Since the famed 1991 beating of Rodney King, officials with the Los Angeles Police Department have worked to equip the department’s some 1,500 officers with on-body and in-car cameras. But the high price tag of the surveillance-like equipment — along with internal politics — has prevented the LAPD from being able to implement the technology, until now.
Last month Police Commission President Steve Soboroff said he had raised half of the $1 million he needed to purchase enough on-body cameras or lapel cameras for LAPD officers through private donations. And on Tuesday, Soboroff announced he had received another donation, this time from the Los Angeles Dodgers baseball team.
Donations to the LAPD’s lapel fund include $250,000 from philanthropist and media executive Casey Wasserman, $50,000 from former Mayor Richard Riordan, $50,000 from DreamWorks’ CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg, $7,500 from Roberta Weintraub, a former member of the Los Angeles school board and now the $250,000 from the Dodgers.
With more than $600,000 raised so far, Soboroff will likely reach his million-dollar goal soon, especially since Wasserman plans to host a fundraising event for the LAPD’s lapel fund soon.
“We don’t want to be a low-tech department in a high-tech world,” Soboroff said. “That technology saves lives and money.”
As Mint Press News previously reported, many first responders, specifically police officers, have recently considered adding on-body cameras to the list of daily equipment that would record audio and video footage. The Mesa, Ariz. police department is the first to have done so in the U.S. The goal is to help lessen the amount of police brutality cases and accusations — plus there is a nice financial incentive to using the equipment.
While the cameras are costly, the Mesa Police Department said the investment in the technology could have a quick payoff if it can help defend an officer against a wrongful lawsuit. The department said that just one false arrest after a traffic incident in 2012 reportedly cost the city $62,500 to settle.
According to estimates from Taser International, the leading maker of on-body cameras, each camera would cost about $700. The department plans to buy 500 cameras, and Soboroff says it costs about $50 a month for each camera, to store the recorded video and audio content.
Raising $1 million would allow the department to buy 500 cameras and pay the data storage fees for two years. Soboroff says if he is not able to meet his goal of raising $1 million, the department will buy as many cameras as they can.
But since the the LAPD paid out $24,154,957 in settlements related to civil rights incentives in 2011 alone, finding the $1 million for cameras may be a wise investment. In addition to the financial benefit, a recent study in Rialto, Calif., found that complaints against officers drop by as much as 88 percent and use of force by an officer drops by about 60 percent when on-body cameras are used.
This study reinforces the LAPD’s own findings, which include that 92 percent of the complaints made against officers who had in-car cameras in 2011 and 2012 were exonerated or unfounded. According to the LAPD, a majority of those cases that were sustained, the officers may have been exonerated, but they had failed to turn on the in-car camera.
Importance of cameras: for the cops or the community?
Mitchell Englander is a Los Angeles city councilman and a reserve LAPD officer. He said that while in-car cameras capture video in front of and inside patrol cars, an on-body camera can capture video in places a squad car can’t go such as inside a home.
“We’re spending tens of millions of dollars on lawsuits and everybody out there has a [cellphone] camera,” Englander said. “This is a great opportunity to set the record straight, to give us extra eyes and ears at a situation.”
He added, “What we’re looking at is an enhancement to the technology that is already out there with the dash cameras in the black-and-whites. More is better in this case. We’re paying out tens of millions of dollars in lawsuits, and these cameras have been shown to lower that amount in other departments. There’s a new energy around this technology, and we want to move forward with it.”
But not everyone agrees. Take Peter Bibring, a senior staff attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California, for example. He said that before any cameras should be used, the police department needs to address the privacy issues that come along with the footage.
“Police officers often interact with people who are in vulnerable states, or not at their best,” Bibring said. “The fact that video is being taken for accountability purposes does not mean it should end up on the evening news.”
He gave an example of the dash-cam video taken of movie star Reese Witherspoon, who was arrested while intoxicated in Atlanta. Bibring said that while the arrest was filmed on the street where Witherspoon had no expectation of privacy, the video was “very embarrassing” and ended up leaking from the police department.
“[These videos] shouldn’t be accessible to anyone else in the department,” he said. “Not only should they not be shared with the evening news, they shouldn’t be emailed around the office.”
The Los Angeles Police Protective League (LAPPL), a union for LAPD officers, agreed.
“Balancing everyone’s right to privacy with technology that could, in effect, capture every moment of every day, will be our emphasis as we consider and negotiate work rules,” the group said in a statement last month.
“Among other issues, recording a very personal moment or a deeply visceral reaction to a violent or tragic crime scene may serve no purpose other than to satisfy morbid curiosity and embarrass someone.”
The LAPPL also stressed that the footage alone is not a “complete investigation” and urged officers not to rely on the technology.
The LAPD has been rather quiet when it comes to addressing the privacy issue, but in a recent interview with the Los Angeles Times, Soboroff said he wants the community to be involved when the rules are created for how and when the cameras are used.
“It’s important that the department doesn’t just come up with something and then tell people, ‘This is what we’re doing,'” he said.
Who is Steve Soboroff?
Because Soboroff has been more successful in working to equip officers with cameras in the past 30 days than the LAPD has been in the past three decades, many are wondering exactly who Steve Soboroff is.
Before he was appointed president of the Los Angeles Police Commission in September, Soboroff, a self-professed “business leader and public servant,” served as president of the Los Angeles Recreation and Parks Commission and a senior advisor to Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan. He even ran for mayor himself in 2001, but was unsuccessful.
Soboroff also worked as the president of Playa Vista, a multi-use real estate project. In his role, Soboroff was responsible for overseeing the development of parks, schools, offices and residences, while preserving wetlands and mitigating major traffic congestion.
He also briefly served as the vice chairman for the Dodgers, and was tasked with improving the fan experience and strengthening the team’s ties to the community.
In addition to his work for the LAPD, Soboroff is chairman of the board of directors of the Weingart Foundation, senior advisor to the California Science Center, chairman of the Maccabiah Games Committee of 18, chairperson of the Center for the Study of Los Angeles at Loyola Marymount University, senior fellow and member of the advisory board at the University of California-Los Angeles Luskin School of Public Affairs and member of the board of councillors at the University of Southern California Price School of Public Policy.
Talking to the Los Angeles Times last month, Soboroff said he asked to be president of the LAPD Commission because he is a problem-solver and wanted to ensure the extremists were out of the picture so work could be done.
He said that not having a background in law enforcement is a benefit because he doesn’t have any preconceived notions of what kind of work needs to be done. Soboroff said he plans to define his term as president of the LAPD with finding the money to get on-body cameras for all officers.