Study Finds Body Cameras Do Protect Both the Public and Police.. Dec. 30, 2014 By Amy Eddings...

STUDY FINDS BODY CAMERAS DO PROTECT BOTH THE PUBLIC AND POLICE

• Posted on December 30, 2014by Amy Eddings
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A new study from the University of Cambridge’s Institute of Criminology showed that having police officers wear body cameras not only protects the public, but the police officers themselves,TakePart reported.

The study involved examining the Rialto, California Police Department’s body camera use over the course of a year. Results found incidents using force by police dropped by 59 percent, while reports against officers fell 87 percent when compared to the previous year.

“An officer is obliged to issue a warning from the start that an encounter is being filmed,” wrote co-author of the study Barak Ariel, “impacting the psyche of all involved by conveying a straightforward, pragmatic message: We are all being videotaped and expected to follow the rules.”

Results from the study, the first of its kind, had been reported as early as summer 2013, “making the city of Rialto a poster child for the use of the new technology,” TakePart pointed out. But the researchers said their results are just the first step in finding out just how effective the body cameras actually are.

“Rialto is but one experiment; before this policy is considered more widely, police forces, governments and researchers should invest further time and effort in replicating these findings,” said Cambridge’s Alex Sutherland in a statement.

Regarding the death of Eric Garner, who was choked to death by a New York City police officer this summer, Ariel said things could have played out much differently if all parties had known they were being filmed.

“The ‘preventative treatment’ of body-worn video is the combination of the camera plus both the warning and cognition of the fact that the encounter is being filmed,” said Ariel. “In the tragic case of Eric Garner, police weren’t aware of the camera and didn’t’ tell the suspect that he, and therefore they, were being filmed.”

The researchers will be replicating their body-camera experiment with 30 different police departments and hope to have new data to announce next year. Hopefully similar studies will produce similar results. After the numerous unfortunate events of the past summer (and throughout the past), increasing the safety of both the police and the public during encounters between the two groups is of the utmost importance.

Rialto Police Dept. Partners With Private Social Network To Communicate With Residents « CBS Los Angeles

Rialto Police Dept. Partners With Private Social Network To Communicate With Residents « CBS Los Angeles

RIALTO (CBSLA.com) — The Rialto Police Department announced Tuesday it will integrate a private social network that will allow officers to communicate online with the city’s neighborhoods.

The purpose of the free website, Nextdoor, will be for residents and police to be able to work together toimprove safety and strengthen neighborhood watch efforts.

“We have always invested in innovative ways to increase safety for our residents,” Rialto Police Chief William Farrar said in a statement. “With Nextdoor, we can help empower neighbors to keep their community safe and connected, and give them the ability to collaborate on virtual neighborhood watch efforts.”

Rialto residents can join to share information, including neighborhood public safety issues, community events and activities, local services and even lost pets.

Six Rialto neighborhoods have already started Nextdoor websites.

Neighborhoods establish and self-manage their own Nextdoor accounts, while the police department does not have access residents’ websites, contact information or content.  Information shared on Nextdoor is password protected and cannot be accessed by search engines.

Fort Worth Police Leading the Charge Locally in Usage of Body Camera's by Monika Diaz WFAA.com/News

Fort Worth police leading the charge locally in usage of body cameras

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by MONIKA DIAZ

Bio | Email | Follow: @MoniNews

WFAA

Posted on October 24, 2013 at 10:46 PM

Updated today at 9:23 AM

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FORT WORTH -- It's the future of policing; a tiny camera attached to an officer's collar or sunglasses, designed to record every move not captured on patrol dash-cam video.

In Rialto, California, body cameras are mandatory for 70 officers. According to the department, complaints against officers have dropped 80 percent. Use of force went down 67 percent.  The numbers are from a study conducted at the department when the cameras were first introduced.in February 2012.

In North Texas, law enforcement agencies are also deploying these high-tech cameras.

The Fort Worth Police Department leads the effort. It recently got a new shipment of body cameras -- 195 of them. 113 are already on the street, in use, recording encounters and confrontations between officers and citizens.

The voluntary program was launched last year. The video from the cameras is downloaded into a server. It cannot be edited or manipulated.

“This makes it so much easier to understand exactly from the officer's point of view, maybe a justification, a quick decision, or something that can't be explained in a police report or an interview, [that] when you see it on film, it can change your perspective of what was really going on at that date, at that time,” said Fort Worth Police Chief Jeff Halstead.

The Fort Worth Police Officer's Association (FWPOA) supports the body cams, because it believes it will help officers.

“It is a way for us to, one, record events when they happen, and also, a lot of times we have allegations made against us, and they are not always true,” said FWPOA President Stephen Hall.

But for Hall, the cameras also raise questions.

“I'm surprised we don't have a well-defined policy,” Hall said. “There is some policy, but there is not a well-defined policy on how the videos will be used, utilized, and reviewed.”

Without it, Hall believes officers will begin to distrust the technology.

"Then they become suspicious and become more reluctant to use it or rely on it,” he said.

Chief Halstead told News 8 a new version of the body cameras policy is on the way.

“I want that draft finalized by the end of the year,” he said.

He also mentioned that officers’ concerns are being addressed.

“Some of those concerns are what has to be taped and what should be taped, and my position is, the easier the policy is to understand, the more it will be adopted by our employees,” Halstead said. “No one is just going in and kind of like having a free reign of 'Let's see what officer Jones is doing tonight.' We don't do that and we will not allow that.”

Halstead wants the policy to be clear to his officers and the public. Citizens will be on camera, too. He plans to take the policy to community forums and organizations.

“I'm going to review it with a community advisory board that works closely with the chief's office and the police department,” he said.

Additional training for the officers is also part of the plan.

“You have to give them training on how to police on film, 'cause it's different,” Halstead said.

The chief also expects other revisions in the future as the technology changes, including the possibility of random audits.

“Are they being turned on during traffic stops?” he said. "Are they being turned on during critical interviews during the officer's shift? Those kind of audits."

For the chief, the goal is to build best practices that will increase professionalism. The body cameras can be effective in building trust and much more.

“This is going to change our profession,” he said. “But for the better.”

E-mail mdiaz@wfaa.com

Complaints and Use of Force Drop after Rialto Police Don Tiny Video Cameras by Ken Broder.. (AllGov.com)

Complaints and Use of Force Drop after Rialto Police Don Tiny Video Cameras

 

(photo: NBC Southern California)

The Southern California city of Rialto has become the poster child of police videotaping after being cited by a federal judge in his decision (pdf) two weeks ago striking down New York City’s stop-and-frisk law as an unconstitutional use of racial profiling.
U.S. District Judge Shira A. Scheindlin quoted a New York Times story attesting to the usefulness of body-worn cameras by police during an experimental period that began in February 2012 and ended last month.

“[T]he results from the first 12 months [were] striking. Even with only half of the 54 uniformed police officers wearing cameras on any given day, the department overall had an 88 percent decline in the number of complaints filed against officers, compared with the 12 months before the study.”

Perhaps not surprisingly, the study found that officers with cameras used force 60% less often.
Rialto Police Chief William Farrar, with the assistance of Barak Ariel, a visiting fellow at the Institute of Criminology at the University of Cambridge and an assistant professor at Hebrew University, randomly selected officers to place a small video camera on their lapels that recorded events, which were automatically uploaded to a computer for storage.

Police use of video cameras to observe the public has increased dramatically in recent years and drawn the attention of civil liberties advocates who aren’t fond of the authorities recording activities of people not suspected of wrongdoing and storing the data for indefinite periods of time.
Cameras are showing up on street corners and states are considering imbedding trackers in digital license plates. Police also use license plate scanners to profile drivers through storage of their GPS movement.

But recording the activities of police officers, while still raising questions about privacy and surveillance, is a different matter. Jay Stanley of the American Civil Liberties Union told the Times, “We don’t like the networks of police-run video cameras that are being set up in an increasing number of cities. We don’t think the government should be watching over the population en masse,” Stanley said. But “when it comes to the citizenry watching the government, we like that.”   
Stanley, however, expressed reservations about the police videos being stored indefinately and popping up in public at inappropriate times, like on CNN.

Rialto is not the only city using the tiny police video cameras. Oakland, Albuquerque and  Fort Worth use them too, according to the Times, as do others. Oakland has 450 cameras for its 660-member force and stores video indefinately.

Former Los Angeles Police Chief William Bratton is a fan and some experts think their widespread use is inevitable as the price comes down.

–Ken Broder

To Learn More:
In California, a Champion for Police Cameras (by Ian Lovett, New York Times)
Wearing a Badge, and a Video Camera (by Randall Stross, New York Times)
L.A. Police Crank up Surveillance Cameras to Spy on 450,000 Residents (by Ken Broder, AllGov California)
Floyd v. City of New York (U.S. District Court for Southern District of New York) (pdf)
Self-Awareness to Being Watched and Socially-Desirable Behavior: A Field Experiment on the Effect of Body-Worn Cameras on Police Use-of-Force (by Barak Ariel and William Farrar) (pdf)