S2-Episode 4: Focusing in on police use of body-worn cameras

Patricia Kosseim:

Hello, I’m Patricia Kosseim, Ontario’s information and Privacy Commissioner. And you’re listening to info matters, a podcast about people privacy and access to information. We dive into conversations with people from all walks of life, and hear real stories about the access and privacy issues that matter most to them.
Welcome listeners and thanks for tuning in. In the wake of a series of high-profile encounters between police and civilians, a global movement has taken shape, calling for greater police transparency and accountability and cameras worn by police officers have emerged as a tool to achieve these goals. Many of you may have noticed a general shift in public attitudes towards body worn cameras that track interactions between civilians and police. body worn cameras are typically forward-facing cameras that are carried fixed or integrated into the uniform of a police officer, capturing video and audio, essentially documenting what the officer sees and hears on the job. They’re intended to create a record of police civilian encounters, including those involving the use of force, providing police and the public with an account of what happened. This extra set of eyes can potentially help police gather better evidence when investigating crimes. It can also lead to better public insights into police conduct and performance as well. In this episode, we’ll be talking about the use of this technology by police and its role in bringing about greater transparency and accountability in the context of law enforcement and increasing public confidence in their local police service will also explore what’s needed to ensure these technologies don’t cross boundaries, boundaries of individual privacy, right to equality, freedom of expression, and human dignity. My guest is Dr. Alana Saulnier. She’s an assistant professor in the Department of Sociology at Queen’s University. She teaches courses on surveillance, policing, and criminology and has engaged in research partnerships with more than 20 police services in Ontario. Her research centers on the use of surveillance technologies by police, such as automated license plate recognition systems, drones, and yes, body worn cameras, a central focus of her research over the past few years. Dr. Saulnier, welcome to the show.

Dr. Alana Saulnier:

Thank you so much.

PK:

So if I may call you, Alana. And please feel free to call me Patricia as well. I want to start Alana by asking you to tell us a little bit about yourself and what led you to the field of criminology and surveillance technologies by police.

AS:

Thank you. So when I think about my trajectory into the field that I’m now in, it started with one that I think many students who come to an undergraduate degree in criminology has which is just I’m really interested in topics of crime and justice. And that evolved as many of my mentors experiences recounted to me did in that you just sort of fall into the things that you’re most interested in. For me, that started off with a strong interest in the relationship between legal authorities and the communities that they serve, commonly referred to as the public. How are these relationships made as productive as possible, and I’m thinking about things like satisfaction, as well as efficiency, effectiveness? And as I continued on in my graduate studies, I started to become increasingly interested in how technology augments these relationships, especially when we think about a legal authority like the police, they increasingly are reliant on technology to augment or even automate interactions with members of the public. That’s what I started to become incredibly interested in, can technology improve? Does it impact in any way? Can it take away from the quality of interactions with members of the public? And when I left my PhD, I had the opportunity to join the University of Illinois at Chicago. And it was there that an existing partnership with the Chicago Police Department gave me my first taste of working with practitioners on applied projects. And that was it for me, I realized at this point that what I want to do is focus on working with especially police but I could imagine other legal authorities as well to promote evidence based policy, especially when it comes to community relationships and understanding how technology impacts them, but also somewhat more generally as well.

PK:

That sounds fascinating, Alana, and I was wondering if you can give us a high level overview of your research into body worn cameras and what aspects of this technology interest you most particularly.

AS:

The first opportunity came with the Chicago Police Department there I was a co investigator on the evaluation of their body worn cameras pilot project that was in 2016. And it let me get my hands on what it felt like to work with a service in engaging in this enormous rollout of a technology that was costly, and somewhat controversial, but certainly in high demand in terms of public perceptions of what police accountability and legitimacy looked like at that time in the United States in particular. In 2018, I had the opportunity to return to Canada, I took on a position at Lakehead University. And it was there that I was able to start leading evaluations, I worked with the Durham Regional Police Service, and then the Guelph police service to evaluate their body worn camera pilot projects. And we’re talking about things there, like being able to understand what the effects of body worn camera acquisition are on departmental metrics. So how frequently officers are arresting people during calls for service writing reports how long it takes to complete a call for service. We’re also thinking about things like officers attitudes towards these cameras, and their behavior. Is it changing? We’re thinking about use of force as an example there. Complaints are another important departmental metric that can be connected to Officer behavior. Public perceptions are another incredibly important area of study here, what does the public expect and then also public experiences. When the public interacts with an officer wearing a body worn camera does it change the nature of that interaction for them? And are special types of persons interacting with officers? I’m referring to victims here, especially vulnerable victims, survivors of intimate partner violence or sexual assault? How does the inclusion of this camera impact their interactions? Finally, I think that prosecution outcomes although not directly part of the policing equation, certainly a downstream effect that is connected to police acquisition of body worn cameras. So that was all part of the evaluations for Durham and well, once I joined queens, I had the opportunity to continue expanding that and work with agencies relevant to body worn cameras in policing, like the information and Privacy Commissioner of Ontario, like the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police. And this is where I started to increasingly get into the realm of governance topics as it pertains to body worn cameras.

PK:

What an interesting journey, especially that you’ve had a chance to examine this technology both in the US and in Canada. So how common is the use of body worn cameras by police services in Canada, relative to other jurisdictions?

AS:

Body worn cameras are becoming incredibly common in our Anglosphere countries. So the UK is the big kickoff here, the United States heavily following suit, Australia and Canada as somewhat lagging behind but increasingly common as well. When we’re looking at the UK, we’re talking about almost 100% saturation at this point, the United States have very, very substantial portion of their large services have acquired body worn cameras, we are dealing with a nation there of over 18,000 law enforcement agencies. So total saturation is probably a little bit on the horizon. In Canada, I conducted a survey in 2019. And at that time, 36% of Canadian services had considered or were presently trialing or had trialed body worn cameras. And that absolutely was on the rise in 2020, when we saw a whole range of incidents, producing calls for body worn cameras, including the RCMP decision to move forward with body worn cameras, which will certainly massively increase their presence in the Canadian law enforcement landscape. And just to note, I am in the process right now of conducting a follow up survey to that so we will have a very good understanding of exactly how prevalent body worn cameras are in Canada relatively soon.

PK:

Can you unpack for us some of the reasons why police services in Canada are adopting body worn cameras? What would be some of the benefits from the police perspective?

AS:

When we think about the benefits for police? A huge one is arguably enhanced perceptions from the public and increased police legitimacy is associated with increased public cooperation. So this of course stems from the fact that your public wants body worn cameras. If the public does desire body worn cameras, then arguably the acceptance of this technology by police services is something that’s going to enhance public evaluations of police and ensuring the reap the benefits. I think that police also are able to communicate the good work that they’re doing to the public with the acquisition of body worn cameras. Though, of course, we are familiar with these awful examples of either incompetent or completely unacceptable police behavior that are recorded and displayed. We also have to remember that there is much good police work that happens and these body worn cameras provide more opportunities for that to be captured, and ideally at some point shared with the public. Another really key advantage from the perspective of police is that this is protection for officers from frivolous complaints. And while there are absolutely legitimate complaints made against police, it’s also completely reasonable to say that there are frivolous complaints made against police. And that’s an incredibly stressful experience for officers. Bearing in mind that especially in Canada and Ontario, particularly with the OIPRD complaints are taken very seriously.

PK:

OIPRD?

AS:

The Office of the Independent Police Review Director.

PK:

What would the community perceive as being some of the advantages of body worn cameras?

AS:

Looking to the benefits of body worn cameras for members of the public are really substantial one is perceptions of improved transparency, we’re going to be able to have greater visibility on a profession that in some ways, operates with low visibility. Even though officer actions take place in the public. They are often quite removed from their immediate supervisors in their interactions with members of the public. And so having a body worn camera there provides this opportunity to see what officers are doing, and to be able to evaluate if that’s acceptable. Now, that is in and of itself an aspect of a benefit that we just have eyes on these situations. But we can also imagine that body worn cameras could improve interactions, particularly in communities or amongst police services, where there have been allegations of poor community police interactions that officers are not treating people, for example, with respect, there is a considerable amount of hope that body worn cameras would provide the accountability that would tangibly result in those interactions being improved. Another really important fact is the idea that community members can feel that if they do have a complaint, that this is something that’s going to be documented. So justifiable complaints will now not simply be an argument of one person’s word over another, there is this opportunity for evidence doesn’t mean that that evidence perfectly captures what happened, and that there isn’t the ability to differently interpret that evidence. But it is an additional set of eyes on the situation that can be very useful.

PK:

You mentioned that you had conducted research in the context of pilot programs with the Durham and Guelph police services, as they rolled out their body worn camera programs. What kinds of insights did your research uncover there?

AS:

When I conducted research with the Durham Regional Police Service in Guelph police service, what I found was largely in line with what we see in the existing literature around body worn cameras. And what that means is that sometimes we see effects, sometimes we don’t see effects. And when it comes to body worn cameras, there are simply a lot of outcomes that aren’t affected. Let me give you some examples, departmental metrics, things like arrest timelines to call for service completion, reports issued tickets issues chargers issued, these were either not affected or very, very minorly affected by the body worn camera acquisition across these services. So that’s, I think, in some ways, a very good thing that perhaps officers are simply continuing to do their job as usual. When it comes to use of force. We’ve seen very mixed results across the existing research some studies find that body worn cameras decrease use of force, others find that body worn cameras have no effective use of force, and still others have actually found that body worn cameras can increase use of force. So why is this the case? A very recent review of use of force studies suggested that body worn camera policy might actually be a very important factor there. It seems that limiting officer discretion around camera activation may help decrease use of force incidents. So that’s an interesting fact. Complaints. Here we see a really consistent finding. Complaints tend to be reduced when services adopt body worn cameras. One explanation is that the quality of police public interactions is genuinely improving because the body worn camera affects officer and or citizen behavior. Another explanation is that the body worn camera use is impacting reporting behavior, for instance, that frivolous complaints are less likely to be made. So the explanation for the outcome is unclear, but really either way the outcome is desirable. And during the Toronto Police Services body worn camera pilot 23 complaints were made against officers that were in the pilot, and then all 23 cases the officers were cleared of that complaint. What that outcome suggests is that body worn cameras have some value connected to accountability in terms of reaching timely resolutions on complaints, particularly those in which the police were determined to be acting appropriately. And that can also enhance community police relations. Now, coming to some other findings, there is very high public support for police to adopt body worn cameras. Some studies have demonstrated variation in the basis of demographics for body worn cameras support, especially around race. But that’s not always the case. For example, in both wealth and Durham studies, we did not see those effects, it was high support, regardless. Improvements in perceptions of experiences is another thing that’s been considered when it comes to community attitudes of body worn cameras. So it’s not just you know what you think about the camera, but how does actually interacting with an officer who’s wearing a camera impact your evaluation of that encounter? So I ran a study with Durham Regional Police Service where we had people who were randomly assigned to either interact with an officer wearing a body worn camera or not. And what we found in that case is that the people who interacted with officers wearing body worn cameras reported that their interaction was more favorable than people who interacted with an officer not wearing a body worn camera. I do want to stress that the difference was small, but it was more positive. So this is again, a desirable goal, even if we don’t know exactly what the explanation was there is it that officers are actually acting more friendly, or is it that simply the presence of this technology that people tend to have a lot of confidence in support for is making them feel more positive. Another key area of exploration is officer attitudes and behavior. Early literature around body worn cameras was consistently demonstrating that officers tended to be uncertain, a little uneasy about body worn cameras, you have to remember that they at this time are being adopted in a climate that is very critical of officers. But as officers have used body worn cameras, a very consistent finding has been that they tend to feel more positive about them. So that’s something that I think is quite noteworthy, a small amount of research has looked into whether officer behavior actually changes in some of that through that use of force angle. And that study did conclude that officers were in cameras were more positive, more amiable to the people they interacted with. And the final thing that I’ll comment on his prosecution outcomes, only a handful of studies here, one of them being the one that we conducted in Durham, and we see mixed effects across that whole body of literature and fairly non existent effects. In the study in Durham. I want to point out whether we’re seeing more pro prosecution outcomes or whether we’re seeing cases resolved before they have to go to trial, which amounts to reductions in resources for the criminal justice system, that there’s something really critical to take note of here. And that’s that not all body worn camera footage is created equal in terms of evidence, a lot of body worn camera footage is simply recording the interaction than an officer and the person that they interacted with the subject who’s now before the criminal justice system as a defendant, it simply documents their interaction, it doesn’t necessarily have any evidentiary value. And so a next really important step in research is being able to focus on these subset of body worn camera videos that actually include content of evidentiary value and seeing what the effects are of those subset of videos on prosecution outcomes. I think that that could yield some very different conclusions and much more definitive results when it comes to prosecution outcomes and the effects of body worn cameras.

PK:

Certainly a lot of positive results there. And as you say, there’s other areas of future research that are really important to get into. I know your research also revolved around police recordings in particularly sensitive situations. So I was wondering if you can talk to us a little bit about what you found when body worn cameras were used in situations such as domestic and sexual violence cases, for instance.

AS:

Thank you so much for asking that question. Victims have been an incredibly understudied area when it comes to body worn cameras and their impacts with the community that police interact with. And that’s a big issue, when we bear in mind that victims actually constitute a very substantial portion of the people that officers interact with. And generally speaking, your members of the public might think of themselves as a victim with regards to, you know, a home break in or a theft, and might not feel that there’s any substantial concerns about a body worn camera. But there is a very, arguably different experience for someone who is a survivor of intimate partner violence or sexual assault. And so that was a particular area I was interested in exploring. To do that, we need to get insight from victims. Now, I’ve done a couple studies that deal with this. The first was exploratory interviews, so 33 Interviews with Survivors that were aimed at understanding their hopes and concerns, as well as being able to understand the broad categories of rules that could govern the use of body worn cameras in ways that are victims sensitive. And what we found there is that these particular survivors, were able to focus on officer practices, specifically notification that officers should inform survivors as soon as possible, officers should ask survivors if they’re comfortable being recorded. And related to that alternative recording options, if a survivor is not comfortable being recorded, and we’re talking about specifically visually here, obscuring the lens, turning the lens away from the survivor, and simply capturing the audio recording, and then concerns around data storage and access to separate but related issues, a lot of concern there around the potential disclosure of embarrassing, private, you know, images that could have implications beyond someone’s immediate tastes, you know, in terms of their family relationships, their personal relationships, their employment relationships, as well as how long this data is going to be stored. These are all central concerns raised by victims, in that initial interview phase, as follow up study, was taking these hopes, concerns and those list of possible rules I just mentioned, in a survey format to survivors, and sharing that across Ontario to try to understand when people are presented with these specific points, which ones matter most to them. And so that’s a project that is the data analysis is still ongoing, but we’re working to build a body of knowledge there that will ultimately hopefully inform victims sensitive use of body worn cameras,

PK:

Clearly some very heightened privacy concerns in those contexts. Let me ask you about the use of body worn cameras in different contexts in much more public contexts, like in the context of public protests, for instance.

AS:

The central focus for me needs to be is that the cameras are used if they are used in a way that is transparent. So whether they’re used or not, is transparent that policies regarding the use of body worn cameras at protests are something that is clearly laid out in the services policy, and that they’re accountable to adhering to that policy. As such, access considerations, I would say are really substantial point of concern there. I think it personally is reasonable to understand that officers would want to have body worn cameras on at protests to be able to document their interactions with protesters, particularly should something become contentious. But that does not mean that the footage collected from protests should be used for any other sort of reason, fishing expeditions, for example, connected to facial recognition. This is an area that is sort of the front edge of concerns connected to body worn cameras. And I think we do need to tread very carefully there on not infringing on people’s privacy rights in ways that might have chilling effects for people’s willingness to engage in protests. Protests are absolutely something that’s central to our ability to continue to grow as a progressive nation.

PK:

So from what you’ve seen, how important would you say it is for police services to consult their local communities before putting such programs into place?

AS:

I would personally say it’s incredibly important. When I’m sharing my starting point. I think body worn cameras are very are promising for police in service to their communities that they are a tool that can assist the way that communities and police interact with each other. Having said that, that does not mean that I think body worn cameras are a requirement for the future of policing. I think that services adoption of body worn cameras should be based very much on their community’s support and desire for such a technology. And therefore, it’s incredibly important for services to consult with their communities. If a community wants body worn cameras, then it’s something that’s worth the service considering and very likely adopting. And if the community does  not feel that body worn cameras are necessary, then that’s an important consideration as well. These are costly technology. And we want to conduct policing in ways that serve communities.

PK:

So certainly, consulting communities about whether or not to adopt body worn cameras is important. How about consulting them on how body worn cameras should, should be used? What should be their limitations, the rules around them? What role do communities play in helping shape the governance frameworks?

AS:

I think that they should absolutely play a role. And, you know, part of the complex issue there is figuring out how to get this information from the communities that police serve. The common sort of practices, town halls, and just open public surveys. These are good ways to generate feedback, but then often come from your sort of strongest, most opinionated ends of the spectrum and perhaps miss a middle ground. One way to gain access to that middle ground or a broader sample of your community is for services to engage in public perception surveys with people that they’ve actually had contact with, especially around something relatively benign, like traffic interactions, for example, this allows them to potentially gain access to a broader cross section of public perceptions. And that I think, is an incredibly important way to be able to access their community’s sentiments, and when it comes to what community members might be interested in, you know, I think it’s incredibly important that services take into consideration their communities attitudes, again, the focal point for me with policing is that police serve their communities. And if you’re inattentive to the community’s concerns, the police service isn’t really meeting its goal.

PK:

So lots of interesting qualitative methods there to get insight into public perceptions, which is really interesting. So if I were a community member, being asked by my local police service, what I thought about them rolling out a body worn camera program, what are some of the kinds of questions you think I should be asking my local police service?

AS:

That is such an important question. I think that very centrally community members, and this is one that gets overlooked a lot. Want to ask, what’s the purpose of the adoption of this technology? And following up with that, how does the service plan to assess if that purpose is being met? Community members should be asking how will the cameras be used? So this is the policy around things like activation and what sort of activities officers need to record. And in that regard, I think we really want to see full transparency, I think it’s incredibly important that service policies be accessible to the public so that the public can understand what the service is doing. Within that policy, community members could also be very interested in and should be asking questions about how will the data be stored? Who will it be shared with? From a privacy perspective, data must be stored and transmitted securely. This type of data is incredibly sensitive, and we don’t want it to be compromising leakages or in securely stored data compromised and public perceptions of police integrity. Community members should be asking who will have access to the footage and how that access will be documented. So we’re thinking about audit logs there, access to footage should be logged and any access should be appropriate. And I guess the final sort of question that again, might be one that doesn’t come onto the community radar as much is what procedures are going to be in place for transparently integrating body worn cameras with any other new technologies, facial recognition, automated, sort of algorithmic assessments of these data that are being produced. This is the key thing here, there needs to be oversight and accountability in place to regulate the integration of body worn cameras, with other surveillance technologies, especially automated recognition practices that have to do with facial image or voice recognition.

PK:

Very interesting. As you know, our office recently released a model governance framework, setting all these kinds of rules that you just set out around the use of body worn cameras by police services across Ontario. And in doing so we built on our consultations with the Toronto Police Service when they were developing their program. I know you consulted with us on the development of that governance framework. So thank you very much for your input into that process. And you’ve also consulted with other police services across Canada outside Ontario. So let me ask you, how consistent do you think is our body worn camera framework with that of other jurisdictions across Canada?

AS:

The IPC’s governance model pertaining to body worn cameras is an excellent piece of literature. It’s, I think, best understood as a sort of board level policy providing guidance on how services should proceed when they are considering and implementing a body worn camera program. And it really focuses on these key issues of transparency, accountability, privacy, and access considerations when we’re talking about body worn camera program development. Now, when I think about the IPCs framework, it helps police services that are using or considering using body worn cameras to do so in a way that chiefly complies with Ontario’s access and privacy laws, which is an incredibly important practical document for them to have access to. At the same time. It also is ultimately promoting consistency in police use of body worn cameras throughout the province, which is critical and assisting our police services boards in having a guidance document that they can use to help carry out their mandate of providing oversight. It’s an excellent document that I was very pleased with. Now, when I think about the body worn camera policy framework that I was involved in creating with the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police, myself and a working group of 13 members brought in complete services, and related a police associations across Canada came together to try to produce a document that I would describe more as a policy template. So while we look at the IPCs document as something that provides a broad overview with very specific recommendations, the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police template is very complimentary in the material it covers to the IPC’s, but it’s presented more as a service level procedure or directive. It’s designed to be a template that services can directly slot their protocols into and these two documents the IPC and the CACP guidelines when it comes to body worn cameras are very complementary tools for services as they strive to produce a concrete version of the recommendations outlining how body worn cameras are going to be used at their service.

PK:

Wonderful. So for those listeners interested, both the frameworks, the IPC framework, and the Canadian chiefs of police framework will be available in the show notes to this episode. And for my last question, Alana, I’d like to bring you to one of our key strategic priority areas, which is next generation law enforcement. As you know, that is one of the key areas we’ll be focusing on at the IPC. And I want to ask you your advice on how we can best contribute to building public trust in law enforcement, by working with others, to develop the necessary guardrails for the adoption of new programs and technologies that protect both public safety but also respect Ontarians access and privacy rights. What do you think we should be doing to advance work in this area?

AS:

I think what the IPC is already doing with the production of the body worn camera governance framework, with the consultation around facial recognition technologies, as used by law enforcement is exactly illustrative of what I want you to keep doing. Part of expanding that is just being able to document what is going on in Canadian law enforcement. We have an expectation of transparency, but also what is forthcoming getting out in front of these things, which is exactly what the IPC was doing when they got involved with that facial recognition consultation. From there, we want to develop governance strategies, getting out in front of these technologies and their adoption, rather than producing these sorts of governance strategies after the fact. So I think that that is exactly what the IPC is doing. I’m very glad to be involved with those efforts. And I’d say that that’s what needs to continue to happen. We need to be very vigilant in documenting what sort of surveillance technologies data collection and management technologies law enforcement is using, and continue to ensure that they’re used in ways that abide by privacy legislation. But there’s just more broadly meet expectations around human dignity when it comes to the collection and use of data in these contexts.

PK:

What a fascinating discussion it’s been Alana, thank you again, so much for taking the time to join me on the show. You’ve provided us with valuable insights into how law enforcement can use this technology appropriately with transparency, accountability, fairness, privacy, and human dignity. For listeners who want to learn more about the use of surveillance technologies by law enforcement, I encourage you to view the webcast we hosted last year for privacy day. You’ll find it on the IPCs YouTube channel. I also invite you to look up our body worn camera governance framework, which is available on our website at IPC.on.ca. There you can also find more general information about privacy and access rights under Ontario’s laws. Also feel free to call or email our office for assistance and general information about access and privacy rights in Ontario. Well, that’s a wrap for this episode of info matters. Thank you for joining us, everyone. And until next time. I’m Patricia Kosseim Ontario’s information and Privacy Commissioner and this has been Info Matters. If you enjoy the podcast, leave us a rating or review. If there’s an access or privacy topic you’d like us to explore on a future episode we’d love to hear from you. Send us a Tweet at IPC info privacy, or email us at podcast at IPC.on.ca. Thanks for listening. And please join us again for more conversations about people privacy and access to information. If it matters to you, it matters to me