LAPD Cops Sabotaged Equipment Installed to Monitor Them

Police officers generally insist that they are
the biggest fans of being recorded. A PoliceOne
explainer on how cops can beat a lawsuit that I’ve
highlighted before stresses the important of having footage of
an incident that may later be called into question. Video evidence,
police instructor Richard Weinblatt wrote, “should actually be
welcomed, as the majority of officers do what they are supposed to
do and thus will be cleared by the video from any allegations of
wrongdoing.”

What does it say then that members of the Los Angeles Police
Department (LAPD) have reportedly tampered with audio recording
equipment? Nearly half the recording antennas in one division, the
Southeast, actually went missing.
Ars Technica explains:

The antennas, which are mounted onto individual patrol
cars, receive recorded audio captured from an officer’s belt-worn
transmitter. The transmitter is designed to capture an officer’s
voice and transmit the recording to the car itself for storage. The
voice recorders are part of a video camera system that is mounted
in a front-facing camera on the patrol car. Both elements are
activated any time the car’s emergency lights and sirens are turned
on, but they can also be activated manually.

The Los Angeles Times
reports that LAPD chief Charlie Beck found out about the issue
last summer but chose not to try to track down the vandal cops.
Instead, according to the Times, the department issued
general warnings that cops should not “meddle” with the equipment.
The Police Commission, an oversight body, blew the whistles on the
apparent malfeasance this week, but Beck denied any wrongdoing,
claiming that his failure to notify the Police Commission about the
problem earlier was simply “unintentional.”

The lack of interest in identifying the officers who effectively
destroyed city equipment certainly contributes to the impression
that police officers in the U.S. are not held responsible for
wrongdoing. A recent Reason-Rupe poll found nearly half of
respondents
agreeing that cops weren’t generally held accountable for their
actions. The poll also found a whopping 88 percent of respondents
supporting the recording of police officers in public.

Recording cops also makes informed skepticism and criticism of
police actions more possible. Police in Albuquerque, New Mexico,
for example, shot a homeless camper in an incident
caught on a helmet cam. That footage helped
spark protests in a city that has one of the deadliest police
departments in the country.

That right is protected in many states—Illlinois’ Supreme Court

recently overturned the country’s most draconian anti-recording
law—but even in those places, police have been known to disregard
the law and target those who legally record them anyway. Such an
incident recently cost the City of Baltimore $250,000. The city
didn’t have to accept responsibility for the officers’ actions, and
the officers were not fired for breaking the law. Instead, as
usual, they’ll get more “training.”

Read Ron Bailey’s column about why watched cops make for polite
cops
here, and watch a Reason TV interview with an ex-cop who agrees
below: