Zsa Zsa’s Lesson in Jailhouse Video

Police are not merely using video cameras to record demonstrations and other potentially explosive events where their actions may be challenged. The cameras also have become part of the everyday fight against crime.

When Los Angeles sheriff’s detectives are called to a murder scene, no longer does a still photographer join them to snap shots of the body, footprints, etc. “All our homicide teams now have video cameras,” said Cmdr. Ray Morris. “I won’t say we’ve totally eliminated the photographer (but) we use them very infrequently.”

Similarly, the traditional tape recorder is being pushed aside by the new technology when it’s time to record a suspect’s confession or the death-bed testimony of a witness. It’s much more effective for a jury to see the witness’ face, as well as hear his words.

Lighter, portable video equipment also has made it easier for police to play “Candid Camera” in their periodic stings, such as one in Anaheim this year in which 105 suspects were recorded selling nearly $1.4 million in stolen goods to undercover officers posing as fences.

At the Beverly Hills police station, two mounted cameras have videotaped all bookings since 1985.

After Zsa Zsa Gabor portrayed herself at her recent cop-slapping trial as a woman offended by vulgar language, prosecutors were able to show the jury a tape of her saying angrily into a jailhouse telephone: “The (expletive) policeman picked me up and pulled me out of the car!”

The videotapes, kept for two years, are designed to protect the public from mistreatment and “us from false claims,” Beverly Hills Police Lt. Robert Curtis said.

Although the decreasing size and cost (now an average of $940) of camcorders has made it easier for police to use them in the field, one legal expert does not foresee them ever being a routine part of the equipment carried in every patrol car.

“They would need extra people” to man the cameras, said UCLA law professor Norman Abrams. “I don’t think we’re going to reach the point where we’d spend the resources to make that possible.

“The problem, of course, is there are only certain contexts where police can use it. . . . Police catching a bank robber or a car thief are not likely to videotape it.”

They’d be too busy, he noted.