Truth, Lies and Videotape

Lights, camera . . . police action!

After maintaining a pilot video program for more than six years, the Los Angeles Police Department has at last begun installing recording cameras in new squad cars--a move that will make the devices standard patrol equipment in about five years.

In a development that gives an entirely new meaning to the term “police tape,” LAPD officials say the cameras ultimately will reduce the department’s civil liability and aid police in criminal and internal affairs investigations.

“We believe they’re going to be a great tool for risk management and dealing with false complaints, but they’re also going to have obvious benefits in terms of criminal investigations,” said LAPD Cmdr. David Kalish.

Defense lawyers welcome the cameras as well, saying they may provide valuable information on clients’ arrests. However, the attorneys predict that storage and retrieval of the tapes could become an administrative nightmare.

By installing a camera in each new cruiser, the LAPD is joining a national and Southern California trend in videotaped law enforcement. In Los Angeles County, departments in Beverly Hills, Palos Verdes Estates and Hawthorne have adopted the devices as standard equipment, while the Sheriff’s Department is preparing to start its own pilot study program. The cameras are much more common in Orange County, where they have been used by the Sheriff’s Department for eight years and by some cities. In Ventura County, Ventura has conducted a limited experiment with video and is considering whether to expand the program.

The U.S. Department of Justice is conducting a survey of police video use, and has yet to release figures on its prevalence. However, manufacturers of the devices say that business is booming and that the machines are becoming standard equipment for police officers--a technological upgrade of the micro-cassette sound recorders that many officers carry to record their conversations with citizens and suspects.

Among the national organizations that have endorsed their use is the National Assn. of Chiefs of Police, in Washington, D.C. “I think that in the coming years, they’re going to be in general use in all large police departments,” said Bob Wallace, an association spokesman.

The Los Angeles City Council approved the LAPD plan last month, and documents are now being reviewed by the city attorney for approval. At the LAPD, installation of the devices, which cost between $3,000 and $6,000, will take five years and cost $5 million.

Video systems commonly consist of a recording machine that is stored in a shockproof, armored box in the cruiser’s trunk, and a small, box-like camera mounted on the cruiser’s ceiling next to the rearview mirror. Some cameras have zoom lenses and can display images on a computer laptop mounted in the cruiser’s cab. In most cases, the cameras are mounted permanently and cannot be removed from the police car. One recent innovation has been the so-called “copcam”--a miniature video camera attached to a police officer’s body.

Across the country, so-called in-car video systems are supported by city officials, civil libertarians, police officers and defense lawyers as the ultimate impartial witnesses to police heroism and misdeeds. Indeed, some insist that people behave better when they know they are being recorded and that the tapes will help police officers the most by defending them against misconduct claims.

The Videotape That Changed L.A.

Ironically, an incident in which LAPD officers did not know they were being videotaped gave rise to the demand for in-car video systems in Los Angeles. That occurred on March 3, 1991, when amateur videographer George Holliday taped LAPD officers as they beat Rodney G. King, a 25-year-old African American, in Lake View Terrace after a high-speed chase.

The videotape would leave deep marks in Los Angeles’ racially charged history as well as the nation’s. When a jury acquitted four officers of brutality charges on April 29, 1992, Los Angeles erupted in rioting that lasted three days. At a subsequent federal civil rights trial of the officers, two were found guilty.

The Christopher Commission, which reviewed LAPD practices after the King beating, recommended installation of cameras to control the behavior of arresting officers and suspects.

Since that recommendation was made nine years ago, implementation has been stymied by city budget problems, the shortcomings of early video technology and the task of completing other Christopher Commission recommendations, LAPD officials say. Department officials did outfit three dozen police cruisers with cameras as part of a pilot program, but even Police Chief Bernard C. Parks conceded that the program has languished.

But even today, as the Los Angeles city attorney reviews the department’s bidding specifications for the video cameras, some observers say that the department is just now facing up to the biggest hurdle in adopting the system. They wonder whether the sprawling department is up to the administrative task of keeping tabs on a sea of videotapes.

“I think it’s a very good tool and it’s more helpful to the officer than anyone else,” said Ted Hunt, president of the Los Angeles Police Protective League, the LAPD officers union. “But I think it has tremendous, tremendous administrative and cost challenges. It’s going to be a serious undertaking to properly and appropriately collect, catalog and track all of those videotapes.”

Department officials like Kalish say that the videotapes could be cumbersome and that the department’s recording system ultimately could rely on another technology, like digital recordings, which hold more information and take up less space.

“Because there are such issues regarding retention of records and maintenance, videotape may not be the answer,” Kalish said.

A few police agencies in Orange County already have video equipment in patrol cars. Despite early resistance by officers, cameras have been effective in prosecuting crimes and protecting officers against false allegations of misconduct, officials say.

Newport Beach Police Sgt. Mike McDermott said officers grudgingly accepted the cameras when the department began using them three years ago. Complaints by officers that they were under “Big Brother’s” watchful eye quickly disappeared when officers learned that the camera could be their friend, McDermott said.

“Right after we got the camera, we arrested a woman for driving while intoxicated. She claimed she was sexually assaulted by the officer when she was arrested,” McDermott said. “Her employer, a doctor, threatened to take the allegation to the FBI. But when he saw the videotape, it clearly showed a very intoxicated woman being led to the back of a patrol car. The tape shot down her allegation.”

In that case, the video camera probably saved the city thousands of dollars in litigation costs, McDermott said.

In other instances, the cameras can have a sobering effect on suspects who are belligerent or increasingly defiant.

“Sometimes you can say, ‘Sir (or madam), you’re being taped,’ ” said Lt. Ed Kreins of the Beverly Hills Police Department, which has been using video for four years. “Then they’ll look back at the car and see the red recording light. Their whole attitude changes. It tends to de-escalate things.” Officers are not required to tell subjects that they are being videotaped.

Police and prosecutors said cameras record mostly routine traffic stops that show motorists driving under the influence or in possession of drugs. The stops also are voice-recorded with portable microphones clipped to an officer’s uniform.

Occasionally, videotapes are used as evidence at trial.

“But in most cases videotapes are a nonissue,” said Orange County Deputy Dist. Atty. Cameron J. Talley. “They’re part of the evidence but not necessarily the key piece of evidence. We take a case to trial based on the weight of the evidence against a defendant, not what is shown on a videotape.”

Kreins said fewer than 1% of the Beverly Hills department’s tapes end up in court. More important, the internal affairs officer said, the cameras contribute to good conduct among officers and help those who have been wrongly accused of swearing at citizens or propositioning them during traffic stops.

“I think it makes them a better officer,” Kreins said. “You’re going to treat somebody a lot better if you know you’re being taped. That can only be viewed as a positive, whether they like it or not.”

Still, some tapes will make their way into court. Gigi Gordon, a criminal defense lawyer and chairwoman of the Indigent Criminal Defense Appointments Panel of the Los Angeles County Bar Assn., said she would “subpoena them in every case. Who knows what I’d find. Maybe there will be something I could use.”

This demand alone, she said, could pose storage and retrieval problems. “I don’t think anybody’s set up to handle this sort of thing, whether it’s quality or quantity that might be demanded. It’s almost impossible to get things out of them now.”

Activating the Video Cameras

Marketers of the cameras are keen to point out the system’s ability to record conversations within the cruiser, even when the arresting officer is outside the car. The idea is that two suspects can be placed in the car and, believing that they are not being recorded, will discuss details of their crime. In departments that use video, officers grab a tape at the beginning of each shift and scan its bar code, creating a record of which officer has the tape.

The equipment is automatically activated when the siren or overhead lights are turned on. The camera also can be activated by a button on the officer’s utility belt.

When the officer’s shift ends, the tape is dropped into a secure bin, much like a library return slot.

But the systems are not foolproof. The cameras are attached to a swivel so they can be moved by hand. But they mostly remain pointing forward through the windshield, recording images directly in front of the cruiser. While this setup works well for routine traffic stops, the cameras do not capture incidents in which an officer walks some distance from the car, as when responding to a burglary alarm.

In Beverly Hills, Kreins and other officers said that a common problem was the failure of microphones. In the heat of the moment, officers forget to turn them on. “It all depends what’s happening,” Sgt. John Edmundson said. “I may be more preoccupied with where my gun is at that particular moment.”

Special correspondent Holly Wolcott in Ventura County contributed to this article.