Policing on camera
| Date | 01 February 2017 |
| DOI | 10.1177/1362480615622531 |
| Published date | 01 February 2017 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
622531TCR0010.1177/1362480615622531Theoretical CriminologySandhu and Haggerty
research-article2015
Article
Theoretical Criminology
2017, Vol. 21(1) 78 –95
Policing on camera
© The Author(s) 2015
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https://doi.org/10.1177/1362480615622531
DOI: 10.1177/1362480615622531
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Ajay Sandhu
University of Alberta, Canada
Kevin D Haggerty
University of Alberta, Canada
Abstract
On any shift a police officer might be filmed by some combination of public or private
surveillance cameras, including the cameras of individual citizens, activists, journalists,
businesses, and a range of police-controlled cameras. This loosely coordinated camera
infrastructure is part of the broader transformation of policing from a historically “low
visibility” to an increasingly ‘high visibility’ occupation. This article reports on the findings
of a participant-observation study of how police officers understand and respond to this
transformation. We identify three distinct orientations, and highlight the multifaceted
and contradictory relationship between police officers and cameras. The study raises
questions about the extent to which camera technologies represent a straightforward
way to “police the police”.
Keywords
Counter-power, policing, security, surveillance, synopticism, technology
Introduction
Whether we like it or not, we’re like low-level celebrities.
(Constable Albert, male city police officer with 20 years’ experience)
Corresponding author:
Kevin D Haggerty, Department of Sociology, University of Alberta, HM Tory Building, Edmonton, Alberta,
T6G 2H4, Canada.
Email: Kevin.haggerty@ualberta.ca
Sandhu and Haggerty
79
In the summer of 2014 two signal events in the United States elevated the issue of policing
on camera to the leading edge of discussions about police violence, racism, and accounta-
bility. In July, officers on Staten Island confronted Eric Garner—a black man suspected of
illegally selling individual cigarettes—and restrained him, ultimately choking him to death.
Bystanders filmed the arrest, including a close-up of Mr Garner gasping his last words: “I
can’t breathe.” Less than a month later, in Ferguson Missouri, police officer Darren Wilson
shot and killed Michael Brown, an unarmed 18-year-old black man. Critical commentators
characterized the lack of cameras on Fergusons’ police cruisers or on officer Wilson’s uni-
form as a conspicuous omission designed to hide the actions of racist police officers.
The ensuing protests were wrapped up in the troubled history of police and ethnic
minorities in the United States. Also foregrounded were issues relating to the use of
police cameras, with the Ferguson incident helping to encourage the official embrace of
police body worn cameras. The Garner case, in contrast, demonstrated the extent to
which police are already surrounded by cameras.
The police are central actors in a criminal justice system that Foucault (1977) identi-
fied as exercising disciplinary power. This form of discipline shapes individual behavior
and forges subjectivities through such practices as regular training, dispersing individu-
als in space, and, most famously, subjecting people to a potentially constant—although
always uncertain—form of panoptic surveillance.
The recent growth of surveillance cameras trained on the police themselves, however,
accentuates a parallel form of power. Mathiesen (1997) characterizes this as “synoptic”
power. He argues that Foucault’s model of panoptic surveillance—where the few watch
the many—needs to be supplemented with an appreciation for how modern media also
allow the many (assorted mass audiences) to watch the few. Writing before the wide-
spread expansion of the Internet and smartphones, Mathiesen focused his analysis on the
mass media, particularly on how television allows the public (the many) to scrutinize the
actions of celebrities and politicians (the few). This, he suggests, amounts to a different
form of disciplinary power, one which “controls and disciplines our consciousness”
(1997: 230, emphasis in original). In Mathiesen’s account, synoptic power operates on
the viewers of the spectacle, enculturating dispersed audiences into a dominant media-
generated Gestalt, or world-view.
Missing from Mathieson’s analysis, however, is any consideration of how the people
subjected to synoptic scrutiny relate to this monitoring. Does synopticism make public
figures more accountable? Do they modify their behavior as a result? What types of
trade-offs do such individuals see in terms of the benefits and detractions of being on
display? How might they use such scrutiny to their advantage?
Such considerations are particularly important for the police, as on any shift an officer
might be filmed by some combination of public or private surveillance cameras, includ-
ing the cameras of journalists, businesses, and a range of police-operated cameras such
as those attached to an officer’s uniform, or fixed to a patrol car’s dashboard. An unco-
ordinated network of smartphone cameras carried by individual citizens or activists also
mark the police’s transformation from a historically “low visibility” to an increasingly
‘high visibility’ occupation (Ericson and Haggerty, 1997).
The emergent synoptic oversight of the police has been accompanied by a sense that
it might increase police accountability. Castells (2007: 239) refers to this as a form of
80
Theoretical Criminology 21(1)
“counter-power” (see also Monahan, 2006) where new information technologies are
used to challenge institutionalized power. Many activists and political organizations see
synopticism as a way to “reverse the gaze” of the police, to “watch the watchers” and in
so doing restrict police misconduct and curtail the arbitrary use of power. The American
Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), for example, understands cameras as a “critical check
and balance” in the context of policing.1 A range of “Copwatch” organizations now
record critical images of the police and post them online for easy public access. These
forms of “counter-surveillance” (Huey et al., 2006) are understood to create new oppor-
tunities to visually “police the police”, a process that will ostensibly deter police miscon-
duct and increase accountability.
The synoptic scrutiny of the police represents a tremendous change in policing. To
date, however, there has been little empirical research examining how individual police
officers relate to their increased camera visibility. Discussions about policing on film
have instead tended to be highly speculative, focusing on the ostensible challenges cam-
eras pose for policing (Goldsmith, 2010).
What little research has been conducted on the public’s use of cameras has tended to
focus on how police officers use surveillance cameras for investigations and to track
suspects, while also providing some insights into how officers sometimes try and avoid
being recorded (Goold, 2003a). Recent work on the relationship between police officers
and citizens with cellphone cameras tends to portray police and cameras as being in an
inevitably conflictual relationship. Such research focuses on notable instances where
officers have confiscated or even destroyed cameras (Wall and Linnemann, 2014).
Accordingly, Stephanie Simon (2012) describes the post-9/11 security environment as
involving a police coordinated “war on photography”. Wilson and Serisier (2010) char-
acterize this game of revelation and avoidance between police and citizen journalists or
social activists as a “surveillance arms race”, where the police develop measures to pre-
vent citizens from recording them, and citizens develop counter-efforts to record the
police without being fined or arrested.
The research we report on in this article, however, moves beyond speculating about
the implications of high profile (and unrepresentative) media events to concentrate on
the more prosaic, but still consequential, ways cameras are transforming police work.
Our findings suggest officers do not have an exclusively conflictual relationship to cam-
eras, but display more nuanced and apparently contradictory views. These orientations
highlight both the risks and opportunities presented by policing on camera. Sometimes
officers try to avoid cameras, but they are also willing to be recorded in some situations,
and often are simply resigned to the presence of cameras as part of a new occupational
reality. This mutability suggests that we need to move the discussion about policing on
camera beyond the simple suggestion that cameras will check police power, hold officers
accountable, and effectively “police the police”.
The study
This article builds upon the findings of a larger study of how police officers relate to the
totality of surveillance they are under. It is based on fieldwork and interviews with mem-
bers of three police organizations in western Canada. We studied a large urban city police
Sandhu and Haggerty
81
force, campus security for a major university, and the transit police for a sizable urban
transportation system. We focused specifically on line officers, but also included some
camera operators and police trainers in our research sample. All participants had exten-
sive experience of policing on camera, although they were subjected to different configu-
rations of camera visibility. The transportation officers, for example, spent almost their
entire shifts watched by...
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