May 6, 2005

Fourteen years after the Rodney King beating raised calls for cameras in squad cars, Police Chief William J. Bratton said Thursday that he would ask the City Council to buy digital recording cameras for the force's 1,260 regular patrol cruisers.

Assistant Chief Sharon Papa said, however, that the chief sees the video cameras, which would cost $7.5 million, as a long-term project. His more immediate priority, she said, was securing $1.2 million for new simulators to train police in proper shooting techniques and $266,000 for 19 cruiser cameras that can automatically check license plates for stolen auto reports.

Bratton said there is enough money in the city budget to hire more officers and to purchase the new technology. He said he would ask the council to tap a recently established "efficiency fund" set up to hire, train and equip new officers. The fund is expected to contain as much as $9 million next year, officials said.

The cameras will protect officers and hold them accountable, Bratton said.

"New Jersey State Police found that when they put their camera system in as part of their consent decree that they were able to much more thoroughly investigate citizen complaints against their troopers, and they found the vast majority of the citizen complaints against troopers were unfounded based on the evidence these cameras provide," he said.

Putting cameras in patrol cars was one of the key reforms proposed by the Christopher Commission, which studied the LAPD after the 1991 police beating of King, which was videotaped by an onlooker.

"We could reduce our liability cases. We could resolve a lot of those with video cameras," said Councilman Dennis Zine. "Many officers carry a tape recorder right now to defend themselves."

Zine said there was enough money in the efficiency fund for officers and technology, but Councilman Jack Weiss said, "The No. 1 priority is hiring more cops."

Law enforcement agencies across the country, including the Orange County Sheriff's Department, have used cameras in patrol cars for more than a decade. The cameras came to prominence in 1991, when a Texas officer was killed during a recorded traffic stop.

"We strongly believe cameras will cut down the complaints against officers," said Bob Baker, president of the Police Protective League, which represents the LAPD's 9,200 officers. "We advocated for cameras for years, and we've always been told there isn't the money."

Efforts to get cameras stalled under two prior chiefs, although the department has experimented with them on a limited basis.

VHS tape technology is used in the Rampart Division, which has been mired in scandal for the last decade after allegations that officers beat, framed and lied about gang suspects.

"We have had good results from that. However, the storage and retrieval of VHS is extraordinarily cumbersome," Bratton said.

Data from cameras mounted on the windshield and interior of patrol cars would be stored in bulletproof boxes in the trunks, for download later to a central server.

"Cameras are a step in the right direction here," said Ricardo Garcia, an attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California. "It is important officers are held accountable for their actions and exonerated when allegations are proven false."

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-cameras6may06,1,1350094,print.story?coll=la-headlines-california