Seattle Arrest Questions Cops ' Use Of Dash Cams

[MJS]

http://news.yahoo.com/seattle-arrest-questions-cops-dash-cams-194643944--abc-news.html

Two friends who had planned to visit a Seattle sports bar claim they ended up being kicked, arrested at gunpoint and held in jail for several hours by a cop who said he intended to "make stuff up."Part of the arrest of Josh Lawson, 23, and Christopher Franklin, 22, on Nov. 16, 2010 is caught on tape by the officer's dashboard camera.
But key moments of the arrest that should have been captured on video are missing and it was unclear whether the officer intentionally neglected to turn on the dash cam. None of the released footage shows the officer in the moments he made the stop or kicked Lawson.
The accusations against Richardson are among many that have put a spotlight on the Seattle Police Department and it comes after the release of a Department of Justice report in December that said "serious concerns about practices that could have a disparate impact on minority communities" were raised by its review.
The recording of the arrest was released after ABC News affiliate KOMO began an investigation into missing police dashboard camera videos.
The recording of the arrest of Lawson and Franklin -- who were picked up for allegedly assaulting and robbing a man a short time earlier -- shows the suspects being helped from the ground and into the patrol car of Officer Brad Richardson.
The officer's uniform microphone also records Richardson telling the suspects, "Yeah, I'm going to make stuff up."
The Seattle Police Department called Richardson's comment "banter" and the officer was exonerated of any wrongdoing after a use of force review was conducted, along with an investigation by the Seattle Police Department's Office of Professional Accountability.
"Clearly if the officer had made stuff up he would have been in hot water," Sgt. Sean Whitcomb of the Seattle Police Department told ABCNews.com.

 

[Big Don]

Wouldn't an easy partial fix, be a sensor that turns the camera on when the lights and/or siren is on and when weight (people) are in the back seat?

 

[ballen0351]

Wouldn't an easy partial fix, be a sensor that turns the camera on when the lights and/or siren is on and when weight (people) are in the back seat?

Our do come on automatically with the lights but we can then trun them off manually. For instance if your sitting at a traffic detail for a few hours with your lights on you wouldn't want to record all that.

 

[RandomPhantom700]

Wouldn't an easy partial fix, be a sensor that turns the camera on when the lights and/or siren is on and when weight (people) are in the back seat?

The back seat thing is a good idea, but cops could easily shut off their lights/sirens during parts of the traffic stop that they don't want recorded. Maybe if the camera was set to stay active for x number of minutes after the lights/sirens are activated. I know plenty of dash cams are already set to automatically turn on either due to motion or some other trigger in the car, but that'd depend on which law enforcement agency you're talking about.