The Los Angeles Police Department has added equipment and was set to begin recording helicopter footage of large-scale events Tuesday — just in time for Election Day and its aftermath, when protests and political unrest were anticipated by many.
LAPD Assistant Chief Horace Frank, assistant commander of the department's Information and Technology Bureau, said of a pair of recording devices that can capture and store live feeds from some of the department's helicopters have been tested and were ready to go.
In a letter to the Los Angeles Police Commission, LAPD commanders said the department needed the equipment so it could for the first time record its helicopters’ live feeds and preserve the footage.
The recording equipment — including two massive hard drives to store the footage — was valued at $2,150 and was provided to the department by the Los Angeles Police Foundation, a nonprofit that over the years has gifted LAPD with millions of dollars in new technology.
The Police Commission signed off on the donation in a unanimous Oct. 27 vote. In that meeting, Deputy Chief Peter Zarcone told commissioners some in LAPD’s helicopter fleet are equipped with cameras that send live feeds back to department computers so commanders on the ground can see what’s happening.
He said that with the donation, 10 LAPD helicopters — more than half of its fleet — could be outfitted with the ability to record footage.
The helicopter live feeds were used in “the recent riots or a Dodger or Laker celebration, or what have you,” Zarcone said.
“So when I hear them two or three times a day going above,” Commissioner Dale Bonner asked about LAPD’s helicopters that regularly buzz around the city, “how do I know that somebody’s not just sending images of my yard, not just capturing images?”
Zarcone said the helicopters do not turn on their live feeds for regular patrols. During an event when a helicopter with a live camera is requested, officials start recording only after approval from a captain supervising the response.
Frank said LAPD would approve turning on the cameras and recording an event only if there’s “an escalation of criminal activity.”
He pointed to the widespread protests in May and June, when burglary crews took advantage of the chaos and smashed into nearby stores.
“When we had looting going on at the Grove, that would’ve been a perfect use of this,” Frank said. “At the time, we didn’t have the equipment to record everything that was going on.”
Frank said the footage could be used to investigate crimes.
Activists have said for years that they were worried that LAPD and other law enforcement agencies would use footage from drones and helicopters to spy on them and criminalize legitimate protests. Though for years they stymied efforts by the department to get drones mounted with cameras, the Police Commission approved LAPD’s drones last year.
LAPD and other law enforcement agencies around the region already use similar footage — from surveillance cameras, social media, and broadcast-news video — to track down and arrest suspected looters they said descended on areas where protests were happening.
In Long Beach, the Police Department is part of a regional task force that has made 34 such arrests.
Zarcone said the helicopter footage — like video from officers’ body-worn and and in-car cameras — would be kept indefinitely.
Frank noted that the footage could also be used in ongoing LAPD reviews of tactics deployed by its officers during any protest.
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