“Research sits at the core of our mission to educate for justice,” says President Karol V. Mason. The remarkable research that our esteemed faculty, students, and alumni perform directly impacts our society and helps move the needle forward toward creating a more just world. Their empirical data reveals inconsistencies, pushes boundaries, and opens minds to a whole new way of thinking. Our “Research on the Rise” series aims to showcase the ongoing, upcoming, and noteworthy research happening right here at John Jay.

It’s easy to believe that watching footage of a police-civilian altercation is an impartial act because it’s a recording of real-life events, but the research done by Psychology and Law Professor Deryn Strange, Ph.D.; former John Jay Associate Psychology Professor and Co-Founder of the Data Collaborative for Justice Preeti Chauhan, Ph.D.; and their respective graduate students, Kristyn Jones, Ph.D., and Therese Todd highlights the fact that perceptions of police-civilian footage actually changes when the viewer has different information given to them before seeing the video. “We think that the footage is objective, but what we fail to consider is that the person who’s watching the footage is coming with bias,” says Strange, who arrived from New Zealand in 2008 and has been teaching both undergraduate and graduate students at John Jay ever since. “The viewers are coming with their own biases and expectations about what they will see, and it’s sometimes because they’ve been told what happens via media reports or some official documentation.”

In their research, the team constructed a methodology that would examine how perceptions of altercations change when the viewer ascertains that the civilian has either taken drugs or has mental health difficulties before seeing the footage. We sat down with Strange, whose area of study focuses mainly on cognition and memory trauma, to learn more about the research, conclusions, and policy recommendations that this intriguing study brought about.

Why is memory distortion and looking at its impact on the criminal legal field so important?
Memory is one of the foundations of the justice system. Every time somebody is on the stand as an eyewitness to a crime, or the victim of a crime, to a degree they’re relying on the memory of the event. Memory is oftentimes the thing that is on trial. It’s really important for juries, judges, lawyers, and individuals to understand how memory works and to understand that there are still a lot of myths about memory.

Memory is not a stagnant, fixed thing. It is flexible. It changes depending on the information we receive after an event, and that can be absolutely critical to what people actually testify to having remembered. That’s why we should protect memory in the same way we protect biological samples. For example, if a blood sample was left out in the air or was mixed with another blood sample, we would know that it was contaminated and we wouldn’t be able to rely on that particular piece of evidence. That can be easily documented and easily seen, but the way we can contaminate memory isn’t so easily documented. Every conversation, news report, interview with the police, and therapeutic appointment about an event can affect the content of our memories. Those memories can become contaminated or corrupted. It’s not necessarily inevitable, but it does happen, and that can change what people say. That’s a terribly important thing to keep in mind when memory is a key part of a trial.

How are memory and post-event interpretations impacted when it comes to body camera footage?
First of all, I want to be clear that body cameras have been wonderful in certain cases. It’s really important to have these additional pieces of evidence. The problem comes when we consider something to be entirely objective when it’s not. There are two different things that we need to think about when we think about body camera footage. The first being what is and isn’t shown to us. The officer’s body camera is not able to move. It’s fixed on an officer. You’re only getting that single perspective; you don’t know what isn’t being filmed. You don’t necessarily know when it was turned on, what happened beforehand, and what happened afterward. You have to keep in mind that it’s also not at the eye level of the officer. It’s often going to offer obstructed footage and what’s in those obstructions could be really important. There are always physical limitations of what can be seen on the footage.

The second issue to consider is the more personal stuff about the person who is viewing that footage. This is what the majority of my research on this topic has found. We think that the footage is objective, but what we fail to consider is that the person watching it has an expectation about how something is going to unfold. They have their own beliefs about the way police officers behave, the way that people who are taking drugs behave, or the way people with mental health difficulties behave. Those expectations and beliefs actually affect judgments. So, while it is obviously better to have that footage of an event, it’s not the be all and end all.

Can you break down the methodology of the research?
The data was actually collected online. Participants were given some information about what happened in the footage that they were about to see. Some participants were told that the civilian was suspected of being on drugs; others were told that the civilian was diagnosed with schizophrenia. They were also given, or not given, information about how the officer resolved the encounter—if they used force or did not.

Then they saw the encounter. In the three-minute footage, they saw a somewhat unstable person with a knife approaching a police officer. The footage purposefully stops before they know what happened and it’s unclear how it resolves. Everybody in the study sees exactly the same thing. What was interesting was that their judgments differed greatly depending on what information they received beforehand.

After reviewing all of the results, what were some of the biggest takeaways?
If the participant was told that the civilian was suspected of taking drugs, that brought on the worst interpretation for the civilian. Overall, the participants rated the civilian they thought were taking drugs much more unfavorably than when they were told nothing about the civilian or when they were told that the civilian appeared to be suffering from schizophrenia. We believe that the results showed a bias against people who take drugs. The participants seemed to consider drug use as something that a person is in control of, compared to schizophrenia, making them less empathetic to the believed drug user in the footage.

They also rated the officer as having done “very well” in the situation when they didn’t use force against the person who was on drugs. So, you get this kind of similar result to a bad civilian, good officer in that situation. In general, the officers were rated highly when they didn’t use force. Anytime they use force, ratings do come down, but they don’t come down as much as when the civilian is considered to be a problem or taking drugs.

Were there any specific findings when the participants were told the civilians had schizophrenia?
The participants who learned that the civilian had a substance use disorder felt more strongly that the civilian should be punished, as opposed to when they heard that the civilian had schizophrenia. When they were asked to make a decision about what the ramifications of this encounter should be, they were more generous when they thought that the person had schizophrenia. For the participants, it seemed like schizophrenia was deemed not something that the civilian could be in control of, so they shouldn’t be blamed, but a drug user was viewed as being in control and should be punished.

Did anything surprise you about the outcomes?
I think we initially expected to see more stigmatization for having schizophrenia than we actually observed in our data, which was welcome news. There’s still evidence of stigmatization, but not as much as we were expecting. The other thing we found was that people’s overall opinions are also modulated by how much they identify with police in general. The more you think that police officers are like you and think like you, the more generous you are in your assessments of how those police officers behave.

How would you want policymakers or people in the criminal legal system to look at this research and start using it?
The policy recommendation we make in the paper is that to whatever extent is possible, within the limitations of the system, we really need to make it so that evaluators are assessing the footage before they learn any other context information. That video footage should be kept separate from all other context information whenever somebody has to assess police use of force or make a decision about whether or not a civilian should be arrested. They need to look at the footage before learning any other information.

Can you talk about what it was like working with the graduate students?
Honestly, mentoring Ph.D. students and helping them find their own niche in the research world, that’s my favorite part of my job. That’s what makes you get out of bed and go to work. Having the opportunity to help people find their favorite thing to do is my favorite thing to do. Working with Kristyn was an absolute dream. She’s a wonderful researcher, and she is doing fantastic things out in the world now. And, having the opportunity to work with Preeti and her student, Therese, was really great in terms of teamwork. When you have different approaches and different areas of research, and then merge it all together, the result is a very organic and enjoyable process. I think it was a lovely example of how interdisciplinary research can actually make something better.

What advice do you have for undergraduates interested in conducting research?
The first thing to do is to get into a lab, develop a relationship with a professor. Find a professor in the department who is doing the kind of research that speaks to you and see if you can volunteer in the lab. If you’re committed to doing the work, you’ll get more and more opportunities. You might even have the opportunity to do your own project for a thesis or for actual credit. Those are the steps that you need to take if you want to get into grad school.