Body-worn cameras improve law enforcement officer report writing accuracy Journal of Law Enforcement
Date
08/01/2015Abstract
With cameras becoming ubiquitous in society, it is becoming more important for law enforcement officers (LEOs) to have video recordings of civilian contacts recorded from their own perspectives. This was a prospective study of a convenience sample of LEOs who completed several scenarios and wrote a use-of-force report on one of the scenarios from memory. The LEOs then reviewed their body-worn-camera (BWC) recording of the scenario and amended their reports, as they felt necessary. The 11 LEOs had an average of 2.63 minor errors (range 0-7), 5.4 moderate errors (0-14), and 0.9 major errors (range 0-3) corrected by their BWC recording review in our study. This included 21 errors related to miscounting, mis-sequencing, or omitting force, warnings, compliance, or other important descriptors of the use of force. Point-of-view BWC recording review improved the accuracy of the LEOs’ report writing, leading to the correction of important errors from the LEO’s original reports.
