EUGENE [Oregon]- Mechanics working for the Eugene Police Department found themselves repairing video cameras on patrol cars over and over again - and believed the officers were sabotaging the equipment to avoid oversight of their work, internal e-mails show.
The e-mail and other internal documents indicate that several city employees most familiar with the video systems assumed that the $90,000 program to put a camera in about two dozen cars failed, at least in part, because of tampering by officers.
Officer Jeff Roth, who made multiple efforts to jump start the patrol camera program, wrote in a January 2000 memo to his superiors that they shouldn't force the patrol officers to use them.
"Ordering the use of the system I think would be fruitless and cause much of what has already been occurring," he wrote, referring to disconnected and damaged video cameras on the cars.
Department administrators place the blame on the SpectraTek camera systems, saying they never worked properly from the time they were installed five years ago. The manufacturer said no one had complained or exercised the warranty.
Police officials say they can't believe officers would intentionally damage their equipment, but they can't rule it out either, because they don't know or can't remember whether anyone ever investigated the reports of tampering.
So was it a human or technological failure?
"It could have been both," Acting Police Chief Thad Buchanan said in a recent interview. He said he didn't know of any investigation having been carried out or currently underway into the tampering allegaions.
Within about 1 1/2 years of the cameras' installation in 1997, technicians in the fleet services division detected what they considered a suspicious pattern of breakage, documents and interviews indicated.
Over a three-year period, technicians found that a dozen cables, wires or computer-style connectors were either broken or disabled. During that period, they found a system's wiring pulled out of the monitor in the passenger compartment and also cut near the VCR in the trunk, documents show.
Three times, the video antennas from the top of the patrol cars went missing, repair records show.
Later e-mails assumed that officers intentionally broke or disabled the camera systems.
In 1999, fleet services manager George Jessie lamented the problem, writing that he didn't know why officers seemed to damage the cameras.
"Not sure why officers do not utilize the equipment and in fact seem to cause damage to the equipment," he wrote.
As distressing as the possibility of sabotage may seem, it wouldn't be the first time a law enforcement agency resisted technology by disabling it.
The Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department uncovered instances of apparent sabotage to wiring after launching an in-car video program a decade ago, according to an audit by the Los Angeles Police Department Office of Operations.
(Copyright 2002 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
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