reduce use-of-force incidents and increase police accountability. President Obama pledged $263 million in federal funding to equip, train state and local law enforcement officers with 50,000 body cameras (Dann & Rafferty, 2014). Because a condition of the federal funding required law enforcement agencies to match the funds, more than half a billion dollars in taxpayer money has been invested in body camera programs. Law enforcement agencies worldwide are similarly implementing body camera systems. Police branches in Australia, for example, have committed millions of dollars to body camera programs. What is lacking, however, is empirical research whether these programs are effective. The use of body cameras in law enforcement is a relatively new technology. The first randomized controlled study was published in only 2015. Cubitt et al. (2017) noted a "considerable paucity of peer-reviewed articles" on body cameras and wrote that a majority of the current literature on body cameras was "methodologically weak". Ariel et al. (2017) also noted the lack of empirical evidence about body cameras' efficacy. Some police executives are seeking data to assist them in deciding whether to invest hundreds of thousands — or, for some departments, millions — of dollars of taxpayer money into body camera programs. Multiple police departments have conducted studies to determine if body camera programs should be pursued and, if so, which body camera companies should be awarded contracts. Other police executives are proceeding with body camera programs without regard to the scholarly research due to the urgent demand for more transparency in policing (McClure et al., 2017). Body-camera advocates may need to temper their expectations. Brucato (2015) discussed the “promise of accountability” that body cameras offer, but do body cameras deliver on this promise? Or do they deliver only a false sense of security? This paper consists of four sections. Section I lays a historical foundation. Section II discusses the theoretical framework for body cameras. Section III examines the existing scholarly literature on body cameras' influence on the application of force by the police. Section IV examines the existing scholarly literature on the number of citizen complaints received by law enforcement agencies after a body camera program was introduced.