In use of force incidents, body worn cameras are limited in their perspective. “I would emphasize in especially the use of force investigations, the footage itself is useful, but it doesn’t provide the full context,” Lawrence says. 

Lawrence predicts the next step in body worn camera footage will be the automatic review through machine learning of officers conduct to hold them accountable for acting “polite, respectful,[and] humanizing towards the committee members.”

CSPD uses technology from Utility Inc., a U.S. based software and technology company, which automatically turns on the cameras due to a set number of triggers including an officer’s gun release, running and siren activation. Officers can also manually turn on their cameras with a remote wrist watch. Unlike the typical body worn camera that sits outside of an officer’s uniform, CSPD’s cameras snap into an inside pocket which prevents them from being knocked off. The department provides a pouch to place the camera in a “heavy-vest” used over the uniform when responding to situations that require body armor. 

The video is automatically uploaded to the CSPD’s cloud based storage system where the officer classifies the footage with tags depending on the type of call. The footage will be retained for the amount of time related to the tags — felonies are held for 99 years, but noncriminal related videos are only stored for 60 days. All video related to use of force is stored for five  years. 

Though an officer is required to activate his or her camera, the technology doesn’t always turn on and can malfunction, Kathi Wolf, a body worn camera technician that started with CSPD’s program in 2016, says.

Wolf says that the footage is only cell phone quality, and the angle of the footage is controlled by the officer’s stance which can often be a sideways position which indirectly faces a person called a “bladed stance.”

 “It’s not amazing Hollywood cameras doing the footage. It is just this cell phone,” she said. 

The camera’s are limited in their perspective and also aren’t equipped with night vision. Wolf says it’s important that the cameras are not better than what an officer can see. 

“We want it to be as close as possible to real life what an officer really saw in the moment,” Wolf says. If it’s too clear it could cause the public to clearly view a stapler when an officer acted because he or she saw a potential knife. 

But still the camera is not a perfect representation even of what an officer saw. “It’s another perspective. It’ll never be exactly what they saw until we implant their eyeballs,” Wolf says. 

The officer’s body camera is only one of four ways that a police encounter can be recorded. Most law enforcement’s vehicles have dash cameras that also record incidents. Surveillance cameras surrounding an area can also catch a recording, and a citizen can record from their cell phone. 

A 2020 study by Christopher Slobogin on the effect of different video sources on viewers’ judgement of officer intent found that body camera footage leads people to judge officers’ actions as more justified and deliver more lenient punishments. The citizen in the encounter is more easily visible in the footage, and the attachment of the camera to a uniform is “unable to adequately capture certain use of force movements that are important in determining an officer’s intent,” according to the study. 

“It’s just one other tool. It’s one other, almost like another witness, and you can interpret it how you want. But it’s just another way to do it,” Wolf says. She adds that “in the scope of everything,” body worn cameras are still a new technology for police officers. 

With the passing of SB 20-217 CSPD will need to add almost 250 more cameras to its ranks by July 2023 even though it has a head start on some of Colorado’s other law enforcement agencies who have yet to adopt the technology.