A new report concludes that Los Angeles police officers have widely tampered with voice recording equipment to block monitoring of their actions on duty. Officers have been tearing off the antennas of their cruisers to prevent transmitting signals. Yet, there is not a single reported case of a single officer been disciplined, let alone fired. Indeed, none will be investigated.
We have previously discussed officers tampering with monitoring equipment by disabling or turning them off.
Investigators found about half of the estimated 80 cars in one South L.A. patrol division were missing antennas. Another 10 cars were disabled in other divisions.
Here is the most disturbing line is this one from the article below: “LAPD Chief Charlie Beck and other top officials learned of the problem last summer but chose not to investigate which officers were responsible.” Really? Officers destroy public property to prevent their conduct from being observed and Chief Beck decided not to investigate and charge them? Somehow I doubt that is the approach to citizens who destroy LAPD or city property.
Instead of investigating the potentially criminal acts, Beck issued warnings against continued destruction.
Making things worse, the Department waited to notify the Police Commission, which oversees the department, even though this equipment is designed to protect the public as well as officers. That led to criticism from commission President Steve Soboroff that they were left in the dark.
What is truly astonishing is that most of the destruction occurred in the Southeast Division, which limits the officers and supervisors involved in the misconduct. That would have made this an easier matter to investigate. Yet, Beck ordered that no investigation occur and did not immediately inform the Commission that is tasked with this type of matter. That should raise an equally pressing question of the suitability for Beck as Chief of Police, but it appears that he is another officer who is unlikely to be held accountable in this scandal.
http://www.latimes.com/local/la-me-lapd-tamper-20140408,0,7666331.story#ixzz2yPEshY00
Wayne – depending on the facility, and there are many levels, depends the level of threat to the guards. In some facilities the prisoners are locked down at night, in others they are stacked in bunks like cord-word in large dormitories. The federal courts (bless their pea-picking hearts) have given a lot of these prisoners rights within the prison system. Many of these prisoners prey on their fellow prisoners, financially or sexually, so the weaker ones often are armed with shanks to protect themselves and the stronger ones are armed to help themselves prey. Those shanks get passed around. Every prison has a collection of various types of shanks taken from prisoners and during training the new guards are shown them to know what to look for.
Guards are at risk usually under three circumstances. 1) they personally really piss a prisoner off and the prisoner does not care what happens to them 2) for some reason the prisoner gets riled up about something and the guard just happens to get in the way 3) prison riots. In cases 2 and 3 if the guard is reasonable humane to the prisoners, other prisoners will often come to their rescue and keep them from being killed.
Thanks Paul,
Your explanation really helps. I do understand that when someone has nothing left to lose he/she can be a very dangerous individual.
I can also understand that when prisoners are “Stacked up like cordwood” then violence is just part of life. What a shame.
I’ve always advocated that minor drug offenses shouldn’t involve prison time, mandatory minimum sentences need to be changed as judges should have more flexibility at the time of sentencing. And for goodness sake let’s legalize marijuana, tax it and quit putting non-violent people in jail. Someone smoking marijuana is no more of a danger to me or my family than someone drinking a beer.
Thanks for painting a clearer image for me…..
Protect yourself, ALWAYS record the police. Clearly, they aren’t going to hold themselves accountable.
Bad behavior works it way from the top down. Thanks Chief Beck for showing your officers integrity and accountability.
At some point shouldn’t the Feds step in when PDs act in a lawless manner?
Wayne, My response to Paul included the fact that yard time is their alone time. They are human. We kept our distance but added tower guards during yard time. They are humans. They are VERY BAD humans, but humans nonetheless. We had leaders of the Aryan Nation, Black Muslims, Cosa Nostra, etc. we got the Alcatraz inmates when Kennedy closed Alcatraz. Robert Stroud, the Bird Man, did most of his research @ Leavenworth. I was there in the 70’s.
Wayne, these inmates were sharp and they sized up us hacks pretty quickly. The NYC dagos tried to schmooze me. We policed our fellow hacks and if even were like you, Wayne, we made sure you were gone in a NY minutes!! A-holes in our ranks could get us killed. And, the inmates policed their own. If we told an inmate to so something, it was righteous and they would follow orders. I never had any real problems w/ an inmate one on one. They sized me up as righteous. You would have had your throat cut if we didn’t run you outta there in time.
Yes, inmates are human and I apologize for my degrading comment about them a few minutes ago. After retiring from my ‘normal’ job I drove a cab in a large city (pop: one mil) for eight years seeing the best and worst that society has to offer. During those eight years I became very jaded toward criminals after witnessing their violence against the elderly and weak.
I understand what you are saying, but as someone with zero experience in handling inmates and fortunately zero experience in being one, what you are saying doesn’t compute with me. I know you are explaining things the way they really are but I still don’t understand how an inmate can cut a guard’s throat. It doesn’t make sense.
This is a closed rigid society where inmates are locked up at night or anytime a guard wants them behind bars. Perhaps our correctional institutions need a new direction or new ideas as the status quo doesn’t seem to be working very well.
Paul,
…..”Nick – mine were all young. But you have the Aryan Brotherhood, the Mexican Mafia, the Muslims, Bloods, Crips, etc. each has their territory marked out in the yard. Did the guards mark it out, not where we were.”
Why let them out in the yard in the first place? Leave em locked up. Or let one gang out in the yard on one day, then another the next day…or maybe one hour at a time. Get rid of all the weights and other training paraphernalia. Make a mini-Pelican Bay and treat them like the animals they are.
“I have always found that mercy bears richer fruits than strict justice.” Abraham Lincoln
Remember what they tell the citizens. “If you have nothing to hide why are you worried about anyone listening in…”
My reply to that is why do almost all of us have drapes on our windows if we have nothing to hide? It’s because of Privacy!
Paul, All institutions take on their own unique dynamic. I worked @ Leavenworth. Make no mistake, the guards ran the prison. But, it was always understood that if we were not righteous, there would be blood. Leavenworth had some of the worst inmates in the world. But, they were older inmates. They knew how to do time. They were not filled w/ testosterone like 20 something inmates. I knew guys who worked @ the Federal Prison in El Reno, Ok. 18-24 punks w/ hormones and huge chips. Entirely different dynamic.
Nick – mine were all young. But you have the Aryan Brotherhood, the Mexican Mafia, the Muslims, Bloods, Crips, etc. each has their territory marked out in the yard. Did the guards mark it out, not where we were. Cannot speak to Leavenworth maybe they do not have these issues.
Darryl Gates made the LAPD one of the most anti citizen police force in this nation. The philosophy has carried over to subsequent chiefs. They may be more anti citizen than Chicago Police, which I thought impossible.
The other side of the story (the one that the media, and Chief Beck, aren’t going to report). Yes, the officers are sabotaging the recording media. However, they are not doing so to be able to abuse citizens (at least, not most of them). In fact, citizen/police interactions aren’t entering their heads in most cases. What the officers are doing is preventing their superiors from using the cameras to carefully monitor the officers in order to find any infractions (in fact, generally minor ones) that can be used to ‘mark’ officers to prevent them from gaining promotions. Favored officers (politically connected ones) don’t have this happen, of course.
Yes, this is wrong on a lot of levels. However, consider whether you, personally, would want a supervisor monitoring your every action, not in order to make sure you’re following the law but in order to make sure you wouldn’t be a threat to him?
Which is the hidden reason why Chief Beck is blocking the investigation. Finding out that the videos that have been carefully preserved are the ones that show case minor infractions, where videos detailing actual abuse that is in line with unofficial policies are somehow being lost would be worse.
Just to add to their problems, this article from the NYT
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/10/us/report-finds-a-los-angeles-in-decline.html?partner=rss&emc=rss
Paul,
In her paper, she pointed out that Zimbardo had a 1:1 ratio of “guards” to “prisoners.” In the real world, as she pointed out in her paper, the ratio is skewed. For example, at times she was the only CO in an open pod of 85 inmates. She observed at the end of her paper that the “John Wayne” guard would not have lasted out the night shift in that setting, because somebody would have killed him. As it was, she came home from work one morning to tell me they had a hostage situation the night before, where a guard had been held hostage by an inmate who held a shank to his throat. She had been telling me about this guy, and predicted it was going to happen because he treated the inmates like crap. He was rescued with no one getting hurt. Mercifully, he turned in his resignation the next day.
The instructive thing about Zimbardo’s social psychology experiment is similar to what Stanley Milgram learned in his experiments. If leadership encourages authoritarianism, it is going to happen. And of course, being a patrol officer is a different setting than a lockup.
Charlton – your daughter is right. A smile and a sense of humor goes a long way to getting through the night successfully. I was 1:50 with no back up once I was outside the pod. In the pod I just had communication with floaters. I was in with the prisoners one time when the electricity went out. Never been so scared in my life.
The problem with both the experiments is that they are artificially induced. They don’t re-enact reality. It is my personal opinion that neither has validity outside of the confines of the experiment. Oh yes, they are an excuse to write a paper or a book, make a film, but they are valueless.
When I took my Psychology 101 class we were required to participate in three experiments. Of course you were at the mercy of what was available for times you were available. Some experiments filled up very fast. One I ended up in had us looking at pictures of naked women and deciding whether we thought the pictures were erotic or not. I have no idea why they were running the experiment or what they intended to do with the information, but I do know the school had been running the same experiment for over 10 years when I participated. Personally, I think someone was desperate to publish something.
The police department needs a thorough cleaning from top to bottom. The officers and superiors who allowed this destruction to occur, should share the full cost of the repairs and then fire them.
Last night, my daughter asked me to watch a video about the Stanford Experiment. I was already familiar with it, and have met Dr. Zimbardo. I watched it with her, and she made notes as the BBC documentary played. This was an extra credit exercise for her psychology class.
As I watched it with her, I kept thinking about some of the stories we have seen about agencies run amok. She had to write a paper and submit it for extra credit in her psychology class. It took her all of ten minutes to write a three page paper and submit it. In fact, at the end of three pages, she said she was dialing it back, because it was going to end up as long as a book. She wrote that, as a correctional officer at two different jails, she “knew” every single person in that film on one level or another, and pointed out what was wrong.
She thinks, and I agree, that the fish rots from the head down. That is part of what Dr. Zimbardo learned with the study. As Zimbardo discovered, he allowed himself to be sucked into the authoritarian culture, and points out that even he needed outside oversight. Agencies who resist outside oversight are making a major mistake.
Charlton – as a former correctional officer (in a different life), I can state that correctional institutions are actually run by the inmates, rather than the guards or correctional administration. The problem with the Stanford Experiment is that it does not take this into account. They are in an artificial construct. It has no relationship to the reality of either a prison or a jail As a correctional officer, your daughter can confirm what I have said. The longer the stay for the prisoner, the more they are plugged into the prison hierarchy. I personally did not agree with the person who was heading up my institution, but the State of Arizona seemed to think he was doing a bang-up job. My job was to follow my orders as best as possible and make sure no one got hurt, if possible. I accomplished both those tasks.
LAPD was under long term oversight by the DOJ. The DOJ backed away in part due to the self-imposed surveillance of the audio and dash-cams.
This is why police shootings of civilians are way up and civilian shootings of police are way down. Police to NOT want civilian oversight.
Ah yes, “THE ANOINTED ONES.” Don’t you peons understand that your sole purpose is to serve Big Brother and not question anything he does?
Until police officers are actually punished and or prosecuted for committing crimes then this type of activity will never stop. Why should it? There are times where the only thing separating criminals and police is a shiny badge.
Veronica, They think they are immune from the law because they are. They damage public property and there isn’t even an investigation. Now, if you want a real downer, consider why they would damage their vehicles and what they are doing to citizens. Complaints from citizens usually end up validating the bad conduct as ok, if they are even investigated.
Half the cars? That’s a lot. At least make the officers pay to fix the damage. Maybe put an extra video cam inside the car to watch and listen to everything inside the vehicle for those who have damaged vehicles.
what does this say about the police involved – they obviously know they ARE using unlawful speech/actions, or they would not have interfered with the antennas – why do they think THEY are immune to the law ? These reports just validate the growing public disgust with law enforcement in general !!
This occurred in the areas where the police have the most citizen complaints against officers. And they just got out from under a federal monitor because they supposedly had these cameras in place. Hopefully, the federal court will step back in.
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