New Bodycam Research: It’s All About Your Perspective
By Emily Chen-Newton
In the days after Kenneth Jones was shot and killed by an Omaha police officer, the police department publicly released still photographs from the bodycam footage instead of the raw video of the police killing. Broderick Turner, Assistant Professor at Virginia Tech, says, this practice is used nationwide by police departments in cases of possible police misconduct. So, Turner is gearing up for a new research project looking at how the human brain interprets still photographs vs video clips.
“I have to like...go in and out of doing my own research because watching a bunch of police shootings is difficult on the soul.”
Turner says previous research has shown that in general our brains are more able to judge intentionality when we see moving images as opposed to still photographs of an event. This newest research is born out of existing psychological principles such as the Heider-Simmel Principal. Heider and Simmel’s foundational research showed how innately the human brain strives to make a story out of moving images, even when looking at inanimate objects like circles and squares.
Turner is also pulling from his own body of work exploring how the angle from which an incident of possible police misconduct is filmed affects how much intentionality the viewer attributes to the officer involved. A paper published in 2019, shows the longer an officer is on screen or the more of their body that’s visible, the more likely we are to believe they had some kind of intent behind their actions.
Because of how body-worn cameras (BWC) are generally affixed to an officer’s body, the angle afforded by the recorded footage usually shows less of the officer than you see in a dashcam or cell phone video from a bystander’s perspective. However, Broderick says this doesn’t necessarily mean dashcam or cellphone footage will show the fullest picture of the incident. Depending on how the camera is positioned on the officer, or if the footage is from the involved officer’s partner, then it’s possible the viewer gets a wider view. Likewise, sometimes dashcam footage can be obscured by an officer’s body, another car, or other objects nearby, giving a narrower view of the scene.
According to Broderick Turner’s Ph.D. dissertation from 2020, when there are multiple sources of video available, the human brain will prioritize the footage where “the focal actor” (the person doing the action) is most prominent. Additionally, his 2020 work looked at over 1,000 videos of officer-involved fatalities or other instances of violence. The review showed there was a greater likelihood an officer would face some kind of repercussion or legal action if there was publicly available video footage of any kind of the incident. So while the BWC perspective may not be perfect, Turner emphasizes that the more footage we can get of an incident of police violence, the better, and this includes BWC especially when they can provide a wide view of the scene.
First and Third person perspectives represented on an XYZ axis. Figure 1 in Broderick Turner’s 2020 dissertation. Click the image to read more.
On average about 900-1,000 people are killed by police officers each year. And according to the Police Integrity Research Group, from 2005-2019 just 98 nonfederal officers were arrested for a fatal on-duty shooting. This intersection of police violence, social psychology, and criminal law deserves research attention particularly as the amount and variety of available video footage of police brutality increases worldwide.
Turner’s research suggests when more of the officer’s body is in the footage, we are more likely to believe the officer intended to carry out their actions. The work shows there is even a “marginal effect” where the likelihood of repercussions increases once again if the footage is filmed from a third-person perspective. But he says, more research is needed to know whether or not this leads directly to an increased likelihood that an officer will be charged.