The Lab @ DC recently conducted a study on police body cams and the results are a bit disappointing: body cams don't decrease police brutality.
Anita Ravishankar, a researcher with the Metropolitan Police Department and the group in the city government responsible for the study, stated the following:
"We found essentially that we could not detect any statistically significant effect of the body-worn cameras."
The study ran from June 2015 to December 2016 and during it the cameras were assigned at random to the police officers they were working with. Many expected the results to be different because the body cameras were put in place to hold police officers accountable
"I think we're surprised by the result," D.C. Chief of Police Peter Newsham said. "I think a lot of people were suggesting that the body-worn cameras would change behavior. There was no indication that the cameras changed behavior at all."
Though the study shows that the body cams don't have much effect on police behavior, the D.C. police force is actually well trained.
"They're hiring the right people; they've got good training; they've got good supervision; they've got good accountability mechanisms in place," said Michael White, a researcher at Arizona State University who has participated in other body camera research programs. "When you have a department in that kind of state, I don't think you're going to see large reductions in use of force and complaints, because you don't need to. There is no large number of excessive uses of force that need to be eliminated."
Some groups are using the study to question the need of body cams all together.
Source: complex.com
