March 27--The Los Angeles Police Commission's civilian watchdog has faulted police supervisors for not proactively checking in-car video recordings to monitor for officer misconduct, according to an audit released Friday.
Inspector General Alex Bustamante said police officials generally review recordings only when investigating "critical incidents," such as shootings and pursuits, or when a complaint has been made against officers.
Moving forward, Bustamante wrote, his office would conduct "regular and substantive reviews" of the recordings to help LAPD officials "evaluate and improve the in-car video system's operation on an ongoing basis."
Bustamante described the technology as a valuable tool and said it worked well in providing information about many LAPD stops. But he also outlined some concerns, finding that officers didn't always turn on the cameras at the start of pedestrian stops and sometimes engaged subjects in areas that were out of sight.
As a result of the findings, the report said, the inspector general and LAPD officials took steps "that will enable the department to obtain more complete video of each stop." Those steps included drafting a new directive that "explicitly requires" officers to activate the cameras at the initiation of all stops.
Department policy requires officers to turn the cameras on "during the initiation" of all vehicle stops, suspect transports and pursuits or responses that require lights and sirens. But for pedestrian stops, the policy states, the cameras must be activated "when practicable."
The cameras turn on automatically whenever an officer turns on a cruiser's emergency lights. They can also be activated manually by officers.
The installation and effective use of cameras in LAPD patrol cars has been a long-running effort -- and a problematic one. For more than two decades, the department has been trying to install the technology, hoping that recordings of officers' actions would help keep them accountable and guard against false allegations of misconduct.
But the cameras have still not been installed in all of the LAPD's patrol cars. And last summer, it was revealed that officers in South L.A. had tampered with voice recording equipment that accompanies the cameras in an effort to avoid being monitored.
The LAPD is also taking steps to outfit each officer with a body camera, making it the largest law enforcement agency in the country to use that technology on a wide scale. Bustamante wrote that he conducted his most recent audit "in light of the pending implementation" of the body cameras.
In his audit, Bustamante found "a small number of cases" where an officer's microphone "did not appear to be recording any audio." The inspector general recommended the LAPD look into the malfunctions "to ensure that they are not the result of officers' use of the system."
The inspector general reviewed video from 211 vehicle and pedestrian stops conducted by officers working LAPD's South Bureau, which was the first to be outfitted with the technology. The cameras will next be rolled out in Central Bureau, with a full installation there expected early this year.
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FOR THE RECORD
3:57 p.m.: An earlier version of this story said LAPD would complete installation of patrol car cameras early this year. In fact, installation for LAPD's Central Bureau is expected early this year.
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Although cameras generally captured the entirety of the vehicle stops, the inspector general noticed inconsistencies with pedestrian stops. Bustamante acknowledged that pedestrian stops are typically more fluid than vehicle stops, and said there were "various reasons why a pedestrian stop might not be captured on camera."
But he said nearly all of the pedestrian stops occurred at least partially out of the camera's sight. The most common reason, he said, was because officers had driven their patrol cars past the subject before making the stop, meaning it occurred out of sight of the front-facing camera.
Bustamante said he had "asked the department to review these cases to determine whether these incidents present tactical or other concerns."
