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8 - Nonrecording and Officer Monitoring and Discipline Dilemmas

from Part III - Frameworks for Moving Forward

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 May 2019

Mary D. Fan
Affiliation:
University of Washington
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Summary

This chapter is about how to deal with failures to record by officers wearing body cameras and the overarching issue of whether to use police videos for officer monitoring and discipline. There are understandable reasons why officers may not activate their body cameras in the heat and stress of the moment or due to mistake or malfunction. But there also are challenges with resistance, subversion and selective recording. If the problem is left unchecked, rather than being a tool of police accountability, body camera recordings could amplify the problems of a perceived gross imbalance in power and public mistrust. Video recordings could just become yet another way to offer more powerful evidence to speed up a plea bargain or conviction. From a public safety perspective, there also is emerging evidence that uses of force actually increase among officers who wear body cameras but do not follow recording rules. Police departments vary in approaches on whether there are sanctions for failures to record and whether body camera videos can be a basis for officer monitoring, evaluation, and discipline. Police unions also can exert a powerful influence on these policies. The chapter explores how to address the missing police video problem.
Type
Chapter
Information
Camera Power
Proof, Policing, Privacy, and Audiovisual Big Data
, pp. 215 - 246
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2019

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