Los Angeles Police Chief William J. Bratton has endorsed an ambitious plan to place video cameras in police cars, a costly idea that might help the department emerge from its five-year monitoring by the federal government.
Bratton said in an interview that he was already selling the idea -- and its $25-million price tag -- to city officials not just as a reform in police procedures but as a cost-savings tool.
"Is the city going to spend money to save money? That is how I envision it," he said. "Because you will save all this money on liability lawsuits."
Bratton's support is the latest sign that the camera proposal is picking up steam in many quarters, more than a decade after the Christopher Commission first recommended that the Los Angeles Police Department put cameras in cars in the wake of the Rodney G. King beating.
While police officials in the past were wary, the police union now supports the idea, as do community activists and some city leaders.
The idea came back to the forefront last week when the federal monitor overseeing department reforms in the wake of the Rampart corruption scandal said the LAPD must do more to show that it is not biased toward minority groups. He said one way to do that would be to install video cameras in cars so there would be a record of interactions between officers and the public.
Departments around the country have been using cameras in cars for years, but the LAPD -- despite numerous scandals involving officer misconduct -- has yet to make widespread use of them.
Bratton said he has already asked Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa for funds to start a pilot program. He said such a program would allow the city to iron out kinks in the video equipment before ultimately putting cameras in all 1,200 patrol cars.
It remains unclear whether the City Council shares Bratton's enthusiasm. Bratton battled with the council for years over funds to hire 320 officers, a move he said was crucial to the department. Though some of those hires have now been made, voters earlier this year rejected a ballot measure that would have raised taxes to pay for more police services.
Still, Councilman Jack Weiss, head of the council's Public Safety Committee, said his colleagues may be swayed by federal monitor Michael Cherkasky's urging that the LAPD install cameras as a means to ensure compliance with the consent decree. The decree, which requires the LAPD to complete a number of reforms begun after officers in the Rampart Division framed suspects and committed other crimes, is supposed to end in June. But Cherkasky says that the reforms are not likely to be completed by then and that the consent decree is likely to be extended.
