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The Untapped Potential of Body-Worn Cameras in Policing

10 years ago, SPARQ Co-Director Jennifer Eberhardt began exploring using body-worn camera footage as data with an interdisciplinary team. Where are we now?

In a recent multi-stakeholder convening at Stanford, led by Co-Director Jennifer Eberhardt, researchers, law enforcement leaders, policy makers, and technology experts came together to discuss the untapped potential of body-worn camera footage as large scale data to understand and improve policing and police-community relations. The deployment of body-worn cameras represents the largest investment in policing in a generation. Yet their potential remains underutilized.

Over 10 years ago, Eberhardt led an interdisciplinary team of researchers in psychology, linguistics, and computer science to begin looking at footage as data. New research from the team continues to show the untapped potential of body-worn camera footage: first, as a way to assess the effects of training on officer communication during traffic stops and second, as a way to predict how officer language will lead to escalation during stops. 

As Eberhardt shares on NPR and in Scientific American, AI tools can be a way to accelerate progress and digest this data at scale. More multi-stakeholder coordination and cooperation is needed to achieve the full potential of body-worn camera footage as data.

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