Public demands for greater police accountability, particularly in relation to violence targeting Black and Brown communities, have placed pressure on law enforcement organisations to be more transparent about officers’ actions. The implementation of police body-worn cameras (BWCs) has become a popular response. This article examines the embrace of BWCs amidst the wider shift toward evidence-based policing by scrutinising the body of research that evaluates the effects of these technologies. Through an intertextual analysis informed by insights from Critical Race Theory and Science and Technology Studies, we illustrate how the privileging of certain forms of empiricism, particularly randomised controlled trials, evinces what Woolgar and Pawluch describe as ontological gerrymandering. In doing so, the emergent evidence base supporting BWCs as a policing tool constitutively redefines police violence into a narrow conceptualisation rooted in encounters between citizens and police. This analysis examines how these framings, by design, minimise racialised power relations and inequalities. We conclude by reflecting on the implications of these evidence-based claims, arguing that they can direct attention away from – and thus can buttress – the structural conditions and institutions that perpetuate police violence.

公众要求加强警察问责制，特别是针对针对黑人和布朗社区的暴力行为，这给执法组织施加了压力，要求他们对警察的行为更加透明。警察随身摄像机（BWC）的实施已成为一种流行的反应。本文通过审查评估这些技术效果的研究主体，研究了在向循证警务更广泛转变的过程中对 BWC 的接受。通过以批判种族理论和科学技术研究的见解为基础的互文分析，我们说明了某些形式的经验主义的特权，特别是随机对照试验，如何证明 Woolgar 和 Pawluch 所描述的本体论种族歧视. 在这样做的过程中，支持生物武器公约作为警务工具的新兴证据基础在本质上将警察暴力重新定义为一个狭隘的概念，植根于公民和警察之间的相遇。该分析研究了这些框架如何通过设计最大限度地减少种族化的权力关系和不平等。最后，我们反思了这些基于证据的主张的含义，认为它们可以将注意力从——从而可以支持——使警察暴力长期存在的结构性条件和制度上转移开。