 Good afternoon everyone, so I am the policy director from the Office of the Independent Monitor in Denver, Colorado I'm going to present some work that my co-author Dr. Matt Beutis and I did back in 2014 and talk about this sort of ramifications of that work and some of the challenges that we faced in looking at the implementation of a body-worn camera project and and This project focuses largely on policy and so I think You'll see some really common themes in the work that we did and the work that Maria is talking about which I think should lead to a nice conversation So the Office of the Independent Monitor we have five main responsibilities We connect outreach to communities and law enforcement We make recommendations for improving policy practices and training and that's largely what today's presentation is about We monitor officer-involved shootings and in custody death investigations We monitor and make recommendations on on internal affairs Investigations and disciplinary findings and then we have a mediation program in which we try to cultivate community member and officer dialogue When there's been a conflict or a complaint So in 2014 the Denver police department piloted a body-worn camera project So I'll give you a little bit of the chronology and some of the details because they're useful for background So we have six patrol districts in Denver seven if you count the airport This project focused on district six, which is the district that patrols downtown Denver So sort of the tourist area as well as the area where the restaurants and bars and clubs are And so a little bit different from the rest of Denver when you're looking at a program like this And so the body-worn camera pilot project went on for about six months the roughly the last six months of 2014 The patrol officers were outfitted with cameras the supervisors weren't so if you're a sergeant a lieutenant and obviously command staff They were not assigned to wear body-worn cameras during the pilot project the project was was The pilot period had a what was called a testing and evaluation policy It's a long document, and I won't get into the details But I think the important part of that policy was that officers were required to activate their camera prior to any officer Initiated field contacts and for a broad range of calls for service So really anytime they could where it didn't present a safety issue There was no discipline in place at the time right because this was only one It was a pilot project in one district They couldn't impose discipline on one district and not the others and during that time 80 uses of force were reported In that six month period that roughly six month period And so we were really interested in looking at those 80 uses of force Because I think a primary role of body-worn cameras is is to capture uses of force and provide sort of objective accounts of You know what type of resistance could be seen what the officer's perception was and why the officer chose to respond in the way that he or she did so The the sort of field of research around body-worn cameras is very interesting I think like a lot of technology and policing we've seen this kind of massive This rush to implementation and you know the research has sort of followed suit So we haven't really set up an evidence base at the front and then Tested cameras and made sure that they work and then put them out But I think a lot of people bought into them for really obvious reasons. I think that you know body-worn camera programs I think we all can agree or generally positive programs Most of the research that's currently out there focuses on the quality of officer and citizen interactions and uses of force I cite Cynthia Lum and her colleagues here not because they did that research But because they wrote a really nice piece where they sort of stepped back and looked at the research that's gone on in the past Couple years and said, you know, here's what we know some stuff about here's what we know a lot about And here's where there are big gaps in the knowledge. So I'm drawing pretty heavily from that work on this slide Body-worn cameras, we know they're related to decreases in complaints and uses of force I think from the, you know, kind of seminal research on Rialto, California done by Barack Ariel and his colleagues And some more recent research that's come out of places like Orlando and Arizona We've seen these these sort of decreases that come along with the implementation of a body-worn camera program Some research has found quicker resolution of complaints More proactive policing and less invasive policing. So, you know, more issuing of citations less stop and frisk So positive things like that Improved case processing higher likelihood of charges and convictions So also a good outcome, although I will point out that that that piece of research was focusing primarily on domestic violence cases But it does point to the utility of the body-worn cameras for sort of agencies that work alongside the police as well as the police The big gap here is that there hasn't been much research on implementation and organizational concerns And so I think there's there's a call out right now to really try to fill some of that research and I hope that this research fills that gap even just a little bit so We at the Office of the Independent Monitored, you did a policy analysis At the end of the body-worn camera pilot project We wanted to exist the the assess the existing policy and program design We really had two questions We wanted to know if officers and supervisors were adhering to the policy that was in place during the project Specifically around activation and reporting and things like that And then we wanted to know if any alterations were needed to the policy for the full rollout of the cameras department-wide Which is actually happening this year. They're sort of phasing it out phasing it in one district at a time throughout the city and You know, I kind of point to these goals and questions because I Want to make the point that we weren't you know, we weren't conducting this kind of rigorous academic research with the goal of Establishing whether or not body-worn cameras Contribute to complaints decreases and complaints that you know, we were doing really kind of simple applied research We were coding reports. We were counting and the goal was really just to assess the policy of the department that we oversee So we reviewed supervisor use of force cover sheets for those 80 uses of force involving Officers in District 6 and you know, this is probably a very similar process and many of your jurisdictions Whenever there's a use of force that meets a certain level of criteria or a certain level of resistance The officer has to inform their supervisor and that supervisor are usually the sergeant will come out and conduct an administrative investigation To sort of gather evidence and determine whether or not there may have been any potential Policy violation or any misconduct and so they write a narrative report that you know It could be anywhere from like one page to 15 pages long with their assessment as well as whether they think that there's more Investigation needed or if there were any training issues identified So we use that start usually the sergeants assessment of whether or not the body-worn camera had been turned on and so the Policy had Instructed supervisors that when you're writing these administrative reports you should indicate whether or not there's body-worn camera footage available and then we looked at other relationships between Officers and whether or not they activated body-worn cameras or whether or not they were likely to we didn't find much and so I'll sort of gloss over that second question and really focus on the first question So we have a couple key findings here The first is that body-worn cameras did not record a majority of uses of force in District 6 for various reasons So there were 80 uses of force in that time period The 21 of them had been recorded on a body-worn camera So about 26% of the total and then we sort of looked at the reasons why some of the other Incidents hadn't been recorded and we'll I'll get into the more detailed incidents in the next slide But I think the you know this big kind of I think it's orange up there a piece of the pie 44% of the uses of force were not recorded only because of the the details of the policy which said Supervisors and officers working off-duty are not required to wear body-worn cameras And so huge policy gap that sort of flagged to us that you know that that policy needed to change And I think what we were seeing is that often sergeants, you know theoretically sergeants are not Being supervisors on the street But I think what we saw in reality is that they actually were and they were getting involved in use as a force And then we have a very very large off-duty sort of secondary employment program where the police officers are employed at the the bars and the clubs downtown and Places where uses of force are likely to happen Sports stadiums places like that. So we were concerned about that and then so so let's get rid of those That those 35 that weren't recorded because of the policy And now we'll look at the other 45 where these are ones where we expected to be a recording under the policy That was in place at the time about half of them actually were recorded I'm sorry if it's confusing to kind of jump from the 80 to the 45 But about a quarter of them weren't recorded for reasons that make a lot of sense so if you're an officer New using the equipment and you see a fight break out over here Probably the first thing you're going to do is go break up that fight and not think about pressing the activation button At least at first and we knew they had there had to be some muscle memory development and things like that There were some user and equipment errors So cameras getting stuck under lapels or wires getting knocked off during fights And there is one incident in which the officer There an incident was kind of wrapping up and everything was fine So the officer turned his camera off and then there was a use of force since and then there was small handful that we didn't know We didn't know why or we weren't we didn't know for sure of it had been recorded based on what was included in the The supervisors summary report So we did look sort of descriptively at whether complaints and uses of force went up went down If there was no change now again, we're not this we didn't use regression We didn't you know propensity score matching nothing like that This is just looking at the pilot period in 2014 Compared to the same period of time in 2013. So our pilot site in district six We actually saw complaints went up by 8% uses of force went up by 11% these numbers are kind of small So, you know, we're talking about 10 additional complaints and uses of force if we look at the rest of the department Complaints had gone up a little bit as well But uses of force had actually gone down and we can't really draw any conclusion from this But we thought it was an interesting finding So we issued nine recommendations to the Denver Police Department while they were in the process of finalizing their body-worn cameras So at the end of the pilot project, they took the cameras off the streets They sent them back to taser and they worked on their policy and then they you know They did an RFP process and now they're putting the cameras back on the streets right now So, you know, we thought they should provide additional training on activating the cameras prior to citizen contacts Evaluate potential equipment issues number three is probably our big recommendation here Deploy cameras to all uniformed officers who interact with the public regardless of their rank and regardless of whether or not they're working off-duty Instruct officers to keep the cameras activated until the event actually concludes require citizen notification, I think just building from the Findings of the realtor study. We thought that notification would be pretty important Require better documentation from supervisors to not provide notice of disciplinary penalties Provide more details on privacy issues, which are you know a very hot topic right now And solicit officer and community input for future revision of the policy so this is where I wish we had Maria and her team in there to help out on that side of it and You know the initially the the department so they they did not issue any sort of formal response to any of the recommendations There was no documentation about what they were going to do and about eight months after we put that report out They released a draft public policy for a draft policy for public comment on their website They got some comments from the community. I think sort of outside of that process they drew it it drew a lot of criticism from you know civil rights groups and and advocates and even from our city council for not Incorporating all of our recommendations and I think specifically the recommendation around outfitting supervisors and officers working off duty So subsequently and around the fall of last year the chief decided to To require sergeant, so we didn't get all the supervisors, but we got the sergeants Which I think is important and officers were off working off duty to where a body were in cameras so they're still figuring out the details of how they're going to make that happen and getting the cameras out there and But that that was an exciting change So I've got a couple of discussion points, but I think I maybe I'll just leave them for the actual discussion. Okay Thank You Jennifer