Bureau of Justice Assistance
Body-Worn Camera Podcast Interview
Inspector Goodier
Todd Maxwell: Hello, I am Todd Maxwell part of the Bureau Justice Assistance Body-Worn Camera Team and today I am speaking with Inspector Steve Goodier as part of BJA‘s Body-worn Camera Podcast series. Inspector Goodier is a bodyworn video operational lead for Hampshire Constabulary in the United Kingdom. He has been heavily involved with the use and deployment of body-worn videos since 2008 and is now responsible for the deployment of 2,800 cameras across this policing agency. Working alongside the college of policing he has assisted in the creation of the UK National Guidance and Standards for this new technology. He is a regular spokesperson for the effective use and deployment of body-worn video both nationally and internationally. Inspector Goodier, thank you for speaking with me today. To start can you explain the biggest challenges you have experienced devising a policy and implementing body-worn video devices.
Inspector Goodier: Some of the biggest challenges that we have experienced really is gaining consistency across the 43 different policing constabularies or agencies that we have in the UK so it's really getting everyone together and getting everyone coordinated because we are all at different stages of our deployment. Some like Hampshire are being fairly mature in their deployment and then we have other agencies that are just starting to ask the questions so the biggest challenge for me is really just trying to keep a consistent approach so we can maintain common standards and uniformity in our use and deployment across the whole of England and Wales.
Todd Maxwell: Great, thanks. Can you discuss how the UK uses officers as expert witnesses?
Inspector Goodier: Yea I believe the term in that context I used at the expert panel was when police officers gives evidence at court they are the expert witness and the use of body-worn video is supplementary to that of the officer so the officer will always be regarded as the witness and what they have seen and what they have heard is primary to that body-worn video so body-worn video just compliments the standard forms of evidence gathering, it doesn't replace it so very much what the officer says and has heard during an incident is forefront because we know now that the camera can quite often capture a more wider angle of view, the volume could be heard from a police officer or from the camera and there could be differences so what the officer has said and heard is primary evidence for us.
Todd Maxwell: We recently saw your training video on body-worn video best practices, can you discuss the practice using the body-worn camera as a journal during stops to explain what officers are doing and thinking along with using it to capture evidence?
Inspector Goodier: Yea, sure. So body-worn video in the UK was introduced to capture best evidence so primarily it was an evidence gathering tool, it wasn't a tool used for integrity or for police transparency it was around evidence gathering and I'm really passionate about encouraging officers to, when they activate the camera at the very earliest opportunity is to try and narrate, is to try and set the scene add context about what they are going to or what they have been told about where they are going to. So they go through a risk assessment and every police officer goes through a mental risk assessment in their head about a situation they are about to go through so we try to encourage officers to kind of verbalize that risk assessment so we can understand what they are thinking at a particular time.
So the more they do it the more it becomes habit, the more you're used to talking to yourself the more it becomes more fluid. Some officers, more reluctant than others, but when an officer does it well you really do see when you play the video back exactly what the officer was thinking, what they were going to and any subsequent action that the officer takes you can place it in the context in which the officer was there themselves, not just looking at it through one lens of the camera that one particular view that the camera gives.
Primarily if it's a one on one the officer doesn't need to think about the camera above and beyond their safety. Where we get it more is where it's personal issue certainly within Hampshire, is if the officer, the primary officer is dealing with that individual, the second officer they are the person that is moving the camera or positioning themselves in a position to capture and frame the best shot. So to answer your question, no I haven't seen it directly where officers are compromising their own safety to get the perfect shot, I think where I've seen it more is either the second or third officers are utilizing the camera and becoming more of a director of the scene and maybe utilizing themselves so they capture the scene, not primary the officer that's closest and dealing with the subject.
Todd Maxwell: What are the biggest differences you've seen between the way the UK and the US implement body-worn camera programs?
Inspector Goodier: I think fundamentally the biggest difference between the US and the UK is that we do have a central government that mandates lower legislation, all 43 police forces have to adhere to so we don't get the state structure and the state laws that are individual to each different state so our national guidance, that I assisted the college of policing that guidance is the bedrock for every 43 of the police forces, their operation practices, it's all based on that one set of standards where as I, what I've been told up to 17,000 policing agencies across your various states and they are competing with different types of legislation that you have a local level that effect your policy so to get consistency in use in deployment from one state to another is going to be very difficult. Clearly the other difference around body-worn video between the two countries is that UK is not routinely armed whereas the US police officers are armed and when you add a weapon into the equation and the use of body-worn video it brings up other questions or brings up questions that in the UK have yet to be answered so at the moment in the UK we are not routinely giving our firearm officers, we have 7,000 across the UK, they are not routinely given a body-worn video we are still holding back on that, we are doing more evaluation and we are in talks with the relevant partners around how best to use it and to understand the issues that may well come out of the use body-worn video in a firearms context.
Todd Maxwell: What do you think will be the biggest issue surrounding bodyworn camera use in the future?
Inspector Goodier: I think the future and very much here and now, body-worn video is about giving an officer a camera but for really to maximize the full potential of body-worn video, it's about joining up your criminal justice system so what we are seeing in the UK is forces are deploying cameras but we are almost hitting a brick wall because we have no means really of sharing that media in a quick way to our criminal justice partners. Quite often we find that we still have to burn onto disk into hard media and then share it and all the inefficiencies with burning onto a DVD and then transporting or using a postal system to get it from one agency to another so the biggest challenge really is about the infrastructure that supports the technology like body-worn video. What we are seeing is a rapid adoption of cloud-based technologies, sharing media across, what we are used to in our homes and how we are communicating now in law enforcement still in the UK, we almost have two tiers, what police officers have available to them in their home context is very much different to what's available technology wise at work and we need to close that gap between the technologies and be able to share our media of body-worn video or other types of digital media instantly across a network so criminal justice partners can actually benefit from it immediately.
Todd Maxwell: What is the most important advice you would give to an agency that is considering implementing a body-worn camera program?
Inspector Goodier: My simplest advice that I can give is don't try to reinvent the wheel. There is enough adoption of body-worn video in various different contexts around, sure, the US and in the UK and other westernized countries so we've learned a lot, there is a lot of learning being done and we've documented it so seek advice and spend time actually doing the research and borrow with pride. Look at other people's policy and procedure and if it fits within your state laws then adopt it if it works, if it works for them don't try and do something different or feel you have to start from scratch. It was very much different when I started in 2008; I had no one to go to so it was very organic for us. I feel agencies now can come into it knowing a lot more and can learn the lessons that have already been learned.
Todd Maxwell: If you were starting a body-worn camera program now what would you do differently based on lessons learned in Hampshire?
Inspector Goodier: Personally, I would get my reflection from my own agency is the full commitment and understanding about how much requirement from your IT department. Body-worn video is a technology and it is underpinned by your infrastructure so the more understanding you can have of your infrastructure, knowing the capabilities of it and setting honest expectations about what you can deliver. I'm now many years into it, I have a greater understanding of the IT side of policing and what supports our ways of working, our processes. Most of it now a days is all underpinned by some form of technology so again a greater understanding of our IT department, their restrictions and infrastructure, and I keep coming back to the infrastructure piece, it's so fundamental to having a successful body-worn video program moving forward.
Todd Maxwell: Great. Thank you for all your time today, Inspector Goodier. We are grateful you can speak with us today to share your knowledge on this important topic. We encourage law enforcement, justice, and public safety leaders whose agencies are interested in learning more about the implementation of body-worn camera programs to visit the body-worn camera toolkit at www.bja.gov/bwc. This toolkit offers a variety of resources that agencies can use to help with the adoption and use for community engagement, policy development, data collection, officer training, and educational purposes. We also encourage listeners to share both these resources with your colleagues and staff. Lastly, all these resources and especially the body-worn camera toolkit have been designed as a national resource, your resource; please submit your ideas for new content though the BWC support link at the bottom of the home page. This is Todd Maxwell of the Bureau of Justice Assistance Body-worn Camera team signing off. Thank you to our listeners for joining us today.
