NYPD officer models body camera. (photo: Shannon Stapleton/Reuters)
Police
Body Camera Use - Not a Pretty Picture
By Larry Greenemeier,
Scientific American
04 August 16
A new study finds flaws in the policies governing how officers use
wearable cameras
At
a time when police across the U.S. are being watched warily by the citizens
they serve, many departments are embracing wearable cameras to
document their interactions with the public. Police and rights activists alike
had hoped recording incidents on patrol would help discourage violence against
officers as well as increase transparency in how police treat citizens. But a
report released this week questions how much law enforcement agencies are
telling the public about the use of the cameras—and the footage they collect.
The
latest body-worn camera scorecard from the The
Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, working with
technology and policy consulting firm Upturn, examined 50 U.S.
police departments and pronounced them lacking in most of the study’s eight
criteria. These benchmarks include how well police protect the privacy of those
they record, whether officers are allowed to review footage before filing their
reports, how long the footage is retained and whether civilians can view
footage in which they appear. A number of civil rights organizations, privacy
advocates and media outlets developed the criteria in May 2015
to influence how departments implement and use the technology.
None
of the departments got a passing grade in all categories. In fact only 13
passed muster in more than two areas, according to Wade Henderson, president
and CEO of The Leadership Conference, a civil rights umbrella group formed in
1950 to represent a number of organizations including the NAACP and ACLU.
Police departments in Ferguson, Mo., and Fresno, Calif., failed to satisfy any
of the criteria at all. Ferguson drew the world’s attention two years ago when
police there fatally shot unarmed African-American teenager Michael Brown,
leading to nationwide controversy over the way law enforcement treats
minorities.
Civil
rights groups are also concerned that biometric software with
facial-recognition capabilities could be used to identify people in camera
footage, and the scorecard’s eighth point grades departmental camera policies
based on whether they call for limits on biometrics use. The technology needed
to immediately recognize individuals on camera requires a combination of
processing power, algorithms and camera battery life that does not yet
exist—but that could change quickly as Taser International and other
body-camera makers develop live-streaming capabilities.
And facial recognition of stored images already exists.
Civil
rights groups fear police will use cameras as sweeping surveillance equipment
while patrolling minority neighborhoods, Henderson said at a press conference.
Some departments have responded to these concerns by imposing rules to limit
streaming facial-recognition technology—before it becomes available. The
Baltimore Police Department was the only one in last year’s inaugural
Leadership Conference scorecard whose policy already constrains biometric
searches of footage. The Conference’s latest scorecard shows that police in
Baltimore County, Boston, Cincinnati, Montgomery County, Md., and Parker,
Colo., have all added biometrics limitations as well.
“The
use of biometrics is going to be a big issue—and not in the too-distant
future,” says James Coldren, managing
director for justice programs at the CNA Institute for Public Research, a
nonprofit research and analysis organization. “It’s like anything else.
Biometrics can create problems if it’s not regulated or monitored and people
with bad intentions use it that way.” Coldren and William Sousa, director of the Center for Crime
and Justice Policy at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, are leading a study
of the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department’s body-worn camera pilot program. They were
not involved with the Leadership Conference study but have found through their
research that, after some initial resistance, police departments are welcoming
body-worn cameras. “[In Las Vegas] the department found that the videos are
good for the innocent and bad for the guilty,” Coldren says.
Regardless
of what the future holds, other issues are more pressing than biometrics, says Michael White, a professor of criminology at
Arizona State University who has assessed body-worn cameras for the U.S.
Department of Justice (DoJ). “I have heard some talk about potential [uses of
biometrics] but I don't know of any agencies moving quickly in that direction
right now.” Of the criteria that the Leadership Conference focuses on, the most
significant involve when officers record and how they protect subjects’
privacy—particularly that of crime victims. Such privacy concerns have surfaced
as some departments create YouTube channels for
their footage.
Many
departments cite cost as a barrier to using the technology. The cameras
themselves can range in price from $300 to $800 per officer,
with hundreds of thousands of dollars more spent on monthly video storage over
time. The costs are easy to calculate: hardware, training and data storage.
Savings such as reduced lawsuits or less contentious community relations,
however, are not so easy to quantify, says White, co-director of a team that
trains and assists a variety of law enforcement agencies whose camera programs
are funded by the DoJ’s Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA) Pilot Implementation Program.
But White thinks at least some of the costs will be offset. “Some large police
departments routinely pay out $10 million or more annually in civil
litigation,” he says. “If body-worn cameras reduce that figure, that is a huge
positive.”
The
BJA uses its own scorecard to evaluate departmental camera policies using 17
criteria mandatory for funding, including whether officers are instructed on when
they have to activate their body cameras and how to securely download the
footage to department computers. There is a good reason these policies are
receiving such scrutiny: The BJA has already shelled out more than $19 million
to 73 agencies nationwide to buy wearable camera systems.
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