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LA Police Officers Suspected of Tampering With Their Monitoring Systems
An anonymous reader writes "An internal audit conducted by the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) in March revealed that 'dozens of the [voice] transmitters worn by officers in Southeast Division were missing or damaged.' In the summer of 2013, this same division was found to have mysteriously lost 45% of the antennae placed on their cars to pick up the signals sent by their voice transmitters. The Southeast Division of the LAPD covers an area that has 'historically been marred by mistrust and claims of officer abuse.' For decades, the LAPD had been closely monitored by the U.S. Department of Justice, but a federal judge in 2013 decided to end that practice after being assured by the LAPD and city officials that the LAPD sufficiently monitors itself via dash-cams and voice transmitters. A formal investigation is currently being conducted to determine whether or not police officers intentionally subverted mandatory efforts to monitor and record their patrols."
For any officer found with damaged or missing recording equipment, suspend without pay or confine to desk jockey. Unacceptable to claim equipment is broken or doesn't work so the policy goes to the wayside.
There should be strict rules in place that any equipment malfunctions or damage must be reported as soon as reasonably possible, or sever penalties will result. Of course, the police union would fight this tooth and nail.
Anyone remember the police beating case in Maryland where the dash cams of ALL SEVEN police cars on the scene simultaneously malfunctioned? Accountability is not a thing many officers appreciate.
I wonder if the damage was reported and tracked over time, and if you could correlate this with who was assigned the equipment immediately prior? The results would probably paint a good heat map against the list of officers as to what subset was behind the damage.
It is possible people are vandalizing the cars (in general and though the public would vandalize ALL the antennas, not just one). The simple solution is make the officers report any damage and fill out paperwork indicating the cause. If they go a day with broken equipment unreported they're suspended without pay for day the first time with a day added per occurrence and fired after 5. If it's a repeated occurrence with an officer they should be monitored in secret by IA to observe if the officer is doing the damage themselves and if they are they should be fired and prosecuted for damaging government property. If the cars are being vandalized by the public they need better antennas that are vandal resistant.
Ha. Please find me someone with more contempt and disdain for the law than.... law enforcement! Shocked they would be breaking rules. What's next?
Sig Registration Form 34c_766(a) submitted to Ministry of Signature Management. Approval pending.
From TFA: "Because cars in the Southeast Division had been equipped with cameras since 2010 and different shifts of officers use the same car each day, officials decided an investigation into the missing antennas would have been futile, according to Smith and Capt. Phil Tingirides, the commanding officer of the Southeast Division."
I do not believe that this is possible. Given the number of officers, and the number of damaged cars, and the number of undamaged cars, and the log book, most of us could tell you who the culprits are before we get through our first 16oz cup of coffee.
Nobody should be constantly monitored. Be that at work or in private.
That's pretty obvious to anyone who doesn't live in a totalitarian state or the US.
Society allows police officers to use violence against members of society. They are supposed to only use that privilege under certain circumstances, but many officers have already demonstrated poor judgement and used violence when they should not of used it. The point of these cameras is to provide a control against people who can legally assault the public (police officers) as well as give officers a defense if they are ever accused of using violence inappropriately. This monitoring is necessary because police have already shown themselves to be irresponsible. Any police officer that is intentionally interfering with the recordings should be charged with destruction of evidence.
I'm pretty sure that people who work in retail are basically on camera all the time, certainly when they in the public areas of the store. In private, of course they should not be monitored. Unless, perhaps, you count ankle monitors that some convicted felons wear as an alternative to being in prison.
If you were in England, you would be on some of the estimated 6 million surveillance cameras: 70,000 operated by the police, 300,000+ by schools, 13,000 by the London Tube, etc., and most of the rest private individuals and corporations.
Given the track record of police abuses in the U.S., and the dramatic [fall in complaints about police behaviour](http://www.policefoundation.org/content/body-worn-cameras-police-use-force), plus the usefulness of having on-the-spot video evidence against criminals, I would support mandatory cameras for all of them.
Tell that to someone who works in a casino, or a bank. Sometimes the cameras are there to protect the employee, sometimes the employer, sometimes both.
Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.
I'll bet whoever came up with that was one malicious motherfucker.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
LAPD is notorious for corruption and officer abuse. What is *your* plan to fix that?
Here is a simple rule. If a cop doesn't have an active recording device then he isn't a cop; he is just some guy waving a gun and threatening people. Also invalidate any evidence that a "cop" gathers while not on video and audio. So if a cop searches someone and "finds" drugs and there is no video then it didn't happen; that combined with the stop and frisk being considered a mugging these cops would be polishing the lenses and making sure the equipment was in perfect working order.
Nothing about my day job provides for use of force, arrest, and charging people with criminal acts which could lead to their incarceration.
Given the history of abuses from the LAPD (and lots of other PDs) ... the stakes are much higher, and we've passed the point where we can just assume all police are honest.
So, you'll forgive me if I don't go all "boo hoo" about the level of tracking being applied to them. We see plenty enough stories which indicate cops can often have very little regard (or understanding) of the law.
Quite frankly, I don't believe there's enough tracking of police officers.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Pedantry is alive and well, it seems. I understood him just fine. Perhaps you should of not been so pedantic.
Well done sir! [sounds of applause]
Enigma
It seems to have been fixed:
Instead, warnings went out at roll-call meetings throughout South Bureau, and new rules were put in place requiring officers to document that both antennas were in place at the beginning and end of each shift. To guard against officers removing the antennas during their shifts, Tingirides said he requires patrol supervisors to make unannounced checks on cars.
"We took the situation very seriously. But because the chances of determining who was responsible was so low we elected to move on," Smith said, adding that it cost the department about $1,500 to replace all the antennas.
Since the new protocols went into place, only one antenna has been found missing, Smith said.
...do not rely on monitoring system that treats a complete lack of information as a complete absence of incidents.
Pretty much every retail employee on the planet already has to deal with this, but without the ability to have a mysterious hardware failure at (in)convenient times.
This. There are cameras in my office, if I went around cutting the wires to each camera I would no longer have a job and would probably be brought up on criminal charges. Our security department also has the ability to monitor my computer at any time. People in tons of different professions are monitored while they are working and many are tested to determine if they are doing company-prohibited activities while not at work. There is no reason why police should be excluded from the same kind of surveillance. In fact, many people would argue that there is a more compelling interest in monitoring police than almost any other profession.
Enigma
There are two requirements driving the need for monitoring systems. One is to catch the occasional 'bad cop'. True, most officers are contentious and try to behave ethically. But this is the major drive behind most of these systems. The other requirement is evidence collection. In spite of whatever our law enforcement and judiciary systems claim, police officers make mistakes. Or they are in a hurry or pumped up on adrenalin and their observational powers are hindered. Having a camera/mic running provides an objective view of incidents and in some cases, exonerates the actions of officers.
The second case isn't emphasized to the same degree as the first. It is difficult to make an argument that a person with whom you work regularly (think judges and cops) is as fallible as the average citizen. It isn't that cops always intend to do evil. It has been demonstrated that eyewitness accounts are notoriously unreliable, whether they are 'trained' or not.
Have gnu, will travel.
it is for the officers own protection against false litigation.
see what i did there
I don't do my job "under the color of authority". If you have special legal privileges that the common man does not, additional oversight becomes appropriate, where it wouldn't be for the common man. Corruption matters more.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
This is the preferred solution. After all that training, once an officer proves his eagerness to randomly break a few legs, it just won't do to let them go. That good LAPD conditioning has been disseminated throughout the country as these "rogue" cops take their skills and fucked-up attitudes out to rural America, the better to squelch any nascent bonds developing with the innocent citizens they intend to "protect and serve".
They feared that it could be used to suppress protest or support unpopular rule.
As I read these responses, I'm forced to wonder: would any of the posters tolerate having every spoken word recorded by The Boss throughout their shift? Even one of you?
1) Lots of people do already. For instance, call center employees.
2) While not necessarily at the 'recording every word' level, many more jobs have constant surveillance. Cashiers, for example, almost always have a camera pointed at them. Perhaps it's video only, but not always.
3) The police have the power to arrest you, injure you (if they claim it was necessary), even KILL you. What were the words of Uncle Ben? "With great power comes great responsibility". We need to hold the police greatly responsible for their actions.
Its not every word that is recorded. The recorder activates when they engage the sirens. They are only recorded in the process of doing their jobs.
This isn't surveillance of a private individual; this is monitoring the performance of someone doing their job; a job they are paid to do, a job they can opt out of, a job they have incurred obligations with regard to. It's perfectly legitimate.
Further, these people are given extraordinary power over citizens; the saw "with great power comes great responsibility" pretty much covers why monitoring them makes good sense from the citizen's POV. Even if we didn't know these particular officers have demonstrated that their cadre is well supplied with lawbreakers, and that more generally, they all are dishonest enough to observe the "thin blue line", it would still make sense to monitor them, just for their own assurance that specious claims against them could trivially be refuted. The fact that these idiots are intentionally killing that benefit by incapacitating the monitoring capability is a strong indicator as to why they're doing it: Almost certainly, something else is going on they are afraid will be seen -- add their known history of malfeasance, and we've got good reason to insist those cameras and audio recorders run though the entire shift, on every individual.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
The difference here is A) My organization is not cloaked in the legitimacy of the state to use violence in the gain of civil order. B) My organization isn't known for beating black men to death, robbing people, raping women via searches, and harrassing people for no good reason.
If we were our organization would be rather unpopular. Something like this type of monitoring would inevitably follow, and you would either deal with it or quit.
Though on the ot her hand Chase bank basically got caught funding mass murder and no one is (to the public's knowledge) being surveilled.
Considering that we don't seem to be offered the choice of whether or not we're wiretapped, I feel no sympathy towards law enforcement being recorded while on duty. At least with cops, there is actually a good reason to do so.
Unity? Screw that: XFCE. Slashdot Beta? Screw that: SoylentNews. Australis? Screw that: Pale Moon. UX developers DIAF
When you give someone the power to kill you there comes with it some accountability. These people are entrusted with the ability to rob you of your constitutional rights. A large portion of them currently are more worried about protecting their buddies than protecting the public. So, in short. Fuck their non existent right to privacy while being paid by the public.
Why is it so hard to only have politicians for a few years, then have them go away?
I know boat loads about call centers my first tech related job was in a call center, help desk for dial-up and later dsl.
I was actually trying to say if it's important enough that you need to record the college kid helping you setup dial-up or dsl then a police officer is far more important and should definitely be recorded
I'm leery of reducing a job as important as police officer to call-center working conditions.
That's a straw man argument. Nobody has recommended that we "reduce police officer(s) to call-center working conditions". Recording their on-duty interactions is as appropriate for police officers as it is for pilots. When something goes wrong and innocent people die, the public deserves to know why so that lessons can be learned. That's why we have cockpit voice recorders, and that's why we should have video and audio recording of all police interaction with the public.
If they aren't doing anything wrong, they have nothing to hide, right...?
You are mistaken about how cockpit voice recorders work. They record much more than "the last two minutes of talk before a crash". They typically record two hours on a continuous loop, and in the wake of the MH370 event that will probably be increased to eight hours or more.
1) Lots of people do already. For instance, call center employees.
There are reasons call center ranks below garbage collection on the list of desirable jobs. This is one of them.
I understand your point though: you wouldn't tolerate that sort of treatment but the other guy should have to. He's different!
The other guy doesn't have to tolerate that sort of treatment either. They are free to quit.
You're equating a constantly-overwriting black box that keeps around last two minutes of talk before a crash with continuous recording and long term storage of everything a police officer says, retrievable at his employers' pleasure.
You accuse me of logical fallacy? Really?
The Black box is not the only recording instrument on a commercial plane. There is a cockpit recording device that records all conversations in the cockpit for the entire flight.
Not all human beings are able to arrest me.
Not all human beings are able to have their word taken over mine in court by default.
Not all human beings are able to injure me and get away with it.
Not all human beings are able to invade my home and get away with it.
Not all human beings are able to kill me and get away with it.
Not all human beings are able to restrain me and get away with it.
Not all human beings are able to force me to stop my car and get away with it.
Not all human beings are allowed to go fogging down the road, dangerously far over the speed limit just because some pretty lights are on and/or they're making a loud noise. ...and so on.
So look here: I'll grant you that cops aren't 100% faultless nor is it reasonable to expect them to be, but, I think it's important to point out that when a cop makes an actual mistake, we need to look really hard at it even if we conclude all the response that's required is pointing it out, and more data is better in that case.
Furthermore, when "not 100% faultless" really means "cop is a scumbag criminal", or "cop is aiding and abetting a fellow cop who is a scumbag criminal by conspiring to hide their misdeeds and is therefore also a scumbag criminal" then yes, we do need to see who and how they are hurting people as they violate the public trust so we at least have some chance to clean house. This is oversight of power in public service, and it is, I believe, *entirely* reasonable when any serious degree of force and/or authority is delegated.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
This is crazy. It's not being recorded when you're on a call that makes call centers horrible, it's how you're treated the rest of the time. It's the parts where when you're not on a call you've got supervisors getting upset. It's when you acknowledge the person you're talking to is a human being with better things to do and get yelled at for not selling hard enough that makes it horrible. These things do not translate into recording the police.
Its not every word that is recorded. The recorder activates when they engage the sirens. They are only recorded in the process of doing their jobs.
Wow. And they're complaining about that shit.
Oh, and I'm certain that no officer would ever abuse such a system that is only engaged 2% of the time...
I'm always hearing how my personal privacy is the most important freedom I've got, meanwhile my wages have been declining for 30 years. You never hear the Koch brothers complaining about their personal privacy. How much do you know about them? What do you suppose would happen to you if you tried to find out?
Money is freedom. Economic security is freedom. You're not free so long as somebody can deprive you of food/shelter/health care/etc.
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Now you're just completely hallucinating.
Here's the face of that: http://www.cato.org/raidmap.
Cops get away with injuring people all the time, both on the street and in custody, not to mention via proxies in prison.
I didn't make it a horrible job. They did.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
So if there were a bunch of blatantly race-related murders that cropped up you're answer is to "protect everyone from murder" instead of addressing that specific situation, because "it would be racist to address the killings of whites/blacks/asians."
People like you look for racism, sexism, or whateverism, in absolutely everything. We need to be vigilant against ACTUAL racism..of course. However, if you think what I said is racist, you need to get your race-ar recalibrated.
If an issue is recurring, AND the MOTIVATION FOR THE CRIME ITSELF is race/sex ignoring that aspect is just willful ignorance, and completely ridiculous. Since when is pointing out institutionalized racism itself racism? Maybe this is meta-meta-racism on a level I just can't grasp...I really don't know.
How is it sexist to say women are being finger-raped by cops? The cops aren't sexually attracted to men, so they don't generally finger them. Whereas with women they can just say it was a search, and no female officers were available. Hell in most cases the women don't even speak up, because they don't know any better. There was the one guy raped at the hospital under LE direction, but I don't even think that was the LAPD.
On a side note:
This completely-overboard politically correct culture needs to die. If you reach far enough you can find racism/sexism/etc in literally anything! Just ask Jesse Jackson!
When did the intent of what someone said stop mattering? If someone says something that is obviously meant one way and you take it a completely different way to make it into something racist you're part of the problem.
Sorry if this sounds ranty, but I'm tired and grouchy, and the aforementioned "culture" being fostered here in the US is something I feel very strongly about.