Friday, March 16, 2007

CAMERAS AND THE BIS

Cameras in the squad car is moving from pilot program to city wide implementation. The pilot program,at the present time, has 30 cameras installed in various cars in the 5th and 16th districts and also the traffic unit. At yesterdays recruit graduation ceremony the department announced the intended installation of an additional 280 cameras city wide. In a Fox32 News story there is concern that a citizen may blurt out a statement before his rights are read to him. Admissible!
The goal of the department is to have every car in the fleet camera equipped. Officers will have to be cognizant of the camera and the microphone that will be in their cars. The concern is not so much how they treat the citizen on a traffic stop but their private conversation inadvertently being recorded. We all have heard conversations on the "open mike"..."units watch your radios we have an open mike on the zone".
The best quote we saw was from the Mayor
Sun-Times
"A lot of police officers do a tremendous job and they get C.R. numbers [complaints registered]. The complainant never shows up, so it's unfounded. You say, 'Gee, he had 25 unfounded C.R. numbers. What's wrong with him?' There's nothing wrong with him. If we had this [camera system], we'll prove it," Daley said.

Amazingly the Mayor seems to be enlightened. So why the hell is the department counting "unfounded" cr #'s in determining placement in the BIS? Please Mr. Mayor shed some light on the Superintendent in this matter.

2 comments:

Schicklegroover said...

SCS-Nice job catching out daley on that hypocrisy! Hasn't he used up sides of mouths to speak outta'?

Anonymous said...

I read this article, my reaction was the same as yours, the mayor has given all BIS enrolled officers somthing to throw at the panel during thier hearing.

Apparentely the mayor does not agree with the BIS.

Charlie Williams must be smarter than the mayor.
or at least he thinks he is.

Please keep in mind that this is an open blog
that can and is read by people other than Chicago Police Officers.