The Pennsylvania Commission on Crime and Delinquency (PCCD) is statutorily authorized to undertake criminal and juvenile justice planning, coordination, and policy analysis. PCCD consists of FY2018 and FY2019 BWCPIP grantees, with over 100 agencies within PCCD having received funding to date.
Nearly all scholarship on body-worn cameras (BWCs) has focused on municipal police departments, as they comprise a majority of sworn agencies. Given the unique environment of collegiate law enforcement agencies, however, it is possible that their paths to BWCs—and the benefits and challenges they experience—vary from that of more traditional agencies. Using a survey of 126 collegiate police departments and in-depth interviews with 15 collegiate police executives, this study describes their goals, challenges, and benefits related to BWCs.
Two challenging aspects of implementing or expanding a body-worn camera (BWC) program are ensuring projecting staffing is sufficient to support the program as well as anticipating the impacts on existing staff. Several variables make staffing challenging—some of which an agency can control while others are imposed. Ideally, agencies could simply use a staffing formula based on deployed BWC units, but the complexity of BWC issues makes that impractical.
Many people know Wichita, Kansas, as the “air capital of the world,” or as the birthplace of both White Castle and Pizza Hut. Wyatt Earp also worked as a Wichita police officer long before the famed 1881 shootout at the O.K. Corral in Tombstone, Arizona. More recently, we recognize Wichita as an early adopter and innovator of police body-worn cameras (BWCs).
Body-worn cameras can’t replace an officer’s perceptions, but they can be extraordinarily valuable when they confirm the presence of weapons, capture resistance, and verify de-escalation attempts. What’s more, it is expected that the presence of cameras encourages people on both sides of the lens to be the best version of themselves as they interact.
Body-worn cameras (BWCs) have been presented as a technological innovation to cultivate greater civility in police–citizen interactions. Attempts have been made to clarify the impact of BWCs upon various policing outcomes, but the effects of BWCs on assaults against police has received scant research attention. Existing studies have been limited to a handful of jurisdictions with limited generalizability to a broader range of police organizations.
Park City, Utah, is known for its beautiful alpine scenery, its magnificent skiing, and as host of the Sundance Film Festival, but it was also one of the first US jurisdictions to implement body worn cameras (BWCs). In 2013, the Park City Police Department (PCPD) decided BWCs might help its officers better serve their 8,000 full-time residents and the 100,000 tourists that descend on the city during peak season. They were right—after BWCs were deployed, uses of force dropped by 42 percent and complaints declined drastically. According to the city prosecutor, the courts also benefited.
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).
In only five years, both the implementation of police body-worn cameras (BWCs) and
the evidence base evaluating the technology has diffused at a breakneck pace. As the
number of studies has increased, so too has the uncertainty surrounding BWCs and
their impact on various outcomes. In this commentary, we bring together the differing
viewpoints on the five existing summaries of the BWC literature, highlight the key
sources of contention, and make recommendations for BWC scholars and consumers
moving forward.
