Unfortunately, nowadays students are taught that when they embark on research they first have to learn methodology, and that when they write up that research they should start by explaining their methodology. Even worse, they are often led to believe that there is such a subject as methodology. This needs to be unravelled.

Assessing the Evidence

This Commentary uses the lens of "moral panics" to evaluate public support for equipping law enforcement with body cameras as a response and solution to events in Ferguson, Missouri in August 2014. Body cameras are a generally good policy idea. But the rhetoric surrounding them erroneously treats them as the single guaranteed solution to the problem of excessive force and police-citizen conflicts, particularly by ignoring the limitations of video evidence and the difficult questions of implementing the body camera program. In overstating the case, the rhetoric of body cameras becomes indistinguishable from rhetoric surrounding responses to past moral panics.

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Delivery.cfm/SSRN_ID2533976_code867635.pdf?abstractid=2533976&mirid=5

Moral Panics and Body Cameras

The impact of pre-report reviewing of body-worn camera (BWC) footage remains largely unknown. The current study investigates three research questions, including: “what impact does viewing body-worn camera footage have on report writing?”. Three hundred and sixty-two participants were asked to conduct a simulated use of force situation and write a report afterwards. They were randomly assigned to four conditions: in particular, one group had to review their BWC footage before writing a report, while another could not review the footage. All reports were coded by a team of research assistants and compared using bivariate and multivariate analyses. Participants wearing a BWC provided more accurate reports than those who did not wear one. However, the benefits were relatively small. The analysis suggests that pre-report review of BWC footage will help in providing more accurate reports but might reduce the reliance on subjective information, such as perceptions.

An experimental study of the impact of body-worn cameras on police report writing

Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition 5 (2016) 246–251 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition j o ur na l ho me page: www.elsevier.com/locate/jarmac What Should Happen After An Officer-Involved Shooting? Memory Concerns in Police Reporting Procedures 夽 Rebecca Hofstein Grady ∗ , Brendon J. Butler, and Elizabeth F. Loftus University of California, Irvine, United States Procedures around interviewing a police officer after a shooting have recently come under increased scrutiny. Some argue the officers should be allowed to view available video footage from body cameras and wait two to three days to de-stress before being interviewed. While viewing the video first may increase accuracy for details present in the footage, it may also cause forgetting or distortion for other parts of the situation not captured on camera, including the officer’s perception and construal of the situation. Additionally, memory is likely to decay over any delay from a waiting period, with little support for the claim that a long de-stressing period will improve accuracy compared to an immediate report. Though this is a complex policy matter with many considerations, these procedures may do more harm than good when it comes to preserving the most accurate and helpful memory from the police officer. Keywords: Memory, Stress, Police, Reporting, Body cameras In recent years, tensions between civilians and police officers have seemingly escalated. The ubiquitous presence of smart- phones has led to increased documentation of fatal encounters between civilians and police officers, leading to calls for trans- parency and justice. As a consequence, procedures surrounding reporting practices in police departments – how, when, and under what circumstances officers give their statement on what hap- pened in an officer-involved shooting (OIS)—are under scrutiny. Two key issues have arisen. The first is whether, before mak- ing their report, officers should be allowed to view body-worn camera (BWC) footage of the incident. The second is whether officers should wait to give their report until two to three days after the encounter to allow them time to consolidate their mem- ory. Proponents of the “pre-view of body camera footage” and proponents of the “wait two to three days” method argue that the officers’ memories will be better. We argue, based on the psy- chological literature, that the most complete and accurate reports will be obtained soon after an incident, before video footage is reviewed and without a long delay. However, policy consider- ations from outside the realm of human memory may complicate the real-world decision. Authors Note Please note that this paper was handled by the current editorial team of JARMAC. Pre-Viewing of Body Camera Footage As calls from the public for police use of BWCs increase, more and more police departments will need to decide if they will adopt BWCs and how they will be used. Given the many open questions, such as if officers should be able to turn the cameras off and how long the videos will be stored, police departments need guidelines regarding access to the video. In particular, after a citizen complaint or use of deadly force, some departments allow or require officers to view the video footage before making their written report of the event, while others require officers to make their report first. It may initially make intuitive sense to allow police officers to view the BWC footage if we want them to make the most accurate report. However, decades of research into human memory and cognition make it clear that there can be costs to this approach. One relevant body of research concerns a topic called retrieval-induced forgetting (RIF; Anderson, Bjork, & Bjork, 1994), which shows that retrieving parts of a memory can reduce access to other parts of related memory which were not retrieved. In a typical RIF study, participants are given some sort of ∗ Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Rebecca Hofstein Grady, Department of Psychology and Social Behavior, University of California, Irvine, Irvine, CA 92697, United States. Contact: gradyr@uci.edu

/pdf/what-should-happen-after-an-officer-involved-shooting-memory-2pvirb3s5l.pdf

What Should Happen After An Officer-Involved Shooting? Memory Concerns in Police Reporting Procedures - eScholarship

Police body-worn cameras (BWCs) have emerged in response to calls for greater police transparency and accountability. Leveraged as techno-regulatory tools with the potential to influence officer behavior, BWCs may also afford officers opportunities to review video footage prior to writing incident reports, which has implications for how police-public interactions are documented in official records. In this study of BWC adoption by a police agency in the United States, we examine how officers’ ideological perspectives on BWCs, technological limitations, and policy-related concerns influenced their decisions about whether and how to review video as part of their report writing practice. In conclusion, we argue that police practitioners and policy-makers should provide clearer policy guidance to officers about how BWC footage should be used in the report writing process and that police administrators, policy-makers, and researchers should directly consider the role that technology might play in regulating officer behavior, even in unintended ways.

/pdf/painting-the-narrative-police-body-worn-cameras-report-h96blbif.pdf

Painting the narrative: Police body-worn cameras, report writing, and the techno-regulation of policework

Body-worn video is increasingly relied upon in the criminal justice system, however it is unclear how viewing chest-mounted video may affect a police officer’s statement about an event. In the present study, we asked whether reviewing footage from an experienced event could shape an individual’s statement, and if so, whether reporting before reviewing may preserve an officer’s original experience. Student participants (n = 97) were equipped with chest-mounted cameras as they viewed a simulated theft in virtual reality. One week later, half of the participants recalled the event in an initial statement while the other half did not. Participants then viewed either their body-worn video or a control video. Finally, participants provided their statement (no initial statement condition) or were given the opportunity to amend their original account (initial statement condition). Results revealed that viewing body-worn video enhanced the completeness and accuracy of individuals’ free recall statements. However, whilst reviewing footage enabled individuals to exclude errors they had written in their initial statements, they also excluded true details that were uncorroborated by the camera footage (i.e., details which individuals experienced, but that their camera did not record). Such camera conformity is discussed in light of the debate on when an officer should access their body-worn video during an investigation and the influence of post-event information on memory.

/pdf/law-and-rec-order-updating-memory-for-criminal-events-with-j4bn35zljl.pdf

Law and (rec)order: Updating memory for criminal events with body-worn cameras

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Law and (rec)order: Updating memory for criminal events with body-worn cameras