The body-worn cameras were introduced in the spring of 2018 in connection with a special initiative in the Stockholm region that targets the suburbs of Rinkeby and Botkyrka and Södertälje.

- The police in these areas feel that they have been so attacked in various ways that they have had a poor working environment and are unwilling to go to these areas. This has affected the possibility of carrying out the work, says Fredrik Marklund, investigator at Brå and one of the authors of the report.

Harassment decreased

In the report, the investigators write that some forms of exposure to the police have become less common after the body-worn cameras have been introduced in the three local police areas.

- What we see is that certain types of harassment, especially sexual harassment against women, but also oral harassment against male police officers, has decreased, says Fredrik Marklund.

According to the police interviewed in the report, the camera has a deterrent effect for those who are usually prone to harass or verbally attack the police.

- Some police officers reason that they may be guarding their tongue to a greater extent and thinking about what they say when they know it is being recorded.

Continued violence

The cameras, on the other hand, have not clearly reduced the physical violence, such as punches, bumps and kicks, towards police. In part, this is because the people who physically attack police often suffer from mental illness, or are affected by alcohol or drugs, and are unable to see or care about the police wearing a camera.

- They are not as influential and do not have the opportunity to take it in for various reasons, says Fredrik Marklund.

The report also states that the cameras can sometimes have the opposite effect and annoy people whom the police meet in their work.

- Some are provoked by the camera and can sometimes go to at least verbal attacks and question why the police are filming and filming back, for example. In reports and preliminary investigations we have also seen that this has resulted in physical attacks on the camera. Attempts have been made to turn the camera off or otherwise attack it.

Rarely used

When the body camera project started, police coordinator Gunnar Appelgren said the hope was also that more crimes would be cleared up. But according to Brå's report it does not appear to have been so.

- One thing that I think may surprise the police is to what extent the cameras have been used in judgments as evidence. We see that during this year there are about 20 judgments where the film material was cited as evidence and where it led to conviction. That's quite a bit compared to having had almost 300 cameras out for almost a year, says Fredrik Marklund.