{"id":72277,"date":"2018-03-05T22:58:01","date_gmt":"2018-03-06T03:58:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=72277"},"modified":"2018-03-05T22:58:01","modified_gmt":"2018-03-06T03:58:01","slug":"are-we-really-looking-at-body-cameras","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2018\/03\/05\/are-we-really-looking-at-body-cameras\/","title":{"rendered":"Are We Really Looking at Body Cameras?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>The Washington Post<\/em> has been collecting data on documented fatal police shootings of civilians since 2015, and they recently released an update to the data set with incidents through the beginning of 2018. <a href=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/toolbox\/police-killing-of-blacks\/\">Over at <em>Sociology Toolbox<\/em><\/a>, Todd Beer has a great summary of the data set and a number of charts on how these shootings break down by race.<\/p>\n<p>One of the main policy reforms suggested to address this problem is body cameras\u2014the idea being that video evidence will reduce the number of killings by monitoring police behavior. Of course, not all police departments\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.tandfonline.com\/doi\/abs\/10.1080\/10439463.2016.1267175\">implement<\/a> these cameras and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2017\/10\/20\/upshot\/a-big-test-of-police-body-cameras-defies-expectations.html\">their impact may be quite small<\/a>. One small way to address these problems is public visibility and pressure.<\/p>\n<p>So, how often are body cameras incorporated into incident reporting? Not that often, it turns out. I looked at all the shootings of unarmed civilians in <em>The Washington Post\u2019s<\/em> dataset, flagging the ones where news reports indicated a body camera was in use. The measure isn\u2019t perfect, but it lends some important context.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_72278\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-72278\" style=\"width: 500px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2018\/03\/Body-Cameras.png\" data-rel=\"lightbox-image-0\" data-rl_title=\"\" data-rl_caption=\"\" title=\"\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-72278\" src=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2018\/03\/Body-Cameras-500x340.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"340\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-72278\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">(Click to Enlarge)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Body cameras were only logged in 37 of 219 cases\u2014about 17% of the time\u2014and a log doesn&#8217;t necessarily mean the camera present was even recording.\u00a0Sociologists know that organizations are often slow to implement new policies, and they don&#8217;t often just bend to public pressure. But there also hasn&#8217;t been a change in the\u00a0<em>reporting\u00a0<\/em>of body cameras, and this highlights another potential stumbling block as we track efforts for police reform.<\/p>\n<span class=\"ft_signature\"><i><a href=\"https:\/\/www.evan-stewart.com\/\">Evan Stewart<\/a> is an assistant professor of sociology at University of Massachusetts Boston. You can follow his work at <a href=\"https:\/\/evan-stewart.com\">his website<\/a>, or on <a href=\"https:\/\/bsky.app\/profile\/evanstewart.bsky.social\">BlueSky<\/a>.<\/i>  <\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Washington Post has been collecting data on documented fatal police shootings of civilians since 2015, and they recently released an update to the data set with incidents through the beginning of 2018. Over at Sociology Toolbox, Todd Beer has a great summary of the data set and a number of charts on how these [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1893,"featured_media":72278,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2056,23624,85],"class_list":["post-72277","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-crimelaw","tag-media-newsopinion","tag-politics"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2018\/03\/Body-Cameras-e1520281510167.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72277","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1893"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=72277"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72277\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":72281,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72277\/revisions\/72281"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/72278"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=72277"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=72277"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=72277"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}