PAX Centurion - Spring 2019

www.bppa.org PAX CENTURION • Spring 2019 • Page 13 recording under time-pressured circumstances, you are going to be more dependent on context and movement in assessing and reacting to potential threats. In dim light, a suspect’s posturing will likely mean more to you immediately than some object he’s holding. When footage is reviewed later, it may be evident that the object in his hand was a cell phone, say, rather than a gun. If you’re expected to have seen that as clearly as the camera did, your reaction might seem highly inappropriate." On the other hand, he notes, cameras do not always deal well with lighting transitions. "Going suddenly from bright to dim light or vice versa, a camera may briefly blank out images altogether," he says. 5. Your body may block the view. "How much of a scene a camera captures is highly dependent on where it’s positioned and where the action takes place," Lewinski notes. "Depending on location and angle, a picture may be blocked by your own body parts, from your nose to your hands. "If you’re firing a gun or a Taser, for example, a camera on your chest may not record much more than your extended arms and hands. Or just blading your stance may obscure the camera’s view. Critical moments within a scenario that you can see may be missed entirely by your body cam because of these dynamics, ultimately masking what a reviewer may need to see to make a fair judgment." 6. A camera only records in 2-D. Because cameras don’t record depth of field — the third dimension that’s perceived by the human eye — accurately judging distances on their footage can be difficult. "Depending on the lens involved, cameras may compress distances between objects or make them appear closer than they really are," Lewinski says. "Without a proper sense of distance, a reviewer may misinterpret the level of threat an officer was facing." In the Force Science Certification Course, he critiques several camera images in which distance distortion became problematic. In one, an officer’s use of force seemed inappropriate because the suspect appears to be too far away to pose an immediate threat. In another, an officer appears to strike a suspect’s head with a flashlight when, in fact, the blow was directed at a hand and never touched the head. "There are technical means for determining distances on 2-D recordings," Lewinski says, "but these are not commonly known or accessed by most investigators." 7. The absence of sophisticated time-stampingmay prove critical. The time-stamping that is automatically imposed on camera footage is a gross number, generally measuring the action minute by minute. "In some high-profile, controversial shooting cases that is not sophisticated enough," Lewinski says. "To fully analyze and explain an officer’s perceptions, reaction time, judgment, and decision- making it may be critical to break the action down to units of one- hundredths of a second or even less. "There are post-production computer programs that can electronically encode footage to those specifications, and the Force Science Institute strongly recommends that these be employed. When reviewers see precisely how quickly suspects can move and how fast the various elements of a use-of-force event unfold, it can radically change their perception of what happened and the pressure involved officers were under to act." 8. One camera may not be enough. "The more cameras there are recording a force event, the more opportunities there are likely to be to clarify uncertainties," Lewinski says. "The angle, the ambient lighting, and other elements will almost certainly vary from one officer’s perspective to another’s, and syncing the footage up will provide broader information for understanding the dynamics of what happened. What looks like an egregious action from one angle may seem perfectly justified from another. "Think of the analysis of plays in a football game. In resolving close calls, referees want to view the action from as many cameras as possible to fully understand what they’re seeing. Ideally, officers deserve the same consideration. The problem is that many times there is only one camera involved, compared to a dozen that may be consulted in a sporting event, and in that case the limitations must be kept even firmer in mind. 9. A camera encourages second-guessing. "According to the U. S. Supreme Court in Graham v. Connor, an officer’s decisions in tense, uncertain, and rapidly evolving situations are not to be judged with the ‘20/20 vision of hindsight’," Lewinski notes. "But in the real-world aftermath of a shooting, camera footage provides an almost irresistible temptation for reviewers to play the “coulda-shoulda” game. "Under calm and comfortable conditions, they can infinitely replay the action, scrutinize it for hard-to-see detail, slow it down, freeze it. The officer had to assess what he was experiencing while it was happening and under the stress of his life potentially being on the line. That disparity can lead to far different conclusions. "As part of the incident investigation, we recommend that an officer be permitted to see what his body camera and other cameras recorded. He should be cautioned, however, to regard the footage only as informational. He should not allow it to supplant his first- hand memory of the incident. Justification for a shooting or other use of force will come from what an officer reasonably perceived, not necessarily from what a camera saw." [For more details about FSI’s position on whether officers should be allowed to view video of their incidents, see Force Science News #114 (1/17/09). You will find online it at: www.forcescience.org/ fsnews/114.html] 10. A camera can never replace a thorough investigation. When officers oppose wearing cameras, civilians sometimes assume they fear "transparency." But more often, Lewinski believes, they are concerned that camera recordings will be given undue, if not exclusive, weight in judging their actions. "Acamera’s recording should never be regarded solely as the Truth about a controversial incident," Lewinski declares. "It needs See View on page 14