The effects of interview timing and body‐worn camera video review on completeness and accuracy of accounts of a lethal force scenario

Abstract Research Summary How to optimize police officers’ accounts following a critical incident like an officer‐involved shooting has been debated in policy and scholarly literature. Although empirical research has begun to explore the impact of interview timing and viewing body‐worn camera (BWC) footage from the incident, no study has explored how timing interacts with BWC review to impact officers’ memory reports. The present study addressed this through a randomized controlled experiment. Police recruits ( N = 166) wore a BWC and participated in a live armed‐offender role‐play simulation. Recruits were randomly assigned to an interview about the scenario either on the same day and several days later, or only several days later, and to either watch or not watch their BWC video directly before their interview. We tested the effects of timing (delay–between‐subjects and repeated interview–within‐subjects) and video review on the amount and accuracy of two categories of details: details from the encounter with the offender (encounter‐phase details) and details outside of this encounter phase (non‐encounter‐phase details). Delay did not significantly impact recruits’ accounts. Repeating the interview yielded more details than first interviews, and watching BWC improved accuracy. However, these effects were confined to non‐encounter‐phase details. Policy Implications The findings have implications for policy and practice regarding the timing and review of BWC footage when interviewing police officers after critical incidents. Our findings showed that the effects of these practices, particularly BWC, depend on the context of the information being reported. Policies allowing officers to view their BWC video footage before giving a statement are likely to support more complete accounts but will not necessarily be beneficial to determining the reasonableness of officers’ actions. We caution against reviewing BWC before an initial statement is captured, as well as delaying interviews, if the officers’ perspective is the priority.