Let’s face it. There’s rarely a “perfect” police operations policy of any type that covers all possible eventualities. That’s certainly true of BWC policies and I’ve reviewed hundreds. When it comes to BWC activation however, a poorly written policy puts officers at a higher risk. Let me explain, and at the end of this short read I’ll offer officers a tip for surviving a weak BWC activation policy.
Recently, I had a conversation with a friend of mine who had no law enforcement experience. He asked me about an incident he saw documented on YouTube where an officer failed to activate his body camera during a critical incident. I explained to him that there might be numerous reasons that this could have happened but, in my experience, many times it starts with a failure in the agency’s body-worn camera policy. To emphasize the point, I told him we would run a little experiment. I asked him to just name a city at random. He picked a mid-sized city in the upper mid-west. I used my phone to pull up that city’s police department’s body-worn camera policy. Sure enough, we discovered weak policy language that could lead to a failure to activate such as that depicted in the video he watched. Here is the direct quote from the policy:
“Members should activate the recorder any time the member believes it would be appropriate or valuable to record an incident. Except as noted below in (b), the portable recorder should be activated in any of the following situations:”
The issue here is with the word “should”. “Should” is used to express uncertainty, give advice or suggestions, or talk about probable situations. A better choice would be to use the word “shall”. “Shall” is used to indicate a strong intention or action that will happen in the future. Additionally, the word “believes” reinforces the subjectivity of when to activate.
The policy above leaves a great deal of discretion to interpretation by the officer. It also leaves the officer at risk for an incident where the officer doesn’t activate the camera during an incident, especially a critical one, where the department and the public expects the camera should have been activated.
Words matter. Agencies have a responsibility to ensure that their policy language is solid and well thought out. In my experience this doesn’t always happen, and it puts both the agency and officers at risk. It is in the best interest of officers to learn to identify weak policy language and take actions on their own to mitigate their individual professional risk.
So what do you do if your department's BWC policy language is similiar to the example? I would recommend you activate your BWC immediately upon being assigned to every call for service or taking any officer-initiated action. Officers doing so would still be in compliance with weak policy language, as in the example, while protecting themselves from possible negative outcomes due to subjective decisions, especially in rapidly evolving circumstances.
Policing has always been a tough job, but it is arguably tougher today than it ever has been. Save yourself! Think ahead. Don’t be the recipient of the consequences that might impact you and your career for following a weak BWC activation policy.
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