heard by federal judges and six by United States magistrates in which officers were using BWCs . Together , there were 45 summary motion judgements awarded to the defense ( law enforcement ) and 26 motions denied in favor of the plaintiffs .
To compare these findings to cases in which officers were not using BWC , the researchers developed a comparison group . In 2017 – 2018 , there were 5,300 excessive force claims filed in federal court in which a body camera was not involved . Using this data , a comparison group was composed of 66 non-BWC cases from the same circuits , at the same frequency , as the BWC group .
Findings Of the cases that BWC videos included as evidence , almost one-third of the cameras did not capture the entire event . This was attributed to a number of reasons including the officer did not activate the camera prior to the encounter , the officer with the BWC was not the first officer on the scene , the officer wearing the BWC did not see what the other officer saw or was not involved in the use of force , or the recording was not clear .
Of the 48 cases in which a full recording was provide 37 ( 77 %) of the decisions were in favor of the defense ( police ) compared with only seven of 22 motions that included partial recordings . Essentially , police defendants “ prevail on summary judgment nearly four out of every five times ” when they have the complete recording . The rate of successful summary judgment ruling with complete videos is “ well over twice as high as in cases with only partial videos .”
Agencies from the comparison group prevailed in 53 % of the cases even though they did not have BWC footage . This rate remained constant with other video or audio recordings such as in-car cameras or cell phone footage were available . Essentially , cases with partial video resulted in fewer successful motions for summary judgment than those cases with complete or no video recordings at all .
Finally , researchers also found that cases with complete video have motions requesting summary judgment filed sooner and receive a favorable ruling faster than cases with partial or no BWC recordings .
In closing , the researchers recommend agencies accelerate the implementation of BWC programs and implement processes that ‘ maximize the likelihood that encounters ’ are fully documented . Recognizing many communities question the financial costs associated with the potential benefits , the researcher suggests the potential return is worth the expenditure . They also concluded the use of the BWC technology provides greater accountability of officers and helps to build trust with the community .
_______________________________________ NOTES
Mitch Zamoff , Assessing the Impact of Police Body Camera Evidence on the Litigation of Excessive Force Cases , Georgia Law Review , Vol . 51 , Issue 1 , ( 2019 ), pp 1 – 60 .
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