What Cameras Cannot See

Who’s watching whom—and what can they see?

When it comes to police-worn cameras, these questions don’t
yet have a consistent answer—and with the rush to implement the technology now
well past the tipping point, those answers matter.

Over 30 states and the District of Columbia have now either
introduced or passed legislation addressing body-worn cameras. Earlier this month, The President’s
Task Force on 21^st Century Policing released its final report with an
entire pillar of recommendations around technology and social media and the
Bureau of Justice Assistance released a National
Body-Worn Camera Toolkit, an online clearinghouse for sharing information,
resources, and research on “body-worn camera-related subjects.”

Against the backdrop of
#BlackLivesMatter and now the #SayHerName campaign, the landscape of
whose experiences are witnessed, named, and validated by the public has grown
increasingly complex—and in the face of such complexity, cameras offer what
appears to many to be an invitingly simple solution. But that purported
simplicity may be deceiving; advocates
on all sides are expressing concern about the risks of cameras and arguing
against treating them like a panacea for the problems around race and policing
in communities across America.

“With each of these developments,
and as local and national developments unfold, myriad concerns are coming to
light about the technology and the conditions for its deployment that will best
serve public safety and safeguard our rights,” observed Open Technology
Institute Fellow Seeta Peña Gangadharan at a recent event at New America. Joined in
conversation by Justin Ready, Nicole Austin-Hillery, Sarah
Brayne, Brian K. Jordan, and Malkia Cyril, Gangadharan identified a key
question facing advocates and policymakers alike: “What institutional and regulatory choices do we
need to make now—before police
cameras become the status quo?”

It’s critical that ask that question on the
front end, said Brayne—a sociologist and researcher at Microsoft Research New
England—because “once a new technology is rolled out in an institutional
setting such as a police department, it’s really hard to scale back.” From her
own research doing ride-alongs with the Los Angeles Police Department, Brayne
speculated that cameras might have “unanticipated downstream consequences.”
Police officers inclined to cut community members they know a little slack
might no longer do so. Knowing they’ll be recorded might deter people with
loved ones in precarious legal standing from calling the cops when they need
help.

In times of social upheaval, “we do look to innovations, whether
it’s policy innovations or technological innovations as a solution,” noted
Ready, a professor of criminology and criminal justice at Arizona State
University who has been in the
field for the past few years studying the use of cameras by police in Mesa,
Arizona. After following 100 officers for a year, 50 of whom wore cameras and
50 of whom did not, Ready had around 30,000 videos of police encounters with
the Mesa community. He found that officers wearing cameras initiated about 15
percent more citizen contacts, conducted 10 percent fewer stop-and-frisks, and
wrote 14 percent more tickets than the non-camera officers.

“We want to
adopt [camera technology] to solve problems that happen disproportionately in
minority communities. But we have to remember that over the long run there are
costs,” Ready warned. “Any technology does both harm and good.” Ready’s remarks
resonated with observations from Cyril, the executive director of the Center for Media Justice. “The
fact is [that] video is powerful,” she said, but “we’re talking about inserting
an unproven piece of technology into Jim Crow policing.”

“I don’t
believe body-worn cameras are the answer, but I believe they’re inevitable,” Cyril
continued, describing her encounters with protestors in Ferguson and Baltimore.
“The solution that has been offered to them is body-worn cameras, but that
doesn’t mean that’s what they want. What they want is to feel safe.”

Whether or
not cameras can truly foster a feeling of safety in communities is a paramount concern
for Austin-Hillery and the Brennan
Center for Justice, where she is Director and Counsel. “Body-worn cameras
are supposed to provide accountability, transparency, and—let’s get down to it—truthfulness”
in the pursuit of criminal justice, she said. But whether in Cleveland or
Ferguson or elsewhere, “cameras are a part of the larger conversation [about
justice] and will only be a part of a larger solution.” The ultimate goal,
Austin-Hillery stressed, “has to be figuring out how we make our criminal
justice system better for all of us”—citizens and police officers alike. 

Jordan,
Chief of Police at Howard University and a law enforcement veteran with over 30
years experience, agreed with Austin-Hillery: “the general premise of policing
is to first be safe and second is to make people safe.” The now-infamous
incidents involving Rodney King, Oscar Grant, Eric Garner, and Walter Scott
were all captured on video and all prompted different results from the
communities in question, in part because “once that video is there, it’s still
not going to be seen the same way by everybody.”

How cameras
fit into programs of community policing was an open question among the
panelists, as was who would have access to the potentially massive pool of raw
data produced by them. “Community policing…is about relationships. Cameras are
about automation. Those are opposing things,” argued Cyril, who also underscored
that “officers are community
members.” For Jordan, cameras and community policing boil down to “what [communities]
want from their police.” “The debate [over cameras] is necessary,” he
concluded. “We have to work it down to the point that the police wearing the
cameras buy into it and the communities being monitored buy into it.”

Consensus
emerged around the need for further information-gathering and public engagement
on all sides on the issue of cameras. Ready and Cyril both articulated an
urgent need for further study and research, while Austin-Hillery cited a
necessity for citizens to engage their lawmakers at multiple levels of
government. We may look to the President for leadership on policing in the 21st
century, she said, but “it’s that city council member in your local community
who is making decisions that affect your lives on a daily basis.”

So what do we need to do before
cameras become the status quo? For one thing, we need to remember that
technology is inextricably bound together with its social context and human
interaction. “Raw data does not always speak for itself,” reflected Brayne in
comments that captured a major theme of the evening, “it requires
interpretation.”