In spite of the potential benefits of using body-worn camera footage to improve community interaction, increase officer safety, and evaluate training, police departments are only minimally using the information available at their fingertips. The crux of the problem comes down to time: It is impossible for agencies to dedicate the manpower required to review hundreds of thousands of hours of footage generated by body-worn cameras.
Criminal justice experts at Washington State University (WSU) are hoping to solve this problem by using advanced scientific tools and techniques—such as data analytics, biometrics and machine learning—to examine the complex factors that shape interactions between police and community members.
Researchers in the new Complex Social Interaction (CSI) laboratory at WSU, led by David Makin, assistant professor of criminal justice and criminology, are designing algorithms and software that analyzes body-worn camera footage.