Police Camera Study Shows New Tech Having Little Effect On Misconduct And Excessive Force
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The results of another police camera study are in and there's not much good news in them. While cautiously hailed as tools of accountability, body worn cameras so far have proven to be anything but. In the early days of body camera adoption, a study of a pilot program in Rialto, California produced very positive results.When cops in a Rialto, California were forced to wear cameras, their use of force dropped by over two-thirds. Additionally, the officers who were not made to wear the cameras used force twice as much as those who did. This strongly suggests the majority of the time police use force is unnecessary. In other words, the majority of the time these officers used force they were simply committing acts of violence which they don't feel comfortable committing if it's captured on film...The Rialto study began in February 2012 and will run until this July. The results from the first 12 months are striking. Even with only half of the 54 uniformed patrol officers wearing cameras at any given time, the department over all had an 88 percent decline in the number of complaints filed against officers, compared with the 12 months before the study, to 3 from 24. The study's length suggested positive long-term results but the small sample size may have skewed the results. Another contributing factor could have been the "newness" of the devices themselves -- something that may have led officers to act with more restraint than usual.But as more and more police departments have deployed body cameras, the results have been less and less positive. A study published last year suggested body worn cameras actually led to an increase in violence -- a 3.64% uptick in fatal shootings by officers. Of course, this increase may have been nothing more than a deviation from the mean. But it still pointed towards cameras being anything but a cheap, scalable fix for officer misconduct.The latest report covers the Washington DC Metropolitan Police Department's body camera pilot program. The data is drawn from 2,000 MPD officers over a period of 18 months. Again, the results suggest body cameras aren't going to change policing for the better. From the report [PDF] (via the New York Times):We learned that BWCs do not have detectable average effects on documented uses of force or civilian complaints. More scientifically:We are unable to reject the null hypotheses that BWCs have no effect on police use of force, citizen complaints, policing activity, or judicial outcomes. Because our study has a large enough sample size to detect small effect sizes, these failures to reject the null are unlikely to be due to insufficient statistical power, at least for uses of force and complaints. (Our estimates of average effects in the judicial outcomes category occasionally have much wider confidence intervals.) We consider here a few possible explanations for our null findings.First and most obviously, it is possible the null finding needs no explanation: the devices, in fact, have no effect on the measured behaviors, and the video footage they produce has no effect on judicial outcomes. Perhaps neither the officer nor citizen involved in an interaction are actually aware of the camera, either due to attention being diverted elsewhere or desensitization over time to the presence of the cameras. Alternately, the officer and citizen may notice the cameras, but other factors in the heat of the moment may override any deterrent effect the cameras may have had. Cameras do not act as a deterrent for police misconduct, according to these findings. There were case-by-case fluctuations, but the end result remained unchanged.The report doesn't discuss any outside factors possibly contributing to this lack of deterrence. But there are several reasons police behavior may remain unmodified after the deployment of cameras. Restrictive public records policies can insulate officers from accountability, leading to little or no change in police behavior. Fortunately, the Metro PD's BWC footage policy does not automatically exempt it from public records laws, although it does tend to discourage complainants from seeking footage of possible misconduct.A person alleging non-criminal misconduct related to an interaction with an MPD officer, such as rudeness and unprofessionalism on the part of the officer, shall be able to schedule a time to view unredacted BWC footage of the incident at the police station in the police district where the alleged misconduct occurred… Another possible contributing factor is the lack of meaningful punishments for officers who fail to activate cameras or tamper with recorded footage. This may not have had much of an effect on this study, as officers knew they were being watched by the group performing the study. The report notes no instances of tampering or questionable camera activation were observed during the 18-month pilot period.But the biggest contributing factor to zero change in officer behavior is police culture itself. The Metro PD has had its problems with misconduct and excessive force. This is from a 2001 DOJ report on the DC police.Through analysis of a random sample, the DOJ determined that in approximately 15% of the use of force incidents, the force used by MPD officers was excessive, compared to an expected occurrence rate of 1 to 2%. Other DOJ findings included disproportionate incidents of force used by off-duty officers (14% of incidents); subjects being charged with "assault on a police officer" when force was deployed (1/3 of incidents); incidents of a gun not found on the subject, despite officers reporting that subject appeared to be reaching for a weapon (22% of incidents); and excessive incidents of police dog bites (bites occurring in 70% of canine deployments, compared to an expected bite rate of 10%). The DOJ determined that MPD lacked a comprehensive program to minimize the use of excessive force, had an inadequate system for investigating citizen complaints of officer misconduct, and had significant deficiencies in its training program. Over the past decade, DC Metro Police has paid out $31.6 million in settlements and fielded nearly 175 civil rights lawsuits. And, in general, use of force by MPD officers has remained constant over the same time period, suggesting it takes a bit more to reach the "excessive force" plateau needed to sustain allegations against officers. While the PD has taken a proactive approach to misconduct and excessive force following the 1999 DOJ investigation, follow-up reports show the PD has narrowed its definition of "force" to exclude many forms of force deployment from its mandatory reporting.If the consequences for misconduct are minimal, officers won't change their behavior even if they've got cameras pinned to their chests. Cameras are only a small part of police accountability. The largest contributor to better behavior by officers is the department itself. If it makes de-escalation and respectful behavior a priority -- and follows this up with serious punishments for violations -- cameras will be filled with exonerating footage. If not, force deployments and potential misconduct will remain nearly unchanged as officers have little to fear even if the footage they capture shows them violating rights and deploying excessive force.
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posted at: 12:00am on 25-Oct-2017
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A Public Focused Approach To Net Neutrality
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Net neutrality is the idea that Internet service providers (ISPs) should treat all data that travels over their networks fairly, without improper discrimination in favor of particular apps, sites or services. It's a principle that's faced many threats over the years from ISPs and government agencies seeking to exercise control over the free and open Internet.With the roll back of net neutrality protections looming, many people are now asking, "What if there is no net neutrality?"This "what-if" debate is surprising, however, because we have a clear, documented history of the kinds of non-neutral, discriminatory practices that ISPs have actually deployed in recent years. Here are just a few ways ISPs have throttled or blocked content in the past: - Packet forgery: In 2007 Comcast was caught interfering with their customers’ use of BitTorrent and other peer-to-peer file sharing
- Discriminatory traffic shaping that prioritizes some protocols over others: a Canadian ISP slowed down all encrypted file transfers for five years
- Prohibitions on tethering: the FCC fined Verizon for charging consumers for using their phone as a mobile hotspot
- Overreaching clauses in ISP terms of service, such as prohibitions on sharing your home Wi-Fi network
- Hindering innovation with "fast lane" discrimination that allows wireless customers without data plans to access certain sites but not the whole Internet
- Hijacking and interference with DNS, search engines, HTTP transmission, and other basic Internet functionality to inject ads and raise revenue from affiliate marketing schemes, from companies like Paxfire, FairEagle, and others
Individually and collectively, these practices pose a dire threat to this purely democratic engine of innovation that has allowed hackers, startups, and kids in their college dorm rooms to create the free Internet that we know and love today.Nonetheless, Ajit Pai, the new FCC Chairman backed by many Congressmen and a very powerful lobby, is moving forward to reverse net neutrality protections. At stake are the net neutrality rules that would allow Comcast and other ISPs to once again engage in non-neutral market practices like forging packets and blocking some Internet traffic.Chairman Pai's actions ignore the overwhelming sentiment of over 22 million Internet users who have contacted the FCC in an unprecedented outreach to government to express their views on net neutrality. According to a poll this summer the public support to protect net neutrality is overwhelming. 77 percent of those surveyed support net neutrality protections, as codified in the FCC's 2015 Open Internet order. And support for the FCC's policy is bipartisan, with 73 percent of Republicans, 80 percent of Democrats, and 76 percent of Independents in favor of the rules.It is tempting to reach for easy solutions, but handing the problem over to a government agency with strong industry ties and poor mechanisms for public accountability poses a real danger of creating more problems than we’d solve.One alternative is to foster a genuinely competitive market for Internet access. If subscribers and customers had adequate information about their options and could vote with their feet, ISPs would have strong incentives to treat all network traffic fairly. But the ISP market today is under oligopoly control. Nearly one in three American households have no choice when it comes to their Internet, and for all the other consumers choices are quite limited.Another scenario would be for Congress to step in and pass net neutrality legislation that outlines what the ISPs are not allowed to do. But fighting giant ISP mega-corporations (and their army of lobbyists) in Congress promises to be a tough battle.Yet another option: empower subscribers to not just test their ISP, but challenge it in court if they detect harmful non-neutral practices. That gives all of us the chance to be watchdogs of the public interest, but it too, is likely to face powerful ISP opposition.Net neutrality is a hard problem, and will remain challenging. But one guiding principle to keep in mind is that any effort to defend net neutrality should use the lightest touch possible, encourage a competitive marketplace, and focus on preventing discriminatory conduct by ISPs.Internet freedom means that all Internet traffic should be treated fairly and without gatekeepers to determine winners and losers. Special deals with a few companies will inevitably inhibit competition, thwart innovation and suppress free speech and expression through throttling, packet forgery and paid prioritizations. There is simply no evidence that Internet users can trust the ISP oligopoly, the FCC, or any government agency with open-ended regulatory authority of the Internet. In fact the evidence is clear to the contrary.Free and open access to the Internet is a universal right. Let's seek solutions to protect net neutrality that empower users with free (as in freedom) Internet access. The power of the Internet belongs with the people.John Ottman is Chairman and co-founder of Minds, Inc. a social media network. He is also an enterprise software industry executive, and the author of Save the Database, Save the World, a book on database security.
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