This is the first in a series of investigations we will be conducting into different body-worn camera policies within the United States.
As the debate over the future of policing in America continues, it’s important to look at both past and ongoing attempts at reform — to learn what works, what doesn’t, and what’s complicated.
One tool for police reform that holds potential but suffers from poor implementation is the body-worn camera (BWC).
The NYPD Body-Worn Camera Program
The New York City Police Department (NYPD) has a large BWC program. According to the NYPD, the department began its rollout of BWCs in 2017. Currently, the NYPD reports that over 24,000 of its members are equipped with a BWC, including “all Police Officers, Detectives, Sergeants and Lieutenants regularly assigned to perform patrol duties throughout the city.”
The New York City Civilian Complaint Review Board (CCRB) is an independent agency empowered to investigate "complaints against New York City police officers alleging the use of excessive or unnecessary force, abuse of authority, discourtesy, or the use of offensive language." In February of 2020, the CCRB released a report on the impact of the NYPD’s BWC program on its investigations into police misconduct — highlighting both successes and shortcomings of the BWC program.
The report stated, “In the 318 fully-investigated complaints in which BWC footage was received, the Board was able to reach a clear determination of fact in 76% of all cases, compared to 39% when no video was available.”
As for complaints of officer discourtesy and officers using offensive language, the report says, “Between 2017 and 2019 Q2, in cases where BWC footage was available, the CCRB substantiated 56% of Discourtesy allegations and 37% of Offensive Language allegations. During that same time period, in cases where no BWC footage was available, the CCRB substantiated only 19% of Discourtesy cases and 15% of Offensive Language cases." The report also found that “While in 2017, complaints with BWC footage comprised only 1% of all fully investigated cases, in the second quarter of 2019, they comprised 33%.”
For anyone looking to BWC programs as a tool in identifying — and eventually curbing — police misconduct, these numbers are encouraging. That said, it’s becoming clear that the success of these programs depends on civilian investigators being able to access the footage they need.
Footage Delays and “False Negatives”
On that note, the review board reported increasing delays in the time it took to receive BWC footage from the NYPD, noting that in Q4 of 2018, “it took an average of 20 business days to receive a response to a BWC footage request, regardless of whether the response included footage. For requests made by June 30, 2019 (2019 Q2) and closed by July 31, 2019, that number jumped to an average of 42 business days for the CCRB to receive BWC footage, and 37 business days for the NYPD to tell the CCRB that no footage existed or that the request for footage was denied.”
Additionally, the board highlighted the issue of “false negatives,” in which requests for BWC footage were given a negative response, but footage was later found. The CCRB identified instances of false negatives in almost 19% of BWC requests. CCRB investigators “often learned about false negatives, and the subsequent existence of BWC footage, haphazardly—from reading about BWC assignments in police documents, during officer interviews, and, in at least two instances, via video footage provided to the news media.”
Possible explanations for false negatives were listed as “BWC requests providing limited or incomplete information, the completeness of search criteria used by the NYPD to identify BWC footage, or human error.”
Recommending location tracking or geotagging as a potential way to “reduce false negatives and expedite BWC searches,” the review board reported that “despite Axon’s software capabilities, the NYPD currently does not use geotagging technology. It instead relies on human input, making it difficult to identify incident locations as well as the location of officers during an incident.”
In response to these problems, the CCRB and NYPD signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) in November 2019, by which the two parties agreed to the establishment of a facility in which CCRB employees can oversee NYPD employees as they conduct database searches for BWC footage requested by the CCRB. The agreement additionally stated that the NYPD shall provide requested “BWC video(s) not requiring redaction” to the CCRB within 10 business days (“absent exceptional circumstances”) and “shall make best efforts to provide redacted video(s) within twenty-five (25) business days.”
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Footage Access in 2020 and 2021
Delays in accessing BWC footage continued throughout 2020. The CCRB reported that by the end of July 2020, 36% of the board’s open investigations had pending BWC requests. 80.7% of these pending requests were reported to be at least 30 days old.
By Q3 2020, the NYPD took an average of 79 business days to respond to BWC footage requests, an increase from an average of 33 business days “over the first half of the year.” This is a far cry from the agreement outlined in the MOU.
The review board’s 2020 annual report attributed “significantly delayed” receipt of BWC footage to staffing limitations within the NYPD during the Covid-19 pandemic.
The CCRB worked alongside the NYPD to address the backlog of requests. Delays decreased in Q4 2020 to an average of 10 business days when requests for BWC footage were given a negative response, and an average of 21 business days when BWC footage was shared with the CCRB. That same year, the CCRB reported having “collected BWC video evidence in 38% of the complaints closed,” a 2 percentage point increase from 2019. While footage request response times shortened in 2020, the rate of BWC video evidence collection for closed complaints remained fairly steady.
The improvements in footage request response times have continued into 2021. In September 2021, 2% of the CCRB’s open investigations had pending BWC footage requests. According to the CCRB, 38.8% of these pending requests were at least 30 days old.
The NYPD and the CCRB combated this backlog without the help of the secure BWC search facility outlined in the 2019 MOU. Although the “build out” of the facility has been completed, “Use of the space is on hold until there is no longer a public health concern.”
While the CCRB reported being "optimistic about progress toward full implementation" of the Memorandum of Understanding "in the coming year," the CCRB testified before the NYC Racial Justice Commission on the need for “unfettered and direct access” to BWC footage as recently as September 9th, 2021.
It remains to be seen how the improved access to BWC footage by CCRB investigators outlined in the 2019 MOU will impact both the speed and effectiveness of civilian complaint investigations. Seeing that the CCRB collected BWC footage in less than 40% of complaints closed in 2020, direct access to BWC videos may have a wide reaching impact on the board’s investigations, and police oversight in New York City more broadly. We will be closely monitoring the developments of this program.