An occasional pet peeve of mine is the subject of expectations. Let me give a quick concrete example: When the Metro Light Rail went in here in the Twin Cities and initially opened up, the local media was all agog as they announced that more than twice the expected number of people had ridden the light rail in the first X months.
We’re all supposed to get excited with them, right?
But, to me, being slightly cynical, I had to ask, first, On what are these expectations built? and then, even worse, Is this even the right metric?
The first question is a technical question about how a metric is estimated, and this takes place without discussion of what they’re trying to measure. Think about it: the number of people riding the light rail relates to what how?
The unvoiced, and either assumed or, insert dark music, unexplored causal chain here is how that estimated number captures the percentage of goal achieved. Removing some of the abstractions here, we don’t choose to install a light rail system, or widen the interstate, or for that matter polish the Capitol building, because we have an excess of money flowing out of our wallets. We do it because there’s some a problem to solve, a problem of such magnitude and impact on society that it seems worthwhile to spend many millions of dollars to solve it.
So, as an engineer, it seems far more logical to me to quantify the problem, estimate the impact that this solution, which may be a partial solution (and that’s fine), will have on the problem, and then measure the actual impact. That, not so incidentally, is how we’ve gradually realized that widening the interstates as a solution to commuter gridlock is not the solution we’d like to think it should be. How do we know? Because we did it, we’ve widened interstates, and gridlock simply continues. Remember Build it and they will come? Yep, that’s what happened.
All of this came to mind when a reader sent me a pair of links concerning police body cameras. Here’s the first, from Governing:
Police Body Cameras Aren’t Having the Effects Many Expected
For years, many people hailed body-worn cameras as a potential key to improving police transparency and strengthening often-fractured relationships with the communities they serve. But so far, academic research suggests the technology largely hasn’t lived up to those expectations.
That’s the conclusion of a new report from the Center for Evidence-Based Crime Policy at George Mason University.
Researchers reviewed 70 empirical studies on body cameras’ effects, ranging from officer and citizen behavior to influences on law enforcement agencies as a whole. While much of the research remains mixed, it counters some promised benefits of body cameras at a time when departments are increasingly adopting the technology.
And then this one from NPR:
Body Cam Study Shows No Effect On Police Use Of Force Or Citizen Complaints
Having police officers wear little cameras seems to have no discernible impact on citizen complaints or officers’ use of force, at least in the nation’s capital.
That’s the conclusion of a study performed as Washington, D.C., rolled out its huge camera program. The city has one of the largest forces in the country, with some 2,600 officers now wearing cameras on their collars or shirts.
“We found essentially that we could not detect any statistically significant effect of the body-worn cameras,” says Anita Ravishankar, a researcher with the Metropolitan Police Department and a group in the city government called the Lab @ DC.
“I think we’re surprised by the result. I think a lot of people were suggesting that the body-worn cameras would change behavior,” says Chief of Police Peter Newsham. “There was no indication that the cameras changed behavior at all.”
Perhaps, he says, that is because his officers “were doing the right thing in the first place.
But was it realistic to expect behavioral changes by the police because they wear body cams?
Look: body cams have been in the process of adoption because of dissatisfaction with certain outcomes involving police and the public. As a proud member of the Instant Gratification Generation, I can understand why everyone wanted to believe that having a body cam would cause the police to … improve. That’s what I hoped for when I heard about body cams. Having fewer poor outcomes might be the metric we desired.
But I think what we need to realize is that body cams are a documentary tool, not a corrective tool. They are not analogous to a cattle prod, zapping an officer who’s not performing properly right when they commit an impropriety; in order for body cams to function as a corrective tool, the officers would have to be thinking about how they’re reacting now and how it’s going to look on the body cam, all while reacting to a situation which may be life and death right now.
That’s too much to expect.
But I have to take issue with Michael White, cited in the NPR report, on this statement:
The big question about cameras now is, White says: “Is it worth the cost?” Besides buying the actual cameras, cash-strapped police departments have to pay to store and manage many thousands of hours of video footage. “I think a big part of the answer to that question is going to come from what the police department and the community want to accomplish with the rollout of body-worn cameras.”
Even as I agree with him that the footage from body cams will generally have little long term value, I have to say I think that as a documentary tool, they may prove to be initially highly valuable. Not as a tool for evaluating if this or that police officer is performing well or poorly, but as a general documentary tool for evaluating whether police are the proper response to categories of situation. I and readers have touched on this subject before with regards to the Eugene, OR long term experiment with CAHOOTS, a agency trained to respond to situations for which police often prove ill-suited, such as the mentally ill. They are not armed, but they are equipped for their specific emergency situations.
This body cam footage may turn out to be invaluable for deciding which categories of incidents warrant police response, and which categories call for response by groups other than police, such as mental health professionals. Ideally, those categories in which the police simply do not perform well could be reassigned to non-police forces specialized for those situations, much like the CAHOOTS force, above, leaving others for police to work on. As most police forces complain about their burden these days, they should welcome this approach to police reorganization.
The metric changes from quantification to classification.
That said, it remains true that police are one of the vectors for system racism. I think body cams are turning out to be an inefficient tool for documenting and evaluating officer behavior when it comes to undesired incident outcomes. Along with the difficulty in understanding just what is happening, especially during an altercation, my main objection is that the body cams are under the control of the subjects under study – the police. No competent scientist would permit this if at all possible. All it takes is for a body cam to mysteriously not work for a moment or two in order to lose key data.
If we really want to pursue direct observation of officers’ performance, ideally we’d like to have God observing each incident and sending us a written summary. Lacking that, how close can we get?
Without much idea of how expensive and difficult this would be to implement, I’d recommend an independent agency of drones and drone monitor operators. They would not be members of the police, and the drones would not be weapons platforms. They’d only carry cameras, and they’d launch whenever the police responded to an incident. Perhaps based on the roof of the police cars, the drone, controlled by its operator, would be responsible for filming the incident from advantageous angles in order to evaluate performance and, in tragic cases, convey the recordings of the incident to the District Attorney for follow up and prosecution. The drone operator would not be at the scene of the action, but remote, instead.
Is this perfect? Of course not. Police could “accidentally” shoot the drone down and then shoot their suspect down in cold blood. Their are other ways to defeat the drone, which I shan’t bother to enumerate, which would be more subtle. But this should improve the situation at least somewhat.
