Officer Discretion and the Choice to Record: Officer Attitudes Towards Body-Worn Camera Activation

NORTH CAROLINA LAW REVIEW Volume 96 Number 5 Badge Cams as Data and Deterrent: Enforcement, the Public, and the Press in the Age of Digital Video Article 8 6-1-2018 Officer Discretion and the Choice to Record: Officer Attitudes Towards Body-Worn Camera Activation Bryce Clayton Newell Ruben Greidanus Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarship.law.unc.edu/nclr Part of the Law Commons Recommended Citation Bryce C. Newell & Ruben Greidanus, Officer Discretion and the Choice to Record: Officer Attitudes Towards Body-Worn Camera Activation, 96 N.C. L. Rev. 1525 (2018). Available at: https://scholarship.law.unc.edu/nclr/vol96/iss5/8 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by Carolina Law Scholarship Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in North Carolina Law Review by an authorized editor of Carolina Law Scholarship Repository. For more information, please contact . 96 N.C. L. REV. 1525 (2018) OFFICER DISCRETION AND THE CHOICE TO RECORD: OFFICER ATTITUDES TOWARDS BODY-WORN CAMERA ACTIVATION* BRYCE CLAYTON NEWELL** & RUBEN GREIDANUS*** In recent years, questions about when police officers should activate (or not activate) their body-worn cameras during policepublic encounters have risen into the foreground of public and scholarly debate. Understanding how officers perceive bodyworn cameras and policies surrounding activation (and how they view these as impacting their ability to make discretionary choices while on the job) can provide greater insight into why, when, and how officers may attempt to exercise their discretion in the form of resistance or avoidance to body cameras, seen as technologies of accountability. In this Article, we examine officer attitudes about how much discretion they ought to have about when (or when not) to activate their cameras, what concerns they have about overbroad, overly punitive, or ambiguous activation * © 2018 Bryce Clayton Newell and Ruben Greidanus. ** Assistant Professor, School of Information Science, University of Kentucky; Ph.D. (Information Science), The Information School, University of Washington; J.D., University of California, Davis School of Law. We wish to thank Mike Katell and Chris Heaney for their assistance with fieldwork and data collection; Sander Flight for detailed comments on an earlier draft of the paper; the two anonymous peer reviewers for their detailed and helpful comments; organizers and participants at the North Carolina Law Review’s 2017 symposium for their invitation and feedback; all of the individuals who consented to participate in the empirical research described herein; all those who facilitated access to (and within) both of the police departments studied, especially Chief Clifford Cook (Bellingham Police Department, chief until 2017), Chief Frank Straub (Spokane Police Department, chief until 2015), and Chief Craig Meidl (Spokane Police Department, since 2016) and their respective command staffs who graciously allowed access to their departments; and Bert-Jaap Koops, for his support of this research. Portions of this research were funded by the Information School at the University of Washington and under a grant from the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) (project number 453-14-004). *** Legal Researcher for the Dutch government. LL.M., Law & Technology, Tilburg University; M.A., Criminology, Utrecht University. 96 N.C. L. REV. 1525 (2018) 1526 NORTH CAROLINA LAW REVIEW [Vol. 96 policies, and their perceptions about how frequently cameras ought to be activated in specific circumstances (i.e., general police-public interactions, arrest situations, domestic violence calls, traffic stops, when taking statements from witnesses or victims, and when responding to calls inside homes and medical facilities). These findings are drawn from a multi-year and mixed-methods study of police officer adoption of body-worn cameras in two municipal police departments in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States from 2014 to 2018. INTRODUCTION ..................................................................................... 1526 I. BACKGROUND................................................................................... 1532 II. METHODS AND DEMOGRAPHICS .................................................. 1541 A. Methods ................................................................................ 1541 B. Agency and Respondent Demographics ............................ 1543 III. FINDINGS......................................................................................... 1549 A. Desired Levels of Discretion............................................... 1549 B. Self-Reported Activation Rates ........................................... 1567 IV. ANALYSIS ........................................................................................ 1570 CONCLUSION ......................................................................................... 1575 INTRODUCTION In the past few years, questions about when police officers should activate (or not activate) their body-worn cameras (“BWCs”) when contacting or otherwise interacting with a member of the public have risen into the foreground of public and scholarly debate. Instances in which camera-wearing officers have failed to activate 1 their cameras have also received significant media scrutiny. 1. See, e.g., Jared Goyette, Australian Justine Damond Shot Dead by US Police in Minneapolis, THE GUARDIAN (July 16, 2017), https://www.theguardian.com/usnews/2017/jul/17/australian-woman-justine-damond-shot-dead-by-us-police-in-minneapolis [https://perma.cc/5XRS-79BG]; Eric Levenson, Minneapolis Police Shooting Exposes Flaws of Body Cameras, CNN (July 19, 2017), http://www.cnn.com/2017/07/19/us /minneapolis-police-shooting-body-camera/index.html [https://perma.cc/F5UK-NPZV]; 96 N.C. L. REV. 1525 (2018) 2018] THE CHOICE TO RECORD 1527 Departmental policies in police agencies around the country (and beyond) that ostensibly regulate officer behavior in this context are 2 varied, although emerging evidence suggests (predictably) that agency-level activation policies can impact officer activation rates in some circumstances (as can other factors, such as the presence of other officers and bystanders or whether camera use is mandated or 3 voluntary). Concerns that civil society groups, the press, and members of the public have regarding activation policies and activation practices are often linked to normative ideas about police accountability and transparency, the appropriateness and limits of officer discretion, and, in some cases, the adverse impact that 4 increased recording may have on privacy interests. Editorial, Officers, Turn on Your Body Cameras, WASH. POST (July 22, 2017), https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/officers-turn-on-your-body-cameras/2017/07/22 /41290ff0-6e3e-11e7-b9e2-2056e768a7e5_story.html?utm_term=.67385a2d0d90 [https://perma.cc /MW4F-ZA54]; Brandt Williams, Mi (...truncated)