This is scientific Americans 60 second science. I'm Erica Barris. Got a minute?

The last few years have seen numerous widely publicized incidents of civilians,

black men in particular being killed by police. In response, many officers are not

required to wear body cameras. The theory is that technology will lessen the

likelihood of an officer using unnecessary force to diffuse a situation.

Now research finds that body cameras do indeed appear to keep encounters between police and civilians

from intensifying to the point where a civilian files a complaint, in a few jurisdictions anyway.

The study is in the journal Criminal Justice and Behavior.

Researchers collected data from seven police departments in the UK and the US that serve a total population of 2 million people.

The data represented over 1.4 million. total population of 2 million people.

The data represented over 1.4 million hours logged by nearly 2,000 police officers in 2014 and

2015.

Officers were randomly assigned to either wear or not wear body cameras week by week.

When the police wore the cameras, they were required to have them on at all times.

The year before the study, a total of 1 1539 complaints were filed against officers at the seven sites.

But during the course of the body camera experiment, a total of just 113 complaints were filed, a reduction of 93%.

Six of the seven sites saw complaint reductions

of at least 88%.

An interesting finding was that complaints

against officers wearing body cameras were almost equal to complaints against. was that

the complaints against officers wearing the cameras.

The studies authors suggest that the change in police behavior

...