Los Angeles, California – The Los Angeles Police Departments highest ranking officials were under fire this past week as the police commission took on the issue of equipment tampering by officers policing black LA neighborhoods.

The commission took up the camera issue during its April 15th meeting which took place on the heels of a April 12th the Los Angeles times article which stated that last summer, an LAPD inspection found that about half of the vehicles assigned to the departments southeast patrol division had the antennae from its audio/video recording devices removed from its patrol vehicles by officers. Further, to date no officers have been held accountable for the device tampering.

The Los Angeles Police commission which oversees the department says that police Chief Charlie Beck failed to notify them of the tampering problem until several months after the issues came to light. The Chief did eventually notify the commission president but the full commission was unaware of the tampering until this past February.

Says Kathleen Kim, one of five commissioners that oversee the department: “The inability to investigate is probably as troubling as the incident itself, because the ability to investigate serves as a deterrent for these kinds of things happening in the future.”

The areas patrolled by the officers in question include Watts as well as public housing projects Jordan Downs and Imperial Courts, all predominantly African-American populated areas.

The cameras that record audio and video of officers in the field as well as the civilians that they interact with was first put into patrol cars in the area about four years ago. The cams were added as a way to help end years of federal oversight that came as a result of the Rampart police brutality scandal of the 1990’s.

Since the department first began using the cams at least one in-custody death, that of Alesia Thomas in the summer of 2012 was caught on tape and an officer was criminally charged in that case. That death happened at about the same time as other police brutality allegations in two other LAPD policing areas.

Federal oversight known as the consent decree came to an end in May of 2013 after the department claimed to have implemented many policy changes over the past decade. Says Chief Beck at a May 2013 press conference: “We’ve become accountable, we’ve become transparent, and we’ve become more effective than we’ve ever been.”

As the death of Alesia Thomas suggests however, the cameras are needed as a means of protecting the community from those officers who disregard their duty to serve and protect and instead bully, brutalized and cover up.

Currently, the department is expanding the use of it’s in car audio and video recording devices and is currently testing body cams on about 30 officers in the city. The department claims to have implemented additional procedures to guard against the tampering of equipment by it’s officers.

Sources:
http://www.scpr.org/news/2014/04/15/43524/la-police-commission-grills-lapd-over-officers-who/

http://articles.latimes.com/2013/may/17/local/la-me-ln-lapd-reformed-as-federal-oversight-lifted-city-leaders-say-20130517