Police shootings and body cameras one year post-Ferguson

Abstract

ABSTRACTPolice departments across many countries have rapidly begun implementing the use of body cameras to document their interactions with the public. Previous research has shown that body camera footage of a police shooting was viewed positively before, but negatively immediately following, the media coverage of the Ferguson, MO shooting of Michael Brown [Culhane, S.E., Boman IV, J., and Schweitzer, K., 2016. Public perceptions of the justifiability of police shootings: the role of body cameras in a pre/post-Ferguson experiment. Police quarterly, 19, 251–274. doi:10.1177/1098611116651403]. This paper presents a partial replication of their final study. In this replication, participants watched, heard, or read about a police shooting involving a man with a weapon. The data collection was conducted one year after Brown’s death. Results indicated that judgments of the shooting’s justification returned to those seen before the Ferguson incident. When participants could see the event unfold, they were significantly more likely to judge the shooting was justified when compared to participants in the study shortly after the Ferguson incident.