As a criminal defense firm, it’s no surprise that we’re in favor of police body cameras. The fact of the matter is, when it comes down to a he-said, she-said argument, a judge or jury is going to inherently trust the word of a police officer over that of a suspected criminal every day of the week. The problem is that police officers don’t always tell the truth, or more often they are pretty selective about what does and doesn’t get included in the official report.
Police body cameras can solve that problem by putting a neutral party on the scene. Interestingly though, a new study suggests that the presence of a police body camera may have some unintended consequences. According to new research, the rates of assault against police officers wearing body cameras were much high than non-equipped officers.
Assaults and Police Body Cameras
In the largest study to date on police body cameras here in the US and in the UK, researchers found that the presence of a body camera actually increased the likelihood that an officer would be assaulted. After looking at the data, researchers found that the presence of a police body camera did not change the rate of use-of-force by officers, but it did lead to a 15 percent increased likelihood that the officer would be assaulted by a person of interest.
“We sought to replicate [similar body camera] studies, adding assaults against police officers as an additional outcome,” the researchers wrote. “Contrary to expectations, assaults against officers were higher when cameras were used.”
Researchers noted that the study only proved correlation, not causation, and they hypothesized that in some instances, the same amount of assaults against officers are occurring, only police feel more comfortable reporting the incident because of the presence of video evidence. They concluded by saying more research into the devices and their implementation into police forces is necessary.
“More attention should be paid to how these devices are implemented,” the researchers concluded. “Likewise, since other public-facing organizations are considering equipping their staff with (body worn video) (e.g. firefighters, private security, traffic wardens), the findings on risks associated with (body worn video) are transferable to those occupations as well.”
