What is it about?
Think of police officers as filmmakers and storytellers. They decide when to turn the camera on and where to point it. Two key decisions officers make are when to start or stop recording (the cutting decision) and which direction to film (the camera-angle decision). These choices significantly affect how we perceive incidents.
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Photo by Jakob Owens on Unsplash
Why is it important?
Understanding the storytelling decisions officers make about when to record and where to aim the camera can influence what is captured, which in turn can impact public trust and the pursuit of justice.
Perspectives
My aim, along with my fantastic co-author, was to reframe how we think about policing and the kinds of choices officers make in the field. Writing the article was quite challenging because taking police officers out of one conceptual box and putting them in another is quite tricky!
Jonathan Simmons
University of Alberta
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Police officers as filmmakers: the cinematography of body worn cameras, Policing & Society, December 2022, Taylor & Francis,
DOI: 10.1080/10439463.2022.2160450.
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