Recent highly publicized and emotionally charged instances of violence between police and citizens raise questions about whether officers acted appropriately. In response, increasing numbers of police departments are requiring their officers to wear body-mounted cameras, hoping their use will lead to increased officer compliance with police regulations as well as compliance by citizens with police instructions.

A newly published study by the University of Cambridge suggests that police body-worn cameras do, in fact, reduce complaints against police. In what the university claims is one of the largest randomized-controlled studies in the history of criminal research, the authors found that when police wore body cameras, complaints dropped by a dramatic 93 percent. The study, entitled “Contagious Accountability,” was published in September in the journal Criminal Justice and Behavior.

The study followed seven police departments in the United Kingdom and the United States and amassed data involving 1,429,868 officer hours across 4,264 shifts and serving a combined population of nearly 2 million citizens. In the 12 months prior to the experiment, 1,539 complaints were lodged against officers—an average of 1.2 per officer. During the study period, complaints dropped to 113, or an average of 0.08 complaints per officer.

The study protocol required officers to “keep the camera on during their entire shift and inform members of the public, during any encounter, that they were … recording their interaction.” Earlier studies had shown that when officers were in control of turning the cameras on and off, use of force actually increased, suggesting the importance of having continuous video surveillance of a police-citizen encounter.

Jayne Sykes, head of performance review for the largest police force in the study, West Yorkshire Police in England, said prosecutors already see benefits from the use of body cameras. “Anecdotally, in terms of bringing offenders to justice, our Crown Prosecution Service have said to us on numerous occasions that the video footage has tipped the balance in favor of prosecution, whereas without it, they may not have been able to prosecute.”

Battery-powered credit

Americans are gradually getting used to the new EMV (Europay, Mastercard, VISA) credit cards with a computer chip. The so-called “chip and PIN” technology is designed to decrease instances of fraud when the card is present at the point of sale. But what if a criminal steals your credit card details online? Already, countries that have adopted EMV technology have seen a huge uptick in such online, or “card-not-present,” fraud.

French company Oberthur Technologies believes it has found a solution to this problem. Its Motion Code card has a small e-paper mini-screen on the back that generates a new CVV code every hour, defeating any attempt to fraudulently use stolen credentials.

Powered by a micro-sized lithium battery with a three-year life span, the card looks, feels, and works just like a standard credit card. It can even survive being put through the wash.

“This technology adds an additional layer of security for online transactions—but with total transparency for the cardholder and the retailer,” Martin Ferenczi, president of Oberthur Technologies North America, told Pymnts.com.

After a pilot program, French banks Société Générale and Groupe BPCE will offer Motion Code cards to their customers this year. Oberthur plans an eventual worldwide rollout of the technology. —M.C.