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Body-Worn Cameras in the Post-Ferguson Era: An Exploration of Law Enforcement Perspectives

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Abstract

In the aftermath of Michael Brown’s death in Ferguson, Missouri, confidence in police has weakened. Body-worn cameras (BWCs) are perceived to increase law enforcement transparency and accountability, and, by proxy, restore law enforcement legitimacy. Though the empirical status of BWCs has grown in recent years, missing from these accounts are the actual words and narratives of officers. Through a qualitative approach, the data and analysis within this paper overcome this issue and indicate that BWCs have had an impact on police–citizen interactions in one Southern American State. More specifically, citizen and officer accountability from BWCs was found to have positive and negative consequence. Officers articulated this supposition in a number of ways and the paper contextualizes these perspectives within the extant literature. The policy implications and areas of future research from these findings are discussed as they inform a non-positivist approach to research.

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Notes

  1. A Department of Justice (2015) report would later discredit many bystander claims after an investigation found that they did not view the incident firsthand or lied about being at the scene during the shooting.

  2. Officers in Katz et al.’s (2014) study were less enthusiastic about the impact of BWCs on citizen behavior. Few believed it would lead to more cooperative (25.7%), respectful (28.6%), compliant (11.8%), and less aggressive (25.7%) citizens.

  3. BWC evaluations on officer in-the-line-of-duty deaths have not been empirically explored due to their infrequency and the relatively low deployment rate of BWCs throughout the Nation.

  4. Together these writings are discussed as the investigator’s field notes.

  5. Saturation, in these analyses, was observed when responses became repetitive and no new information was forthcoming.

  6. On one occasion, two officers opted to be interviewed simultaneous due to work-related restraints.

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Funding

This study was funded, in part, by the Fulbright Scholar Program of the United States Department of State Bureau of Education and Cultural Affairs.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Criminology and Criminal Justice, College for Design and Social Inquiry, Florida Atlantic University, 777 Glades Road, Boca Raton, FL, 33431, USA

    Seth Wyatt Fallik, Ross Deuchar & Vaughn J. Crichlow

  2. Interdisciplinary Research Unit on Crime, Policing and Social Justice, School of Education, University of the West of Scotland, Ayr Campus, Ayr, KA8 0SX, Scotland

    Ross Deuchar

Authors
  1. Seth Wyatt Fallik
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  2. Ross Deuchar
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  3. Vaughn J. Crichlow
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Correspondence to Seth Wyatt Fallik.

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All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

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Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

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Fallik, S.W., Deuchar, R. & Crichlow, V.J. Body-Worn Cameras in the Post-Ferguson Era: An Exploration of Law Enforcement Perspectives. J Police Crim Psych 35, 263–273 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11896-018-9300-2

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