The Blind Spots of Video Evidence

It is no secret that much of the technology we have access to today helps us garner more information than ever at an increasingly rapid rate. However, an oft forgotten aspect of both the development and subsequent applications of said technology is the biases that are built into the algorithms and the way they are used. One such innovation is the use of video evidence in criminal justice, specifically in the case of body cameras used by police officers in an effort to maintain transparency and possible justification for their actions as well as surveillance footage from the scene. This evidence is then submitted to jurors working the case, where it is scrutinized and an official decision is made. At first glance, it would seem as though this makes for an impartial judiciary system that makes decisions based on facts rather than predisposed biases, but unfortunately, it is hard to impossible to remove one’s biases from the decision making process.

These biases make it very difficult to uphold a just criminal system, and the resulting damages are very racially charged and have caused decades of systemic harm. For example, the Washington Post reported that six year old Kaia Rolle was forcibly removed from her school premises and arrested by officers in Florida for a violent outbreak. The disturbing video evidence shows young Rolle crying and begging to be left alone. The officer can be heard giving no assurances to the child, and instead letting her know she will be arrested and escorted to jail, before forcibly putting her in a police vehicle. The administrators on site were outraged and dismayed at the obviously inappropriate behavior of the officers. The school also officially denied that they ever pressed charges and maintain that they would never have subjected a child to such an experience. Although the officers later claimed that they were never going to go through with the arrest, the trauma of the incident has obviously scarred young Rolle forever.

It is important to note that Rolle is also a black student from a low income neighborhood. The obvious bias that comes with those identities are not lost upon anyone who has come across this case. Unfortunately, racial injustices are particularly rife among police. The manner in which the officers deny that their involvement and treatment of Rolle indicates that they truly are “blind” to their biases. In her paper, “Justice Is Not Blind: Visual Attention Exaggerates Effects of Group Identification on Legal Punishment,” Yael Granot and colleagues wrote about how actual justice may benefit from being blind in the literal sense. The studies she drew from indicated that the more a person with full visual capacity tries to examine evidence, the less they see because they become desensitized or their internal biases take over the way they intake evidence. 

More than believing that someone who can not see is above racism, internal biases, and less fallible to visual cues, the evidence Granot gathers indicates that the criminal justice system is fraught with racial biases and leaves the most vulnerable of our society susceptible to violence and injustice. In this case, a six year old child was subjected to a very traumatic experience that may leave her wary of the criminal justice system for the rest of her life. Even though the video evidence makes it very clear to the casual viewer that the incident was charged and inappropriate, the varying responses to the situation makes it plain that different people have differing biases that shape the way they investigate cases and draw judicial conclusions. Granot’s proposal of allowing folks without the capacity to see to become part of the justice system would take out at least one of the variables that hinder us from making biased decisions, but ultimately does not eradicate biases altogether.

Resources

1. Granot, Y., Balcetis, E., Schneider, K. E., & Tyler, T. R. (2014). Justice is not blind: Visual attention exaggerates effects of group identification on legal punishment. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 143(6), 2196–2208.
2. Horton, Alex. “Body-Cam Video Shows 6-Year-Old Crying for Help as Officers Zip-Tie Her.” The Washington Post, WP Company, 26 Feb. 2020, www.washingtonpost.com/education/2020/02/26/video-florida-girl-arrested/