Policing Made Visible: Mobile Technologies and the Importance of Point of View
Surveillance & Society, 2015, 13 (3/4): 455-473
This award-winning article examines advocacy for policing’s “new visibility,” contrasting police accountability activists who document police through sousveillance with designers and adopters of on-officer camera systems. While both frame these technologies as mechanisms of accountability grounded in mechanical objectivity, accountability functions differently for each group due to the social and legal privileging of police perspectives. I argue that on-officer cameras, such as Taser’s AXON Flex, are widely adopted because they enable police to neutralize third-party documentation, functioning as counter-sousveillance technologies rather than straightforward tools of accountability.