Policy Resource

The Tampa, Florida, Police Department provided an example of its Body Worn Camera Audit Form to assist agencies in implementing similar audit practices.

Objective: Provide an accurate performance assessment of departmental operations as they relate to defined standard operating procedures and policies.

The Quality Assurance Unit conducts monthly compliance reviews which include police reports, administrative documentation, logs, body worn cameras and site inspections for each district.  A detailed report is issued to each district for follow-up and corrections.

Video technology has been an important public safety tool for decades. From the earliest closed-circuit television (CCTV) systems in correctional facilities to in-dash cameras in police vehicles, video technology has been used to deter criminal behavior, document encounters or behaviors of interest, and to investigate and solve crimes. The current iteration of video technology in public safety is body-worn cameras (BWC). The use of BWCs dates back to 2005 when small-scale tests were conducted in police departments in the United Kingdom (Goodall, 2007).

This report serves as an addendum to our more extensive four-year policy analysis report. Refer to the larger report for a more detailed description of the methodology, selection of policy issues, and general policy trends. In this report, we explore whether there is variation in body-worn camera (BWC) policy positions across agencies of different sizes. For example, do departments with fewer than 25 officers address BWC policy issues such as activation and de-activation the way much larger agencies do?

This document helps law enforcement agencies develop strategies to engage their communities when deploying body-worn cameras (BWCs). This guidance builds on lessons learned from the BWC Training and Technical Assistance (TTA) Team’s work with hundreds of agencies. These agencies were funded through the Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA) BWC Policy and Implementation Program (PIP).

Contentious debate is currently taking place regarding the extent to which public scrutiny of the police post-Ferguson has led to depolicing or to a decrease in proactive policework. Advocates of the “Ferguson effect” claim the decline in proactive policing increased violent crime and assaults on the police. Although police body-worn cameras (BWCs) are touted as a police reform that can generate numerous benefits, they also represent a form of internal and public surveillance on the police.

In 2017, the Fairfax County (Virginia) Police Department, known as FCPD, decided to launch a pilot implementation of body-worn cameras (BWCs) to learn what the technology involved, the response of its officers to it, what community members and local organization leaders would think, and the changes in policing practices and outcomes that would occur. Some police agencies in the Metropolitan Washington, DC area had already adopted BWCs and there was a push nation-wide to implement them quickly in the face of numerous high-profile and controversial interactions between police and citizens.

Body-worn cameras (BWCs) have become a popular technology for use in police forces around the world; however, little is known about the effects of this technology on policing and on the criminal justice system more generally. In this article, we discuss reported benefits and limitations of body-worn cameras. We examine the current evidence-base for BWCs and the legislative framework in NSW.

Body-worn cameras provide officers with a reliable and compact tool to systematically and automatically record their field observations and encounters. They can be used for documentation purposes, to include interactions with victims, witnesses, and others during police-public encounters; arrests; and critical incidents. These documents provide items for agencies to consider when developing their own body-worn cameras programs.

To read the documents, click here.

The New Orleans, Louisiana, Police Department provided examples of its Stops, Searches, Arrests, Use of Force, and Procedural Justice Audit Form and Use of Force Reporting and Force Statements Audit Form to assist agencies interested in implementing similar audit and reporting practices. 

To view the New Orleans Stops, Searches, Arrests, Use of Force, and Procedural Justice Audit Form, click here.

As police departments across the United States embrace the use of police body-worn cameras (“BWCs”), it is imperative that prosecutors be involved in the uptake process as early as possible. The cameras will inevitably capture a great deal of evidentiary material that will be used in every type of criminal prosecution. Thus, systems and policies must be developed to ensure that this evidence is properly captured and delivered to the prosecutor in a timely and usable way.