Understanding the Impact of Police Body-Worn Cameras on Virginia Public Defenders

Understanding the Impact of Police Body-Worn Cameras on Virginia Public Defenders

Source

University of North Carolina at Charlotte (2019)

Authors

Janne E. Gaub, Carolyn Naoroz, and Aili Malm

In the past five years, body-worn cameras (BWCs) have disseminated widely and rapidly to police departments across the United States (White & Malm, 2020). In 2013, only one-third of agencies had some form of BWC program, most of which were small-scale pilot programs of the relatively new technology (Reaves, 2015). By 2016, about half of agencies had BWCs, including nearly 80% of large agencies (more than 500 sworn personnel) (Hyland, 2018). The push for BWCs came at a time when there was a severe dearth of research from which to draw guidance or best practices. In 2014, at the time of the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, there were only five published studies or agency reports documenting findings related to the impacts of BWCs (White, 2014). The number of rigorous assessments had reached more than 70 by March 2019 (Lum, Stoltz, Koper, Scherer, & Scherer, 2019) and continues to grow.

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