Documents Show Chicago Cops Routinely Disabling Recording Equipment
from the deliberate-operator-'error' dept
When the dashcam footage of the shooting of Laquan McDonald was finally released by the city of Chicago, it was notably missing the audio. In fact, no surviving footage of the shooting contains any audio. It's 2016 and the Chicago PD is still producing silent films.
There's a reason for this. Turns out cops aren't fans of recordings. DNAInfo Chicago requested information on the police department's camera problems after the eerily soundless shooting video was released. The documents obtained showed the PD may have plenty of cameras, but they're rarely generating complete recordings… or in some cases, any recordings at all.
On the night Laquan McDonald was shot 16 times by a Chicago Police officer, at least three dashboard video cameras in squad cars at the scene didn't work. And the ones that did capture video did not record audio.This complete failure was no statistical quirk.
In fact, 80 percent of the Chicago Police Department's 850 dashcam video systems don't record audio due to "to operator error or in some cases intentional destruction" by officers, according to a review by the Police Department.Cameras are only a part of the accountability equation. Putting them into use is a step forward, but if there's no accountability built into the process itself, this is the result. A mechanically inoperative camera is rarely going to be considered a problem by either the cops in control of it or the management overseeing them. And if officers feel more "comfortable" with less documentation of their activities, it doesn't take much to render the cameras useless.
Additionally, about 12 percent of dashcams experience "video issues" on any given day due to "equipment or operator error," police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said.
The documentation obtained by DNAInfo makes it clear missing footage or recordings are anything but accidental. The following cannot be explained away by coincidence.
Additionally, only three of 22 Chicago Police-involved shooting investigations forwarded to the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office from the Independent Police Review Authority this year included dashcam video evidence. And none of those videos included audio recordings, state’s attorney spokeswoman Sally Daly said.Neither can it explain the "errors" that led to the dearth of Laquan McDonald shooting footage.
The dashcam in police vehicle No. 8489, shared by officers Thomas Gaffney and Joseph McElligott the night of Laquan's shooting, recorded 37 “event videos” in October 2014, and had an operational dashcam the night of the shooting. But “due to disk error” no video was recorded at the shooting scene, according to police reports.In both cases, equipment was inspected later and found to have no mechanical problems. And yet, mysterious malfunctions somehow presented themselves during this controversial incident -- an incident in which the surviving footage contradicted officers' reports.
[...]
Police vehicle No. 8756 had a working dashcam that recorded 124 “event videos” in October 2014 without a single request for maintenance that month.
But on the night of Laquan's shooting, the vehicle assigned to Arturo Bacerra and Leticia Valez reportedly had a “power issue” and the dashcam was “not engaged.”
So, even purely as an internal investigative tool, the "recordings" are mostly useless. Officers clearly don't want their superiors to see what they've been up to, much less the general public. DNAInfo's report of the epidemic of unusable/missing recordings was unsurprisingly greeted by the local police union as an unwarranted attack on the reputation of Chicago's finest.
The union president called the report and CPD's statement that the department will not tolerate officers maliciously damaging equipment "just more kicks to the morale and kicks to the people that are out there working every day."The union president points to "thousands" of repair tickets and months-long waits for service as the real problem here. But his attempt to portray this as a hardware problem doesn't hold up when actual accountability measures are put in place.
"If there are individuals that are involved in purposefully damaging equipment, they will be cited for it," he said. "But, to cite someone because of a repair tag not being the most recent request for repair, I think that’s arbitrary and I think that’s part of the problem.”
“Supt. Escalante sent a very clear message and has held people accountable. And since we took that corrective action, we have seen a more than 70-percent increase in the amount of [video] uploads at the end of each tour … and that is being audited weekly with reports sent to the superintendent.”If it was mostly a problem with non-functioning equipment and long waits for repairs, the amount of uploaded footage should have remained nearly unchanged, rather than increasing 70 percent.
And the union president's statement would be more believable if similar tampering hadn't occurred at other police departments. This indicates that covering up wrongdoing is the prevailing mindset, rather than just the actions of a few rogue officers determined to thwart accountability at every turn.
Cameras can't fix officer accountability if no one's willing to hold them accountable for missing or incomplete recordings. The problem never seems to get fixed until it's been made public. When agencies are only interested in reacting to issues rather than trying to head them off, they play right into the hands of officers who prefer to perform public duties completely unobserved.
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Filed Under: disabled, police, recording equipment
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If you drive and hit someone from behind it is assumed that you are at fault, same sort of idea. Assume that any complaint is true as the officer has nothing to back his side of the story. Cameras are neutral observers and lacking those rather than providing the benefit of the doubt to the officer provide it to the citizen. Courts like to believe that officers would never lie, despite the evidence to the contrary (and the recent leaked contracts showing clauses getting rid of evidence that would support those claims).
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Not having it on means you are liable for any damages and offenses that it is claimed.
After all, if the Chicago PD have nothing to hide...
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Take the cop who jumped up on the hood of a car and executed 2 people when the original hail of bullets didn't kill them... no charges. They did nothing wrong but run from a massive overreaction from cops who were unable to tell a gunshot from a backfire, who were bent on getting those they thought shot at them. They caused havoc, destruction of property and murdered 2 innocent people.
In Chicago we have cops who actively destroyed evidence of one of their brothers murdering someone who presented no real threat. They ran a black site denying people their rights, using torture to get confessions. Now they are actively destroying systems that might hold them accountable for wrongdoing. Even when there is video the system colludes to protect them.
When we can break past that barrier then there is a chance of the presumption being innocent until proven guilty, but when they scale is unfairly weighted to one side often to bring the balance back you have to make changes.
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When we can break past that barrier then there is a chance of the presumption being innocent until proven guilty, but when they scale is unfairly weighted to one side often to bring the balance back you have to make changes.
Certainly. I just don't think one of those changes should be instituting a presumption of guilt.
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Choices in the pointing the finger game, matter
Or, they could just get a new PR guy, one who is better able to spin the unspinnable.
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Murder investigation ups the ante
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These dash-cams must be horribly designed.
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Re: These dash-cams must be horribly designed.
They were the ones whose contracts went right into the garbage.
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So they've got from having only 20% of the dashcam videos turned in to having ... 34% turned in. Yay, team.
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Ummm...do the cops tamper with these as well?
Police State?
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Sabotage of equipment
And it's a union shop, btw.
Just sayin'
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Twilightzone
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Human surveillance
We should test the humans at the NSA, to see if this effect can be reproduced.
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cops lie?
Happy valintines day everyone.
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Why not?
They have all the incentive in the world to ensure that no usable recordings are around when they act improperly, and no penalty at all for tampering with the equipment, why would they not do so given that?
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Chicago
Not a place I plan to visit anytime soon...
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And to think, cops are the only ones who should have guns
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Re: And to think, cops are the only ones who should have guns
Whaaaaaaaaaat??
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Re: And to think, cops are the only ones who should have guns
Or we could take the U. K. route where we ban guns for civilians, but take them away from most of the cops too.
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Mechanically Inoperative equipment
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If it's them investigating a crime, missing video would be evidence of tampering, but if it's missing dashcam video, it's "just more kicks to the morale and kicks to the people that are out there working every day."
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Sounds Like Just Another Day in Chicago
http://www.nbcchicago.com/investigations/Video-From-Burger-King-Near-Laquan-McDonald-Shooting -Released-360633421.html
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That will increase the 'reliability' of dash/body cams.
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All the more reason...
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