By Anthony A. Braga, John M. MacDonald, James E. McCabe

Research summary

The concern of crime in New York City public housing complexes motivated heightened police patrol of buildings and the enforcement of trespass laws. The 2013 federal court settlement of Davis et al. v. City of New York et al. mandated that the New York City Police Department (NYPD) implement a series of reforms, including the deployment of body-worn cameras (BWCs) on officers, to address unconstitutional use of criminal trespass enforcement and stop and frisk practices in public housing developments. This study employed a stepped wedge quasi-experimental design that involved the sequential crossover of public housing service area clusters from control to BWC implementation until all NYPD housing bureau officers were equipped with BWCs. Panel regression models at the individual officer and service area levels were used to estimate BWC program impacts on outcomes between 2015 and 2019. Logistic regression models were used to estimate the impact of the BWCs on the lawfulness of officer stop reports that were randomly selected for audit between 2017 and 2019. Results show that BWC deployment in public housing reduced excessive enforcement, citizen complaints, and use of force by NYPD housing officers. Findings further suggest that BWCs can help reduce constitutionally problematic stops and frisks of citizens.

Policy implications

Problematic police activities in public housing contexts can be reformed using BWCs. When coupled with routine supervisory review of video footage, the deployment of BWCs on public housing officers can improve compliance with department directives to reduce enforcement actions and increase documentation of citizen stops.

Public housing provides an important source of affordable homes for more than 900,000 low-income households in the United States, the majority of which are minority residents with incomes below the poverty line (Fischer et al., 2021). Unfortunately, many public housing developments have unsafe and unhealthy environments driven by persistent problems related to a legacy of segregation, poor funding for maintenance and repair, and lack of oversight from agencies administering public housing programs (Finkel et al., 2010; Popkin et al., 2020). In 2017, the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA), which administers 17% of public housing in the United States, estimated that their developments needed $32 billion in capital improvements over 5 years to improve living conditions for their residents (STV Incorporated & AECOM USA, 2018). Many public housing developments experience higher levels of crime and violence relative to contiguous communities due to the concentration of vulnerable populations in sometimes substandard living conditions (Fagan et al., 2006; Holzman, 1996).

The connection between crime and public housing has long been recognized as one of the motivations behind increased police surveillance and enforcement in public housing complexes (Austen, 2012; Schill, 1993). The New York City Police Department (NYPD) is well known for their use of proactive policing strategies that encouraged its officers to make very high numbers of citizen stops and misdemeanor arrests to control crime during the 2000s and early 2010s. Guided by mapping and spatial analyses of crime incidents (Eterno & Silverman, 2012), these aggressive enforcement actions were concentrated in public places that experienced high levels of violent crime such as NYCHA public housing developments. Although there is evidence that these NYPD strategies were associated with modest crime control gains (MacDonald et al., 2016; Weisburd et al., 2016), numerous studies suggested that these policing efforts generated racially disparate impacts on police stops and arrests of Black and Hispanic residents (e.g., Fagan & Davies, 2000; Gelman et al., 2007; Jones-Brown et al., 2010). Fagan et al. (2012) estimated that NYPD stops, frisks, and arrests of Black and Hispanic NYCHA residents and their visitors were much higher in public housing settings relative to enforcement patterns in adjacent neighborhoods.

In 2010, a group of NYCHA residents and their visitors filed a federal class action lawsuit against the City of New York, Davis et al. v. City of New York et al. (10 Civ. 0699), which accused the NYPD of unconstitutional use of stops and arrests for criminal trespass in NYCHA housing complexes. Ultimately in 2015, the City of New York settled with the Davis plaintiffs and agreed to undergo a series of reforms to NYPD criminal trespass enforcement practices specifically. The City of New York also agreed to ongoing federal court monitoring with other plaintiffs in cases involving unconstitutional use of stop, question, and frisk (Floyd et al. v. City of New York et al.—08 Civ. 1034) and trespass enforcement in privately owned buildings (Ligon et al. v. City of New York et al.—12 Civ. 2274). The combined settlement agreement included a broad set of remedies to reduce racial disparities and improve the lawfulness of NYPD stops of citizens (see 959 F. Supp. 2d 668, 685; S.D.N.Y. 2013, Remedial Order). The deployment of body-worn cameras (hereafter, BWCs) on NYPD officers was mandated to create objective records of stop-and-frisk encounters, encourage lawful and respectful police-citizen interactions, and offer a way to substantiate whether NYPD officers engage in alleged misconduct. These same issues were specifically mandated to apply to the NYPD's trespass enforcement activities in NYCHA housing as part of the Davis et al. case.

The existing program evaluation evidence on the impact of BWCs on police officer work behaviors is largely mixed with some indication that the presence of the technology may improve the civility of police-citizen encounters (Lum et al., 2020; Williams et al., 2021). Scant research assesses the impact of BWC technology on the lawfulness of police actions during encounters with citizens, and, to date, no studies evaluate the use of BWCs in public housing contexts. In this study, the impact of BWC deployment on officers working in NYCHA public housing developments is measured. The Davis et al. settlement specifically identified problematic trespass enforcement practices in NYCHA developments, making it important to examine the impact of the 2018 BWC deployment on Housing Bureau officers and their interactions with civilians. This evaluation assesses whether the deployment of BWCs on Housing Bureau officers affected the civility of police-citizen encounters, the level of police enforcement activity, and the lawfulness of police encounters, comparing those outcome measures both before officers were equipped with BWCs and for a year after BWCs were deployed. These are particularly important issues to examine in the context of NYCHA housing, which are areas with the highest rates of violent crime in NYC, have undergone extensive surveillance of residents and their guests, and have experienced decades of intensive law enforcement activities.

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Criminology & Public Policy

Early View, July 2024.