11074: How Policy Shapes Officer Body-Worn Camera Attributions, Behaviors, and Wellbeing (session 25790)

Effective policing and strong community-police relations are essential components of public safety and social welfare. Over the past decade, police agencies have spent millions of dollars adopting body-worn cameras (BWCs) with hopes of promoting increased transparency, accountability, and effectiveness. Unfortunately, there is little evidence that BWC adoption has advanced these goals. Our study suggests that agency policy decisions can shape the impact of BWCs on policing and community outcomes. We collected and analyzed data that included surveys of 552 officers from 42 police agencies across the country, coding of official BWC policy documents adopted by these agencies, and surveys of 1,981 community members from the jurisdictions that those police agencies serve. Our findings indicated that officers in police agencies that adopted BWC policy frameworks that were more consistently officer-supportive (as opposed to oversight-oriented) tended to form stronger commitment-focused causal attributions for BWCs. At the within-department level, officers who formed stronger commitment-focused attributions (i.e., perceptions that BWCs have been implemented for their safety and development) reported engaging in community-oriented policing and deep acting more frequently and engaging in surface acting less frequently. Those who formed stronger control-focused attributions (i.e., perceptions that BWCs have been implemented to deter poor performance and to reduce discretion) tended to report more frequent surface acting and higher levels of emotional exhaustion. Based on these results, we offer actionable policy recommendations for police agencies.

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