Page 7 - Top Cover Issue 6

TOP COVER ISSUE 6 7

been captured it has highlighted one very important issue – SCIENCE ON THE STREET
video is extremely compelling and influential and it can provide
supporting evidence for police actions. every single error and irregularity contained within a personal
However, video does not necessarily capture the ‘truth’, of an statement of the same event. It is vitally important to recognise
event. We are all familiar with the biasing effect of a sports video that errors do impact upon the perceived credibility of evidence
replay clearly showing that the referee got the decision wrong … presented by Principal Officers.
until we see another angle! Your own personal understanding and belief may never be

Video can only show one aspect of a scene and can be very captured within a film, since film can never form those same

misleading. It is interesting to consider that the ‘Hawkeye’ processes operating within your brain at the time the event
Goal System designed for football matches requires 6 took place. The personal beliefs we generate when confronting
cameras on each goal line. Just think for a moment, the violence are always individual and frequently transitionary from

precision needed to accurately determine action and second to second. Often police officers struggle to articulate all
movements might require a minimum of 6 cameras. that was going through their minds during a violent encounter,
In the fatal shooting of Mark Saunders, both the video and post yet no quarter is given from Lawyers at Inquest.
investigation laser-scan ‘scene reconstruction’ were combined Film moves us all to interpret and experience events in different
together by the IPCC. In this instance video validated the accounts ways; for those people who have never had to justify a split second
given by Principal Officers and demonstrated that Saunders judgement what they see on camera ‘was’ your view at the scene,
had swept their containment positions with the shotgun in the regardless of science and human performance.
seconds before they fired at him. It also informed the investigation In the aftermath of the Mark Duggan Verdict will the routine
team that a Pathologist was wrong when he stated that Saunders introduction of body-worn cameras provide greater protection to
had been shot in the back. firearms officers and reassure the ‘public confidence’? The answer
In contrast, the analysis of CCTV footage of a non-fatal shooting to these two questions will of course depend upon the specific
in London 2005, led the IPCC to conclude that the Principal Officer incident in question; what the camera does reveal compared with
in the case should be removed from firearms duties since his aspects of the incident that were never recorded.
memory of the incident did not precisely portray the Logically we believe that a body worn video must provide
movements of his assailant, moments before he fired. In far more comprehensive and accurate details for the actions
this instance his recall of an event that lasted and movements germane to a post shooting investigation.
less than 2 seconds was critically analysed, Measurements of body movements, the precise positions of hands
then compared. and weapons - all will be broken down into still frames capturing
These two separate incidents highlight those minute details, what you ‘should have seen’. However, this
where the new legal battle lines will be must be balanced against what science tells us about human
drawn once body cameras are routinely factors. We all have an ‘experiencing self’ and a ‘remembering self’.
introduced. Video will be broken down Both function in differing ways, both are vitally important within
frame-by-frame the goal being to find the context of the ‘honestly held belief’.
discrepancies in the memory Experiences generally last from moment to moment. Many
accounts of officers. Think for one details we experience never reach our long-term memory; this
moment your ‘experience’ of the is especially true when we must ‘act’ while observing. Many
shooting and all that took place experiences become ‘overwritten’ by the dynamic new features of
within the event will be directly the event happening in front of you.
compared to film taken from You may discover that you have no memory for some parts of the
possibly a single perspective. incident, your attention did not get instantiated into a memory
Science tells us that memory s trace – and can never be retrieved. At this point some officers may
hould not be compared to video, try and ‘fill in the blanks’, logically writing what they think must
however our legal system have happened - a confabulation of the event. You piece together
currently pays limited attention to a narrative to make your memory traces form something that
what are well-founded human makes sense … a sense for what must have happened.
performance issues. Will you be Memory is, as previously stated, very unlike film and contradictions
allowed to look at any video between video and memory are highly likely.
of your actions prior to writing Film is very powerful and studies of a phenomenon called
any statement – almost certainly, ‘viewpoint bias’ demonstrate that judges, jurors and investigators
the answer will be no! A memory are highly susceptible to bias when they look at film and photos.
test appears to be the preferred Rather than reviewing video as just one strand of evidence,
method of the legal system! Video ‘camera perspective bias’ greatly influences opinion.
footage does highlight in great detail