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Body-Worn Cameras Ten Years after FergusonBy JW August, Times of San Diego, a member of the San Diego Online News Association
Photos Courtesy San Diego Police Department. Warning: Photos contain graphic violent content.
February 25, 2024 (San Diego) -- Ten years ago, angry widespread protests erupted after Michael Brown was killed by a police officer in Ferguson, MO. Called the Ferguson uprising, Brown’s death and the aftermath of unrest and anger brought immediate attention to law enforcement methods in Ferguson and in time was seen as an indictment of policing in the country and here in San Diego1.
The confidence in policing continues to wane. A Gallup poll taken last year shows confidence in police is at an all time low, with only 43% of respondents saying they have a "great deal/quite a lot" of confidence in the police. At the time of the Feguson it was at 53%.
One important effort being made to change the public's perception was the result of a fierce debate that led to the rapid expansion of the use of body-worn cameras (BWC) by police and sheriff agencies. And with this widening use has come unanticipated challenges -- storing securely hundreds of thousands of videos, determining which videos should be reviewed immediately and the costs to store, review and distribute the videos. And a new challenge, a controversial AI program being used to review the mountains of video and audio.The first body-worn camera usage by police in San Diego and possibly in the entire country came before Ferguson in 2009. Escondido Police Department Lt. Craig Miller recalls, “I had bought a little tiny micro action camera that was designed for people to throw on their mountain bike or to film a bungee jump." The $60 camera impressed his captain, so the department began testing half a dozen cameras.
“Within about three or four weeks, we captured an officer involved shooting on video, and the department was sold," Miller said.
Today every policing agency in the San Diego region uses body-worn cameras except for the California Highway Patrol. The CHP finished testing them in Stockton and Oakland and have gotten the funding needed to roll them out statewide in 2025. Currently there are 5305 law enforcement officers using 4,152 body worn cameras, costing in excess of five million dollars a year in San Diego County. The largest number of cameras are owned by San Diego Police with 1,863 to the San Diego Harbor Police with 164 cameras for a staff of 154 officers.San Diego Police Department spokesman, Lt Daniel Meyer, sums up the current view of most law enforcement, which has come to embrace the cameras. But that wasn't the sentiment early on.
"Transparency is key to the success of modern-day policing and BWC’s are one of many very important tools in that pursuit, " Meyer said. "BWC’s hold the public and law enforcement accountable." He added that the cameras are "vital to modern-day police operations."
Research on the impact of body-worn cameras has grown rapidly and according to a April, 2023 study published on reputable research site.
The Use of Force Directory notes it is difficult to track "the quickly growing evidence base" tracking the effectiveness of body worn cameras. Some of the research results conflict but in reviewing 30 studies, it found "statistically significant reductions in use of force" in 14 studies and overall "the current body of research suggests that police BWCs can lead to reductions in use of force by police."
A contributor to the Directory Dr Janne Gaub at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte was part of a research team that looked at citizen and officer perceptions and use of force complaints at Tempe, AZ and Spokene, WA Police Departments.
Gaub concluded that the “Line-level officers were very skeptical of how the camera footage was going to be used by their superiors in terms of are they just going to go on a fishing expedition, trying to find things we're doing wrong? “
White adds that “a number of unions fought tooth and nail to try to prevent the rollout of cameras," and officers worried, “Is my supervisor going to be watching all my footage and trying to find these little incidents where I can get jammed up?"
That fear has largely vanished, says Gaub.
”As long as there's not a significant cultural clash there, where they just are very, very skeptical of each other, then officers eventually come around to viewing them as a positive," Gaub said3.
Further research showed the local department’s culture “really makes a huge difference in body cameras impact, ranging from the decision to implement, how it's implemented, the outcomes that that departments will experience.” She adds that, "we saw this a lot with use of force, where some departments saw dramatic declines and use of force, some moderate declines in use support, and some saw no statistically significant difference”.The National Institute of Justice believes even more research is needed to be done to determine the value of the cameras and the most effective use when deployed. NIJ suggests moving forward it would be best “to build in rigorous evaluations as law enforcement agencies expand their use of this technology4.”
The latest federal data available shows about 95 percent of major U.S. police agencies with 500 officers and more have adopted a BWC system. The biggest suppliers of cameras and cloud storage are Axon (formerly Taser International), Motorola and Panasonic. Axon is the hands-down favorite in the San Diego region.
It’s not the cameras themselves but what the cameras yield that is the biggest money maker for the suppliers. This cost is a major issue that initially few in and out of law enforcement considered. Early in the development of the body cameras some police agencies dropped out because of the storage costs.
In time this led to the creation of large, secure cloud storage systems that police agencies use, not only for storage but for sharing their videos with prosecutors and defense attorneys. Initially the storage across the country was free but the industry moved to “monetize their interaction” with law enforcement. For the manufacturers of the camera systems, the storage of the information is their bread and butter, not the cameras, which can cost about $1000 each.
“Everything that's recorded on that camera, it has to be treated as evidence.” says University of Arizona professor of criminology Mike White. “So it has to be treated like any other piece of evidence, which means it has to be stored, it has to be stored securely, and then for how long is it going to be stored.”There is a common misconception about camera use, says former San Diego prosecutor Damon Mosler.
“They weren’t designed to necessarily collect viable evidence” said Mosler, regarded as an expert in their use. That's because the video captures the scene after the crime has occurred and before an arrest is made. The reality, he said, is “most policing is reactive not proactive."
Mosler’s perspective is as a deputy district attorney for almost 30 years in San Diego County where he ended his career with that office by coordinating the development of policies for the cameras' use in San Diego. Now he consults for all levels of government..He says, “I would say the public's perception was that we're going to see a lot of misconduct on these videos." That largely has not been the case, he said. “Unrealistic expectations,” says Professor White, describing how some viewed the arrival of the cameras.
“Some people really expected that they were going to be the silver bullet that was going to solve, you know, a century of tension between police and minority communities, that this was going to be it and this was going to be the magic, the magic beans that are going to fix everything, said White, who is also co-director of training and technical assistance for the U.S. Department of Justice Body-Worn Camera Policy Program.
The amount of video captured by BWC systems has grown exponentially, says Mosler. There's not just the video shot by the police officer first on scene but all the other videos shot by arriving units. Then there is security video captured by street cameras and retailers' security cameras, as well as cell phone video from citizens shooting police actions. Except for the City of New Orleans, no police agency reviews all the videos coming into the system.Mosler explains that before the cameras, a police misdemeanor case would begin with a written report of 5 or 10 pages, possibly accompanied by some photos associated with it. But now, the written reports remain but accompanied by several hours of video.
More serious cases entrail even more videos and documentation.
It’s a “vast tsunami of digital evidence," says Mosler, “there’s a lot of time involved but is it all relevant or useful?”
Since 2014, with the inception of SDPD’s BWC Program with Axon Enterprise Inc., officers have recorded over six million BWC videos according to police records.
In addition, the state requires minimum storage requirements. California’s AB 69 guidelines stipulate that data for “non-evidentiary incidents” should be stored for 60 days and a minimum of two years in situations where force is used, an arrest is made or a complaint filed against an officer or agency. The law also requires records to be kept permanently of anyone accessing or deleting the data.
SDPD's deletion policy can be found here.
”As long as there's not a significant cultural clash there, where they just are very, very skeptical of each other, then officers eventually come around to viewing them as a positive," Gaub said6.
Further research showed the local department’s culture “really makes a huge difference in body cameras impact, ranging from the decision to implement, how it's implemented, the outcomes that that departments will experience.” She adds that”We saw this a lot with use of force, where some departments saw dramatic declines and use of force, some moderate declines in use support, and some saw no statistically significant difference”.By the time the Oceansides Police Department adopted its current camera system in 2020, the City Council noted in its funding of the program that they didn’t have to buy the system but it has become “an expectation of the community” and is considered a “best practice” for law enforcement.
The agency signed a five-year agreement with Axon. Oceanside paid $1.8 million for 253 cameras, plus costs for storing the video
In comparison San Diego Police just signed off on a new five-year agreement with the city for $12,015,000 for 1,950 cameras.
Contracts reviewed for this story don't break down the costs for cameras and storage seperately, both are sold as a package deal.
Escondido’s Miller says the Axon system “meets all the requirements for secure evidence through the California Justice Information System. It's all cloud-based. It's redundant. The system is password protected, and then it's got multi-factor authentication.
"Whether it's a photograph, a video or any other digital evidence,” he said, we can see exactly who created it, when it was uploaded, who accessed it, who played it, who it was shared with, right. And then it also prohibits or doesn't allow an officer to manipulate the video; it can't be deleted off their camera.”
Escondido has 297 cameras now for 148 sworn officers. This includes patrol, traffic and gang enforcement who get two cameras, as the agency’s officers take their cars home and “we want them armed with a camera at all times” says Miller. They also provide cameras for patrol technicians and officers who transport prisoners.What’s evolved is that all the video is eventually available for prosecutors as a defense- all having all the same video, storing the same video, tracking it for the same period of time. When the police submit a case, it’s written with a summary of the evidence. That’s used to pinpoint the video of relevance and if needed the prosecutor views it to make the call on whether to move forward on the case. The defense attorney is seeing and wrestling with the same elements. If it’s a police use of force case, those videos all get reviewed. Of all the video recorded, about 30% actually make it to the district attorney's office for review. All of this takes time and effort, with the clock ticking because the the Sixth Amendment to the Constitution requires the accused access to a speedy criminal trial
Controversy over the use of the AI system Truleo to review all police recordings is the next big thing in the debate over BWCs.
All audio from all officers' go into the Truleo system daily for analysis and a automatic transcription highlighting both bad and good interactions; police officers might be criticized or commended. The website; https://www.truleo.co quotes Anaheim Police Chief Jorge saying "We invested a lot of money in body cameras to improve accountability, and Truleo helps us earn a higher return on that investment for our community.”
There appears to be no public interest locally in the system but that may change. Experts we spoke with say Truleo or other AI systems may be slow to gain traction but just like BWCs, the interest in the upside might force the acceptance of the new technology.We asked the San Diego Police Officers Association for their comment on Truleo, they told us “While there are many technologies that can assist first responders in their goal of protecting the community, some of these are simply gimmicky products that divert funds away from providing core services. There is no technology that can replace hiring well qualified officers and field supervisors.” -SDPOA President, Jared Wilson
Mosler believes there is a way to immediately streamline the efficiency and costs of BWC systems across San Diego County. “What struck me most was the lack of regional coordination and consolidation in decisions and expenditures related to BWC purchases and deployments." He suggests looking at the Integrated Law and Justice Agency of Orange County which created a working group led by that county’s District Attorney office which includes all police agencies, the courts and their public defender. “I believe it serves as a model,” noting that, "We coordinate very well here in San Diego but not quite at this level of cooperation and formality to ensure results."
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