Dashcams , bodycams , and other cop - tracking technology has been tout by community leaders and police force departments likewise as a puppet for ensuring that the police are play by the rules . A new account out of Chicago underscores one of the problem with this thinking .
An investigationby DNAInfo in Chicagointo why so many dashcam videos are mum yielded what should be a scandalous revelation : Much of the time the footage does n’t have any sound recording because officer have “ pulled out the batteries ” on microphone , yanked of the antennas , or simply not decent synchronise the footage . Even in cases where “ intentional destruction ” is n’t to blame , camera often went unrepaired for months upon months .
Of particular pastime is the information incur about the team car of Jason Van Dyke , the officer who shoot Laquann McDonald and currently face first - degree murder mission , party thanks toevidence captured by constabulary dashcams . turn out his dashcam ’s had issues — lead right up to the night of the shooting , when the dashcam recorded no audio frequency .
On June 17 , 2014 , law technicians report set a dashcam wiring issue in police fomite No . 6412 , the squad shared by Van Dyke and Walsh , about three months after it was report break , records show .
A day afterward , the same fomite ’s dashcam organization was reported busted again . It took until Oct. 8 , 2014 , to make out repairs of what technicians take for “ intentional damage , ” fit in to story .
Just 12 days later on , on Oct. 20 , 2014 , dashcam video recorded from squad car No . 6412 on the night Van Dyke shot and killed McDonald did not memorialize sound . The video that went viral showing Van Dyke killing Laquan was fill from a dissimilar squad automobile , but it , too , had no audio .
The deep you bet at the numbers the more troubling it looks . Did you have it away four cars at the scene of the McDonald shooting did n’t record sound . Here ’s another crazy factoid from the paper :
Between Sept. 1 , 2014 , and July 16 , 2015 , maintenance technician assigned to trouble-shoot and repair dashcam systems reported 90 incidents where no mike were found in squad elevator car , according to police log .
Seriously !
At the very least , you could characterise the actions of the law section and officers necessitate as wilfully negligent . They do it the dashcams were busted , and they did nothing to prove to fix them in a seasonable mode . A more cynical observer might argue that the officers knew they were up to no good , or did n’t palpate the need to abide by legally mandate transparency .
It would be one matter if the malfeasance in Chicago was isolated , but it ’s not . A 2014 investigationin New Orleans found that over a sample menstruation most “ use of goods and services of personnel ” incidents did n’t have body camera footage available . Somehow , that footage was magically disappearing — either tv camera were never turned off or footage was lost after the fact .
Now most concerned parties , including lefty orgs like the ACLU , believe these constabulary surveillance technologies will finally help make police accountable , and more generally , that they will conduct to safer street for everyone . Indeed , the experiment with revolutionary body camera transparentness in Seattle has been aqualified success . physical structure cameras have lead toindictments of killer cops , which many thought would never happen .
The problem is that bad cops take the parliamentary procedure to bear a modicum of transparency as an insult . If we ’re to believe that these applied science are really more than justfancy peter designed to protect cops . The police , and the department and city governments that supervise them involve to do a better line of work assure the technology is n’t abused .
[ DNAInfo ]
Top image : Footage shot by Chicago Police dashcam import before officer Jason Van Dyke shoots Laquan McDonald .
connect with the author at[email protect ] .
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