PAX Centurion - Spring 2019

Page 12 • PAX CENTURION • Spring 2019 617-989-BPPA (2772) I have compiled a list from numerous news articles about some of the pro's and con's of body worn cameras. As you will see the findings are very complex. There is a lot to think about; the "what if's" are always going to be around with any piece of equipment, and you’re always going to be second-guessed. The camera can provide some information about the incident. But it can't necessarily provide all the information needed to make a fair and impartial final judgement. There still may be factors that the camera does not see. (These points were made available from Forcescience.org) 1. A camera doesn’t follow your eyes or see as they see. At the current level of development, a body camera is not an eye- tracker like FSI has used in some of its studies of officer attention. That complex apparatus can follow the movement of your eyes and superimpose on video small red circles that mark precisely where you are looking from one microsecond to the next. "Abody camera photographs a broad scene but it can’t document where within that scene you are looking at any given instant," Lewinski says. "If you glance away from where the camera is concentrating, you may not see action within the camera frame that appears to be occurring ‘right before your eyes.’ "Likewise, the camera can’t acknowledge physiological and psychological phenomena that you may experience under high stress. As a survival mechanism, your brain may suppress some incoming visual images that seem unimportant in a life-threatening situation so you can completely focus very narrowly on the threat. You won’t be aware of what your brain is screening out. "Your brain may also play visual tricks on you that the camera can’t match. If a suspect is driving a vehicle toward you, for example, it will seem to be closer, larger, and faster than it really is because of a phenomenon called ‘looming.’ Camera footage may not convey the same sense of threat that you experienced. "In short, there can be a huge disconnect between your field of view and your visual perception and the camera’s. Later, someone reviewing what’s caught on camera and judging your actions could have a profoundly different sense of what happened than you had at the time it was occurring." 2. Some important danger cues can’t be recorded. "Tactile cues that are often important to officers in deciding to use force are difficult for cameras to capture," Lewinski says. "Resistive tension is a prime example. "You can usually tell when you touch a suspect whether he or she is going to resist. You may quickly apply force as a preemptive measure, but on camera it may look like you made an unprovoked attack, because the sensory cue you felt doesn’t record visually." And, of course, the camera can’t record the history and experience you bring to an encounter. "Suspect behavior that may appear innocuous on film to a naïve civilian can convey the risk of mortal danger to you as a streetwise officer," Lewinski says. "For instance, A view from the street By Matt Carey, Area A-1 Representative, Last Half an assaultive subject who brings his hands up may look to a civilian like he’s surrendering, but to you, based on past experience, that can be a very intimidating and combative movement, signaling his preparation for a fighting attack. The camera just captures the action, not your interpretation." 3. Camera speed differs from the speed of life. Because body cameras record at much higher speeds than typical convenience store or correctional facility security cameras, it’s less likely that important details will be lost in the millisecond gaps between frames, as sometimes happens with those cruder devices. "But it’s still theoretically possible that something as brief as a muzzle flash or the glint of a knife blade that may become a factor in a use-of-force case could still fail to be recorded," Lewinski says. Of greater consequence, he believes, is the body camera’s depiction of action and reaction times. "Because of the reactionary curve, an officer can be half a second or more behind the action as it unfolds on the screen," Lewinski explains. "Whether he’s shooting or stopping shooting, his recognition, decision-making, and physical activation all take time — but obviously can’t be shown on camera. "People who don’t understand this reactionary process won’t factor it in when viewing the footage. They’ll think the officer is keeping pace with the speed of the action as the camera records it. So without knowledgeable input, they aren’t likely to understand how an officer can unintentionally end up placing rounds in a suspect’s back or firing additional shots after a threat has ended." 4. A camera may see better than you do in low light. "The high-tech imaging of body cameras allows them to record with clarity in many low-light settings," Lewinski says. "When footage is screened later, it may actually be possible to see elements of the scene in sharper detail than you could at the time the camera was activated. "If you are receiving less visual information than the camera is