Police On Camera

Police body-worn cameras (BWCs) are at the cutting edge of policing. They have sparked important conversations about the proper role and extent of police in society and about balancing security, oversight, accountability, privacy, and surveillance in our modern world. Police on Camera address the conceptual and empirical evidence surrounding the use of BWCs by police officers in societies around the globe, offering a variety of differing opinions from experts in the field. The book provides the reader with conceptual and empirical analyses of the role and impact of police body-worn cameras in society. These analyses are complimented by invited commentaries designed to open up dialogue and generate debate on these important social issues. The book offers informed, critical commentary to the ongoing debates about the implications that BWCs have for society in various parts of the world, with special attention to issues of police accountability and discretion, privacy, and surveillance. This book is designed to be accessible to a broad audience, and is targeted at scholars and students of surveillance, law and policy, and the police, as well as policymakers and others interested in how surveillance technologies are impacting our modern world and criminal justice institutions.

The first expert and comprehensive analysis of the surprising impact of body-worn cameras Following the tragic deaths of Eric Garner, Michael Brown, and others at the hands of police, interest in body-worn cameras for local, state, and federal law enforcement has skyrocketed. In Cops, Cameras, and Crisis, Michael D. White and Aili Malm provide an up-to-date analysis of this promising technology, evaluating whether it can address today’s crisis in police legitimacy. Drawing on the latest research and insights from experts with field experience with police-worn body cameras, White and Malm show the benefits and drawbacks of this technology for police departments, police officers, and members of the public. Ultimately, they identify—and assess—each claim, weighing in on whether the specter of being “caught on tape” is capable of changing a criminal justice system desperately in need of reform. Cops, Cameras, and Crisis is a must-read for policymakers, police leaders, and activists interested in twenty-first-century policing.

Police Visibility presents empirically grounded research into how police officers experience and manage the information politics of surveillance and visibility generated by the introduction of body cameras into their daily routines and the increasingly common experience of being recorded by civilian bystanders. Newell elucidates how these activities intersect with privacy, free speech, and access to information law and argues that rather than being emancipatory systems of police oversight, body-worn cameras are an evolution in police image work and state surveillance expansion. Throughout the book, he catalogs how surveillance generates information, the control of which creates and facilitates power and potentially fuels state domination. The antidote, he argues, is robust information law and policy that puts the power to monitor and regulate the police squarely in the hands of citizens.

The first expert and comprehensive analysis of the surprising impact of body-worn cameras Following the tragic deaths of Eric Garner, Michael Brown, and others at the hands of police, interest in body-worn cameras for local, state, and federal law enforcement has skyrocketed. In Cops, Cameras, and Crisis, Michael D. White and Aili Malm provide an up-to-date analysis of this promising technology, evaluating whether it can address today’s crisis in police legitimacy. Drawing on the latest research and insights from experts with field experience with police-worn body cameras, White and Malm show the benefits and drawbacks of this technology for police departments, police officers, and members of the public. Ultimately, they identify—and assess—each claim, weighing in on whether the specter of being “caught on tape” is capable of changing a criminal justice system desperately in need of reform. Cops, Cameras, and Crisis is a must-read for policymakers, police leaders, and activists interested in twenty-first-century policing.

A radical guide to the language of policing This field guide arms activists—and indeed anyone concerned about police abuse—with critical insights that ultimately redefine the very idea of policing. When we talk about police and police reform, we speak the language of police legitimation through euphemism. So state sexual assault becomes “body-cavity search,” and ruthless beatings “non-compliance deterrence.” In entries such as “police dog,” “stop and frisk,” and “rough ride,” the authors expose the way “copspeak” suppresses the true meaning and history of law enforcement. In field guide fashion, they reveal a world hidden in plain view. The book argues that a redefined language of policing might help us chart a future that’s free. Including explanations of newsmaking terms such as “deadname,” “kettling,” and “qualified immunity,” and a foreword by leading justice advocate Craig Gilmore.

This is the first book on the policy questions raised by two revolutions in recording the police - copwatching and police-worn body cameras. This accessible book with compelling stories and coverage of the most important debates over proof, privacy and police regulation will appeal broadly to students, laypersons, practitioners, and experts.

Ways we can make our society more civil, our police more humane, our population more responsible. Sociology. Cuts closer to the bone of truth about the police in America than any book I have read.--NY Times Book Review

Social media is changing the business of representation in the Senate. If you want to know what your senator is up to, you don't need a newspaper, just your phone. Some senators are social media minimalists while others are digitally long-winded, but each senator has the ability to insert themselves into our daily digital routines and frame their political brand for a public audience. Drawing on a unique dataset of almost 200,000 senator tweets, Tweeting is Leading offers a critical analysis of senators' communication on Twitter, the individual and constituent forces that shape it, and the agendas that result. The public priorities that senators communicate through social media--what Annelise Russell calls their rhetorical agenda--offer a necessary tool for understanding how senators link their carefully crafted public image with potential voters. The rhetorical agenda challenges what we know about representation, removing the institutional and political constraints on congressional communication and giving lawmakers a messaging platform where individual discretion is high, the relative costs are low, and someone is always watching. Tweeting is Leading emphasizes why representation on social media matters for understanding media norms and how lawmakers digitally build a political brand, showing empirically how senators self-constrain their communications to curate different styles of representation that match constituent expectations.

A riveting investigation into how a restive region of China became the site of a nightmare Orwellian social experiment—the definitive police state—and the global technology giants that made it possible Blocked from facts and truth, under constant surveillance, surrounded by a hostile alien police force: Xinjiang’s Uyghur population has become cursed, oppressed, outcast. Most citizens cannot discern between enemy and friend. Social trust has been destroyed systematically. Friends betray each other, bosses snitch on employees, teachers expose their students, and children turn on their parents. Everyone is dependent on a government that nonetheless treats them with suspicion and contempt. Welcome to the Perfect Police State. Using the haunting story of one young woman’s attempt to escape the vicious technological dystopia, his own reporting from Xinjiang, and extensive firsthand testimony from exiles, Geoffrey Cain reveals the extraordinary intrusiveness and power of the tech surveillance giants and the chilling implications for all our futures.