Content and Container: Exploring Possible Perspective and Audio Biases in Videos of Police Interventions

The arrest and subsequent death of George Floyd are often cited as pivotal events in the evolution of police-citizen relationships. They were also the pinnacle of the “new visibility of policing” in that they were filmed by multiple cameras, and video recordings of the arrest of George Floyd played a central role in the trial of the police officer who killed Floyd. Although empirical work in other fields has repeatedly shown that how information is conveyed (the container) influences our perceptions and opinions sometimes as much as the information itself (the content), criminologists have largely neglected the effect of cognitive biases on perceptions of the police. The present study investigates both camera perspective and audio biases by reporting the results of three related viewings of controversial police interventions involving the use of force, filmed from the perspectives of a body-worn camera, a surveillance camera, and a cellphone. Results inconsistently support the existence of both biases but still point toward a concerning conclusion: technical features of the videos presented are associated with significantly different opinions. Implications for the public release of video footage are discussed.