ANXIOUS POLICE ARMED WITH TAPE RECORDERS.

Byline: David Ogul Riverside Press-Enterprise

Officer Greg Preece had seen it happen to his buddies. An irate resident would march down to the police station and accuse a cop of being rude. The cop, even if cleared by an investigation, would be marked as a troublemaker.

Preece found his protection in a tape recorder. A Panasonic micro-cassette smaller than a pack of cigarettes. Tucked into a shirt pocket next to the pens he uses to write up police reports, the recorder's tapes are the final arbiter in situations where it's his word against someone else's.

"People lie," said Preece, a 35-year-old Riverside patrolman. "This is for protection."

In an era of what police see as growing public scrutiny - with their every move being watched or videotaped - it's a tool that an increasing number of police officers are turning to.

"Our deputies are encouraged to carry them," said Investigator Mark Lohman, a Riverside County Sheriff's Department spokesman. "It protects us as well as the citizen."

A lot of deputies are taking that encouragement seriously. Lohman estimates that roughly one-third of the 1,200 sworn officers in the department carry the recorders.

"It's a trend that's been going on for the past two years or so," said Detective Eric Spidle, a sheriff's internal affairs investigator.

It's the same sort of trend that has led some police agencies to equip their patrol cars with video cameras to record contacts between police and the public. But court rulings on how long videotapes must be stored and how they can be used, in addition to the cost of installing them in police cruisers, has caused a number of Riverside County agencies, including the Riverside Police Department and Riverside County Sheriff's Department, to decide not to use them.

Tape recorders are a different story.

They're inexpensive. They're easy to use. And they fit into a shirt pocket.

Although a handful of Southern California police agencies require officers to carry the recorders, including the Orange County cities of Brea and Laguna Beach, police officers in Riverside County are not required to carry the devices.

"It's encouraged, though," said Riverside police Sgt. Jay Theuer. "And it's encouraged because, when we get complaints about an officer's conduct, this is a way of getting at the truth."

It's left to officers' own discretion whether or not to use the recorders, but it seems that more and more are choosing to.

"Especially nowadays with the Rodney King things and all the charges of racism and brutality and excess force. That's just one more thing to help the officer . . . one more tool to help preserve the integrity of police officers," said Banning police Sgt. Marshall Palmer.

Few officers run the recorder continuously. Preece says he only turns the recorder on when a situation becomes tense.

Riverside Police Chief Ken Fortier said there have been many cases where police have been cleared after authorities listened to a recording of the incident. The most recent incident occurred in the past two weeks.

"The officer had a tape, pulled it out and was able to show that the complainant was a heckuva lot ruder and just plain out of control," Fortier said.

Police are not required to tell those they encounter that they are being taped. As long as the police contact is in a public area, like a city street, there is no reasonable expectation of privacy, police say.