The secretary of Homeland Security is requiring that all the department's officers on the ground in Minneapolis wear body cameras.

Every Homeland Security officer on the ground in Minneapolis, including those from Immigration and Customs Enforcement, will be immediately issued body-worn cameras, Secretary Kristi Noem said Monday, in the latest fallout after the shooting deaths of two U.S. citizens at the hands of federal agents.

The news of the body cameras comes as Minneapolis has been the site of intense scrutiny over the conduct of federal officers after two U.S. citizens protesting immigration enforcement activities in the city were shot and killed.

It is the latest effort by the Trump administration to alleviate tensions after the shootings and show it is responding to calls for accountability.

  • hoppolito@mander.xyzEnglish
    3·
    12 hours ago

    Comprehensive reviews of body cam usage already put into question the overall efficacy of body cameras (https://doi.org/10.1111/1745-9133.12412 is the one I see cited most often, not sure if there are newer systematic reviews).

    And that one also comes to the conclusion, especially regarding effects on use-of-force:

    Ariel et al. (2016a) recently provided one nuanced explanation to these mixed findings. They discovered that when officers have more discretion in turning on their cameras, they tend to exhibit greater uses of force than officers who have less discretion regarding their BWCs [Body-worn Cameras]. In most of the use-of-force studies reviewed earlier, researchers did not track activation and therefore it was not clear to what extent Ariel et al.’s nuance is salient. If activation is related to use of force in these ways, however, consistently training, reinforcing, and supervising the implementation of mandatory policies may be needed to secure a positive effect of BWCs on reported uses of force

    That, combined with the seemingly more gung-ho internal processes in DHS/ICE, also leads me to believe in few positive outcomes here – especially with the ‘editorial monopoly’ in institutional hands.