Many who are concerned with the possibility of police abuse of power, are comforted by the continuous presence of surveillance camera footage, capturing everything. Recent evidence of LAPD officers and others tampering with video and surveillance equipment, however, would seem to indicate that for some, the omnipresence of the camera is a problem.

Equipment sabotage:
A recent inspection of LAPD police cruisers by police investigators showed what officers say during an arrest, even hundreds of yards from the patrol car. The missing antennae reportedly came to the attention of police officials, who decided not to investigate the missing antennae because the squad cars are shared by different officers on different shifts.

Also without the antennae, the voice recorders still work, just not as well. The Police Commission was not briefed on the subject and the police department replaced the missing antennae and moved on.

Since the commission found out about the problem and investigated it, controls have been put into place to check for the presence of the antenna at the beginning of each shift. Though without knowing how easy it is to remove an antenna, one cannot be sure that they remain in place for the whole of an officer’s shift.

Also the antenna’s receiver is located on the officer’s belt, and could possibly be turned off.We will no doubt be finding out if other departments are experiencing the same conspicuous loss of audio equipment, but some cases out there already indicate that there are officers who do not want all of their actions recorded. […]