Body-worn camera metadata

社区信任对有效维持治安至关重要。在各级政府中，美国对警用随身摄像头（BWC）进行了大量投资，以此建立这种信任。这些摄像头是一种强大的技术，能够捕捉和存储官员与社区成员之间的互动。因此，他们承诺前所未有的警察监督水平。然而，生物武器公约必须手动激活，官员有时无法激活，即使在部门政策规定他们应该激活的情况下。这可能会损害《生物武器公约》的效力，特别是如果不启动是或似乎是官员为避免监督而故意采取的策略。因此，必须了解警察何时以及为何启用《生物武器公约》，研究不启用的后果，并制定能够鼓励更广泛启用的政策，这项研究将对现有警察数据采取创新办法，以查明《生物武器公约》记录的警务事件。警务活动包括召唤服务、紧急停车、逮捕和使用武力。关键信息来自与《生物武器公约》每项记录相关的元数据。元数据包括激活时间和佩戴相机的官员的身份。通过使用概率匹配技术将元数据与警务事件记录联系起来，研究人员可以创建关键的BWC激活标签。这项研究将使用来自芝加哥的公开数据，该数据从2016年开始采用BWC。研究的第一阶段将侧重于了解警务事件的哪些特征可以预测不激活。然后，这些观察结果可以为为什么军官有时无法激活提供理论依据。在第二阶段，研究人员将开发和测试警察在做出激活决策时所面临的环境和激励的理论模型。这些模型可以使人们深入了解为什么《生物武器公约》的启动不是普遍的，以及如何做到这一点。研究的第三阶段将利用关于法院案件和警方不当行为调查的更多数据，了解《生物武器公约》的启动或不启动如何影响这些诉讼的结果。为了控制BWC激活中的选择，我们将使用由主管分配和芝加哥在各警区逐步推出BWC产生的准实验性变化。除了对《生物武器公约》的启动有一般性的了解之外，该项目还可能产生更广泛的影响，对芝加哥警察局和更大的跨学科合作产生可操作的见解。该奖项反映了国家科学基金会的法定使命，并被认为值得通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估予以支持。

Community trust is essential to effective policing. At all levels of government, the United States has made significant investments in police body-worn cameras (BWCs) as a way to build this trust. These cameras are a powerful technology capable of capturing and storing interactions between an officer and members of the community. They therefore promise unprecedented levels of police oversight. However, BWCs must be manually activated, and officers sometimes fail to activate them, even in situations where department policies dictate that they should have. This may undermine the effectiveness of BWCs, especially if non-activation is or appears to be an intentional strategy for officers to avoid oversight. It is therefore crucial to understand when and why officers activate BWCs, to study the consequences of non-activation, and to develop policies that can encourage more widespread activation.This study will take an innovative approach to existing police data in order to identify policing events recorded by a BWC. Policing events include calls for service, investigatory stops, arrests, and uses of force. The key information comes from metadata associated with each BWC recording. Metadata include the time of activation and the identity of the officer wearing the camera. By using probabilistic matching techniques to link metadata to records of policing events, the researchers can create the crucial BWC activation label. This study will use publicly available data from Chicago, which adopted BWCs starting in 2016. The first stage of research will focus on learning what characteristics of a policing event predict non-activation. These observations can then inform theories about why officers sometimes fail to activate. In the second stage, researchers will develop and test theoretical models of the environments and incentives faced by police officers when they make activation decisions. These models can provide insight into why BWC activation is not universal and how to get it there. The third stage of the research will use additional data on court cases and police misconduct investigations to learn how BWC activation, or lack thereof, affects the outcomes of those proceedings. To control for selection in BWC activation, we will use the quasi-experimental variation produced by supervisor assignments and Chicago’s gradual rollout of BWCs across police districts. Beyond a general understanding of BWC activation, this project has potential for broader impacts in the form of actionable insights about the Chicago Police Department and greater interdisciplinary collaboration.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.