Why Are The Police Afraid to be Video Taped ?

[WaTcHeR]

11.28.2006 - LOS ANGELES - Arlin Pacheco turned her video camera from the kittens on her porch to the police officers she saw chasing and tackling a neighbor.

The camera was rolling as one officer pressed his knee on the man's neck and punched his face.

That arrest of suspected gang member William Cardenas didn't draw much attention until last week, when Pacheco's video appeared on the YouTube Web site. Footage of two other arrests quickly followed, and the images fueled an uproar and accusations of police brutality in a city already infamous for the 1991 Rodney King beating.

Amateur videos of police using force on suspects have sparked varying degrees of outrage from California to Philadelphia and Europe after onlookers captured incidents on cheap cameras or video cell phones and posted footage on the Internet.

Some law enforcement officials worry about the effect, arguing that showing only a tiny part of an event can't tell the whole story. They also fear widespread exposure of such video clips might give officers pause in the future, even when force is justified, and that could put people in danger.

"You know, policing is oftentimes not pretty," Los Angeles Police Chief William Bratton said. "The video, as we've seen from time to time, particularly if you're looking at a slice of it, makes it look even less pretty."

One amateur video shows an LAPD officer using pepper spray on a handcuffed homeless man who was then left in a closed patrol car.

But in the 2005 case of the homeless man, Benjamin Barker, a district attorney's investigation cleared the police officers of wrongdoing.

In the Cardenas case, a court commissioner also found that the officers did nothing wrong because Cardenas was resisting arrest on a felony warrant claiming receipt of stolen property. Civil rights attorney Connie Rice acknowledges the images may "polarize and politicize police investigations," but they also force the LAPD to look inward.

Bob Baker, president of the department's 9,000-member union, the Los Angeles Police Protective League, said police have nothing to hide.

The union applauded a plan announced this week to install digital cameras in some cruisers starting this year.

"Putting cameras in cars will give people a full story of what took place," he said.

[WaTcHeR]

It started with Rodney King and the video taping of police brutality. America got to see for the first time, from their living rooms just how brutal police can be.

A few years back there was a gentleman by the name of Michael Crooks, who was arrested outside CNN's Los Angeles bureau where he was scheduled for an interview. Mr. Crooks was the person who shot the amateur video of a white police officer beating a black teenager in suburban Los Angeles. If you go to any page on www.policecrime.com you will see the picture he took of the officer hitting the black teenager.

english.people.com.cn/200207/12/eng20020712_99588.shtml


Even more recently you have a Deputy commanding a suspect to get up and then shooting him. If not for that being recorded by a citizen, the officer probably would have got away with it.

policecrime.proboards28.com/index.cgi?board=talk1&action=display&thread=1138935048


F.B.I. investigating possible police brutality in L.A. that was filmed by a citizen.

policecrime.proboards28.com/index.cgi?board=talk1&action=display&thread=1163184741


Police arrest man for video taping the police.

policecrime.proboards28.com/index.cgi?board=talk1&action=display&thread=1151721435


But then you have a judge that says you can video tape police officer.

policecrime.proboards28.com/index.cgi?board=thehelpdesk&action=display&thread=1149876586


You even have the t.v. show "COPS" filming a scene of police brutality.

policecrime.proboards28.com/index.cgi?board=talk1&action=display&thread=1157308808


How about the man arrested for taking a picture of the police with his cell phone.

policecrime.proboards28.com/index.cgi?board=talk1&action=display&thread=1156743291


And last another thread discussing video taping the police.

policecrime.proboards28.com/index.cgi?board=thehelpdesk&action=display&thread=1134535602

[KC]

Federal Judge: Videotaping Police Traffic Stops OK
A federal court has ruled police cannot arrest a man for peacefully videotaping a traffic stop.

7/20/2005 - A federal judge ruled Tuesday that Pennsylvania state troopers violated the constitutional rights of a man they arrested for videotaping police while they performed roadside inspections. Allen Robinson, 44, had seen the police stop big-rig trucks on the side of Route 41 in Chester County and believed the safety inspections themselves were creating a traffic hazard. He wanted to document the situation with his camcorder so that he could show it to his state representative. After obtaining the permission of a nearby landowner he peacefully videotaped the officers from twenty feet away in August 2000 and again in October 2002. On both occasions, Robinson was arrested for harassment and convicted by a local judge.

"We are not dealing with a 'close case,'" Judge Harvey Bartle III of the US District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania wrote in overturning the 2002 conviction. "There was no justification for the actions of defendants in violating Robinson's right to free speech and his right to be secure in his person against an unreasonable seizure."

Tuesday's decision also ordered the police to pay $35,000 in compensatory damages. The arresting officers -- Patrick Fetterman, John Rigney, and Gregg Riek -- must also each pay Robinson $2,000 in punitive damages.

"To defendants, Robinson was a gadfly," Judge Bartle concluded. "In their view, he was annoying them. It is fundamental that persons such as Robinson may not be deprived of their constitutional rights simply because they are unpopular or disliked or are resented by the police."


www.thenewspaper.com/news/05/541.asp

[KC]

ACLU still wants to record police

Plan would arm St. Louis residents with video cameras.

St. Louis — Nearly a year after the American Civil Liberties Union of Eastern Missouri announced plans to arm north St. Louis residents with video cameras to record interactions with police, the program still has not begun.

The ACLU originally planned to provide the video cameras to residents by summer after a series of incidents raised concern over potential police brutality. But nearly a year later, the plan has not gotten off the ground, according to Reditt Hudson, who heads up the ACLU's racial justice program.

Hudson told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch the program is still coming, though the organization was unwilling to discuss timing, other than to say it is working carefully and quietly toward starting up next year.

"The important thing is that the program is very much in the works," said Brenda Jones, the chapter's executive director. "It's an important initiative, and we plan to have something we can talk publicly about early in the year."

The ACLU announced the program, the Racial Justice Initiative, in December, saying the videotaping would begin after a series of workshops aimed at helping blacks learn how to protect their rights during dealings with police.

Jones said some of the workshops took place this year.

Hudson, a former city police officer, has long said the department sometimes mistreats and unfairly targets blacks. He said the ACLU hopes the presence of cameras will act as a deterrent to abuse.

www.news-leader.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20061125/NEWS01/611250350

[WaTcHeR]

One afternoon in November, Houston Texans lineman Fred Weary was pulled over by Houston police for a traffic violation. The cops say he was belligerent and uncooperative. Weary's lawyer says he did as he was told. What no one disputes is that the story had an unhappy ending. The officer shot him with a Taser before handcuffing and arresting him.

At times like this, wouldn't it be nice to know exactly what happened? Of course it would. It would also be easy--had the incident been captured by a video camera. But it wasn't, because the police car involved didn't have one. Video recording is one of the most extraordinary law enforcement tools ever invented, but despite years of availability, it is still grossly underused.

In the end, a judge dismissed the charges of resisting arrest. You could take that as proof that Weary was an innocent man who was unjustly mistreated--or you could take it as a symptom of how hard it is to prosecute a well-represented public figure based on nothing but a cop's testimony.

All this uncertainty might have been avoided had the patrol car been equipped with an in-dash camera, as some Houston police cruisers are. These devices can provide an invaluable record of what happens before and after a police officer makes a stop or arrest. But cost and inertia have deterred departments from the obvious step of putting them in every vehicle.

The advantages of video gadgets are many. They can document crimes and traffic offenses. They can refute claims of police misconduct or brutality. They can encourage restraint by both officers and citizens.

Where they have been used, they have proved their worth. In a three-month experiment with 74 Oakland police officers, complaints were filed against 15 of the cops when they patrolled without video cameras. But when they were driving cars with cameras, there wasn't a single complaint filed against any of the 74.

Maybe that's because offenders don't make up tales of police abuse when they know the video record will expose the lie. Or maybe it's because police behave themselves when they know they're being watched. In any case, everyone ends up better off: Suspects get protection against abuse, and cops get protection from bogus allegations.

Yet many departments have to be dragged kicking and screaming into the 21st Century. Even though the infamous Rodney King affair put two cops in jail and cost the city a $3.8 million legal settlement, the Los Angeles Police Department couldn't bring itself to embrace modern technology until last month, when it announced it would install cameras in some 300 cars.

Chicago didn't get around to it until two months ago, and only 30 police cars--out of some 2,900--will get the video gear. "A couple of hundred" of Houston's 1,400-plus cruisers are equipped with cameras, according to a spokesman. As of 2003, the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics says, only about one of every five police cars in the United States had them.

Why so few? The easy explanation is that cameras don't come cheap. They cost from $2,500 to $10,000 apiece, plus expenses for training, storage and archiving, according to Jim Kuboviak, director of the Law Enforcement Mobile Video Institute.

But in this day and age, doing without cameras makes about as much sense as doing without guns or sirens. They ought to be considered standard equipment. It doesn't take too many lost convictions or damage payments to make the cost of video look like a bargain. Cities also save money because charges that might have been contested before are likely to produce quick guilty pleas when the incriminating facts are preserved in living color.

The payoff can be counted in more than dollars. In 1991, a county law enforcement officer stopped a car on a deserted road outside Garrison, Texas, only to be overpowered, beaten and stabbed to death by the three occupants. Thanks to the videotape in his patrol car, the killers were caught and convicted of murder.

It's safe to say that a particular police department doesn't need to be persuaded of the value of video. In-car cameras are an unmatched asset for fighting crime and establishing truth. But only if they're used.

www.chicagotribune.com/news/columnists/chi-0612070050dec07,1,719648.column?coll=chi-news-col

[double standard]

The problem with some of these in-car cameras is that officers can turn them on and off at their discretion. I approve only if cameras are set up to work all the time and officers have no control over them.