Countywide : Video Systems for 14 Sheriff’s Cars OKd

The County Board of Supervisors this week approved the purchase of $76,780 in video camera equipment, completing a campaign to mount monitoring systems in each of the 125 Sheriff’s Department patrol cars.

The 14 new video cameras, which are perched just below the rear view mirror and record pursuits and traffic stops, will be installed in patrol cars serving the Mission Viejo area.

With those installations, Assistant Sheriff Dennis W. LaDucer said, all active marked patrol cars will have “a third disinterested, objective eye.”

“The system has had a super effect on reducing the number of complaints and the way we can monitor what really happens on the streets,” LaDucer said. “It’s making the people we pull over feel more secure and it’s making the deputies feel more secure.”

The county became the country’s first to outfit an entire fleet of patrol cars with video equipment following the supervisors’ March, 1992, vote to spend $467,190 for the project, or about $5,200 for each of the cameras made by CrimeTec Corp. of Michigan.

The fist-size cameras are aimed forward to videotape the area immediately in front of the patrol car.

They can be activated manually, when a deputy pushes a button on a control console, or automatically, switching on whenever the vehicle’s overhead emergency lights are activated, LaDucer said.

A miniature, wireless microphone worn by the deputies provides audio for the taped images, LaDucer said.

The taped encounters, which range from traffic violations to tests performed on suspected drunk driver, can be useful in recounting criminal events in a courtroom.

But they also provide the deputies with a valuable learning tool. When a deputy has a conduct complaint, patrol supervisors routinely check the stored backlogs of tapes for the incident and a sampling of their other traffic stops.

“Right there on the screen they can see what they did wrong and what they did right,” LaDucer said. “It’s valuable to point out things they might unwittingly be doing that could cause someone to file a complaint.”

The video image is relayed to recording equipment in the patrol car’s trunk and cannot be erased or edited by deputies, making the visual record a way to prove or disprove complaints of misconduct, LaDucer said.

Mission Viejo was the last of the nine cities that contract with the county for law enforcement to have the cameras mounted in patrol cars because of budget concerns expressed by the city when the program began in July, 1992.

The cost of the cameras will be passed on to the city through the service contract, LaDucer said.