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The Quarterly will keep our law enforcement agencies and their partners and supporters informed of the developments, trends, and news within the BWC field and encourage involvement in our ongoing activities. The Quarterly provides the most up-to-date tools and technical assistance materials for your continued success in navigating and implementing a long-lasting, successful BWC program.
WELCOME TO THE FY 2016 BWC PIP SITES!
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In this Issue:
Upcoming Events
- Webinar: Are Officers Following Body-Worn Camera Policy? Considering the issues around assessing officer compliance. December 19th @ 1 pm et
- Regional Meeting: Issues Related to Policy,and the Latest in BWC Research
Phoenix, AZ. January 11th & 12th
Quicklinks
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The BWC TTA Team Spotlight
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Craig Uchida, Ph.D.
BWC TTA Senior Advisor
Dr. Uchida serves as a Senior Advisor on BWC TTA and is President of Justice & Security Strategies, Inc. where he oversees contracts and grants with cities, counties, criminal justice agencies, foundations, and foreign nations. Dr. Uchida is currently working with the Los Angeles Police Department to design and implement Predictive Policing, and to study their implementation of body worn cameras. He is also working with the Miami-Dade State Attorney’s Office to assist in reducing Mortgage Fraud in the county. Dr. Uchida was a senior executive within the US Department of Justice. He is the former Assistant Director for Grants Administration and Senior Policy Adviser for the Office of Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS Office). As the Assistant Director for Grants Administration he and his staff were responsible for developing and implementing the grant making process, making grant awards, and grant monitoring. When he left the COPS Office he had provided $3.4 billion to over 9,000 law enforcement agencies for over 65,000 officers. His efforts at the COPS Office resulted in two major US Department of Justice Awards – the Attorney General’s Distinguished Service Award in 1995 and the JustWorks Award for innovation in government in 1997
Meet the rest of the BWC TTA Team here.
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For a full view of the map and more information about the funded PIP sites view our website.
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Being able to respond quickly to the needs of the BWC TTA Policy and Implementation Program Sites is important for the sustainability and growth of their body-worn camera programs. The BWC TTA team has completed various requests ranging from peer-to-peer exchanges to assistance with prosecutor collaboration, local BWC workshops, to conference presentations for training and technical assistance during this last cycle.
The Body-Worn Camera Speakers Bureau is one part of this comprehensive effort - connecting body-worn camera subject matter experts with associations and agencies that request a speaker at an organized state, local, or tribal event. The BWC TTA Team responded to 24 requests in which a subject matter expert attended and presented on specific topics related to BWC implementation.
August 2016 BWC TTA Regional Meeting
On August 18-19, 2016, the BWC TTA team convened a regional meeting in Charleston, SC. facilitated by BJA Director Denise O'Donnell, members of the BWC TTA team and BWC TTA subject matter experts. The goals of the regional meeting included:
- Delivering technical assistance to command staff from law enforcement agencies and to prosecutors.
- Facilitating peer-to-peer learning and networking experiences for law enforcement command staff.
- Discussing the role of the prosecutor and the courts in BWC implementation.
- Providing Chiefs and command staff with information about how to work with the media, communities, and officers on the implementation of body-worn cameras.
- Providing interactive training and technical assistance to attendees.
- Explaining the array of TTA resources and how to access them
For handouts, presentations and the summary report continue here.
2016 International Associations of Chiefs of Police Conference Presentation
On Tuesday, October 18, from 8:00 to 9:30 a.m., the BWC Training and Technical Assistance program presented an educational session at the International Association of Chiefs of Police Annual Conference in San Diego, CA.
As thousands of police agencies develop new policies regarding body worn cameras (BWCs), and as the Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA) reviews the policy development process for agencies participating in its Policy and Implementation Program (PIP),
This panel explored variations in BWC policies, based on an analysis of policies implemented in the PIP initiative, and the panel includes representatives from several agencies that recently developed new BWC policies.
View the presentation here
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A Guide for Purchasing Body Worn Cameras For State and Local Agencies
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Our BWC TTA Team partner, Justice and Security Strategies, prepared a guide to assist law enforcement agencies and their jurisdictions' contract offices in procuring body worn cameras, accessories, video storage solutions, and maintenance agreements.
The Generic Request for Proposals document serves as a guide for agencies wishing to obtain body worn cameras via a competitive process and using a Request for Proposals (RFP) mechanism.
The Generic RFP can assist you in putting together your own RFP. It serves as a model for RFP elements to include. It is based on a number of existing RFPs from different agencies that seek to purchase body worn cameras.
Disclaimer: We recognize that Federal, State and Local contracting rules may supersede the examples that we provide. This guide does not replace any state or local requirements, nor does it replace any Federal guidelines or requirements. If federal, state, and local rules are more restrictive, then you must follow those rules. Given those caveats, the Guide will likely be helpful to you. You may and should alter the language to fit your jurisdiction needs. There is no requirement or mandate to use this template as part of your grant with the Bureau of Justice Assistance.
More Information on the Generic Request for Proposals
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Building Body-Worn Camera Program Policies
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Why is Policy Important?
A policy can effectively guide officer decision-making and behavior IF:
- The policy is clear (what is permissible and what is not)
- The policy is understood and available
- The policy is enforced (supervisory review)
“CALEA Accreditation requires an agency to develop a comprehensive, well thought out, uniform set of written directives. This is one of the most successful methods for reaching administrative and operational goals, while also providing direction to personnel.”
(Commission on Accreditation for Law Enforcement Agencies, 2010) A comprehensive policy communicates the goals of the BWC program, conveys expectations to officers, allows for internal and external collaboration , allows for internal and external transparency, guides officer decision-making and behavior, and provides a foundation for accountability.
One of the first steps for a law enforcement agency after receiving a grant through the Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA) Policy and Implementation Program (PIP) is an administrative policy review. This review is a collaborative process with agencies to assess the comprehensiveness of their current body-worn camera (BWC) policy, to understand local issues that influence policy (e.g. specific state regulations), and to identify areas for continued technical assistance.
Constructing a Policy
To facilitate activity, the BWC TTA Team created a BWC Policy Review Scorecard. The Scorecard assesses policy comprehensiveness in the policy development process across 11 different areas including: policy development, general issues, activation, de-activation, data transfer/download, data storage, BWC video review, training, public release of video, policy and program evaluation, and relationship to use of force policy. The Scorecard includes 41 specific policy items across the 11 areas that are scored, 17 of which are mandatory (i.e., must be covered in order for the policy to be approved by BJA). The Scorecard also includes a written description of the specific policy review process, identification of potential problems areas or current TTA needs, and an overall recommendation regarding approval by the BJA. The Scorecard is designed based on best practices found in the National Body-Worn Camera Toolkit, and the PERF/COPS document: Implementing a Body-Worn Camera Program: Recommendations and Lessons Learned.
The Scorecard is designed to rate the comprehensiveness of the policy and does not dictate directionality on policy issues. For example, the Scorecard requires that the policy provide officers guidance on when they are to activate the BWC, but the Scorecard does not proscribe the circumstances for activation –the specifics of an issue are left to the discretion of the local agency. Similarly, the Scorecard requires that a policy provide guidance to officers on advising citizens of the BWC, but the local agency determines the specific guidance that is provided in the policy.
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In View is a resource that features commentary from BWC experts, including researchers, practitioners, and policy makers on emerging issues applicable to body worn cameras. To date, In View has addressed the following topics; outcomes, risk management, racial disparities, video release and crime reduction.
We are learning that the implementation of technology involves more than the introduction of new technology into law enforcement. Full implementation of BWCs in a police agency affects key areas of operations and administration, as well as internal and external stakeholders, in significant ways. For many departments, the implementation of BWCs is in direct response to community and stakeholder concerns about police use of force and the desire for transparency in how these incidents are investigated, reviewed, and managed. Our webinars have covered topics such as best practices related to the BWC procurement process, the importance of reviewing and refining the use of force policy in the successful implementation of BWC programs, recommendations on how to meet the BJA requirements, why they are so important, how PIP agencies are faring in the policy review, how to avoid setbacks, and model policy components, data retention and storage options and how to manage and respond to the media and community after a crisis or high profile event.
Podcasts
BJA created the BWC Podcast Series as an accompaniment to the BJA National BWC Toolkit. This new podcast series is in interview style focusing on important issues regarding implementing BWCs in the law enforcement environment. The podcast series will focus on diverse aspects of implementation and includes input from law enforcement, prosecutors, defenders, advocates, unions, civil rights, and more to cover the most pressing issues concerning BWCs.
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Latest Research on Body-Worn Cameras
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Research on Body Worn Cameras: Meeting the Challenges of Police Operations, Program Implementation, and Randomized Controlled Trial Designs
Given the large number of police agencies implementing BWCs across the country (numbering in the thousands), there will be a growing number of opportunities for BWC evaluations and expectations that these programs will be evaluated. Studying the implementation of BWCs presents a number of challenges to both researchers and police agencies, particularly when large police organizations are involved. Drawing on our experiences involving a BWC experiment with the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department, this article discusses the programmatic challenges of implementing a BWC program in a large agency (technical, political, and administrative) while simultaneously evaluating the program using a randomized controlled trial design.
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The CNA Corporation, Arizona State University (ASU), and Justice and Security Strategies (JSS) provide training and technical assistance (TTA) to law enforcement agencies who have received funding for body-worn cameras (BWCs) through the US Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA) BWC Policy and Implementation Program (PIP). Administrative policy review is a central feature of TTA. The TTA team has developed a BWC Policy Review Scorecard to assess the comprehensiveness of BWC policies, and this report examines agency variation on five areas of BWC policy and practice.
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A recent study published by the University of Cambridge, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, RAND, and several active-duty police officers in the journal Criminal Justice and Behavior suggests that equipping frontline officers with body-worn cameras (BWCs) could lead to dramatic reductions in citizens’ complaints filed against the police. The multisite randomized controlled trial showed that across seven experimental sites, complaints lodged against police officers dropped from 1,539 complaints in the 12 months preceding the study (roughly 220 complaints per site) to 113 (approximately 16 complaints per site) after introducing BWCs. This marks an overall reduction of 93 percent in the incidence of complaints. In some sites, the number of complaints went down to zero.
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Self-awareness to being watched and socially-desirable behavior: A field experiment on the effect of body-worn cameras on police use-of-force
A voluminous body of research across various disciplines has shown that when humans become self-conscious about being watched, they often alter their conduct. Accumulated evidence further suggests that individuals who are aware that they are being observed often embrace submissive or commonly-accepted behavior, particularly when the observer is a rule-enforcing entity. What is less known, however, is what happens when the observer is not a “real person”, and whether being videotaped can have an effect on aggression and violence. This research tested whether police body-worn cameras would lead to socially-desirable behavior of the officers who wear them.
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Body Worn Cameras in the News
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The call comes after yet another case in which the department is under fire, especially on social media after being accused of killing unarmed labourer Adelle Gilbert in San Fernando on Thursday.
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The Oneida County Sheriff’s Department is seeking to purchase body-worn cameras for deputies, joining a growing number of law enforcement agencies in the country that have bought or shown interest in the devices.
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A meeting of the Police Services Board on Thursday approved $500,000 in funding needed to hire a commissioner to look at the implementation of the body cams.
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The cameras will be placed on the officers’ uniforms and will record only after they are turned on by the officer.
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New Haven Police Public Information Officer, Lt. Joseph Murgo, said the body cameras have helped their department in many ways since officers were equipped with them in 2014. He said it promotes transparency, captures evidence in crimes, and encourages both police and the people they interact with to be on their best behavior.
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