Truth, good or bad, is all in what's recorded.

Byline: Diane Dietz The Register-Guard

POLICE - LIKE PEOPLE in most other professions - have gotten a lot of new technological gadgets in the past decade.

High-tech electronics such as in-car laptops and video cameras and nonlethal weaponry such as bean bags and pepper spray are changing the way police operate.

But is it all for the better?

The standard-setting International Association of Chiefs of Police is trying to answer that question with a series of studies on police technology, including a broad 18-month examination of in-car video cameras that began in July.

"Everything coming down the pike isn't necessarily what you need to be better at policing. We said, `Let's take a real hard look,' ' said John Firman, the association's research director. "This is the first initiative to aggressively address the issue of cameras. We're at the starting point."

Researchers will study how agencies handle the cameras and the evidentiary tapes they produce, he said. They'll interview judges, prosecutors, officers and citizens. Finally, they'll make an overall assessment of the technology's value.

A decade's worth of anecdotes from across the county, meanwhile, suggest that in-car cameras are, on balance, useful law enforcement tools, Firman said.

The videotapes they produce can be an effective defense for officers facing charges of racial bias or brutality associated with a traffic stop.

The in-car systems can take in the entire sequence of events, recording not only what the officer and the suspect said, but their demeanor and tone.

That saved Eugene policeman Greg Harvey from grief on at least three occasions in the early 1990s when he was driving the department's camera-equipped DUII car.

In one of those cases, a man who was unhappy about a speeding ticket complained that Harvey had abused him verbally and stolen his insurance card.

Harvey and his supervisor looked at the tape.

"You could hear me handing him back his insurance," Harvey said. "You could listen to me the whole time and no abusive words were used the whole time. It was like, OK, case closed.

"It's no longer his word against mine or her word against mine. It's let's go watch the tape and see whose word we're going to take. It was extremely powerful."

In-car cameras can wipe away lingering suspicions in an unfounded brutality case, said Bill Fagan, executive vice president of the Kansas-based Kustom Signals, which produces half of all police car video cameras sold nationally.

"A lot of time those investigations are never totally clear cut," he said. "It's he said/she said, this opinion vs. that opinion. There's a certain amount of gray area that might stick with an officer even if they're exonerated. With the camera, it's black or white; there's no gray area."

Eugene police officer Randy Smith said he'd be glad to have a video record of his arrests - and especially the rough ones.

"If I got in a wrestling match in front of my car, I'd like it to be on tape because it will show why," he said. "It will show what happened. It will show I didn't hit the guy 10 times."

Further, when the camera is rolling suspects know it and that makes officers a little safer, said Marino Underwood, who recently retired after 27 years on the Eugene police force. "The advantages of having it outweigh the negatives."

Catching misconduct

On the other hand, the cameras occasionally produce evidence that incriminates an officer.

In recent years, a handful of police beatings have been captured on videotape and eventually turned up on the national news.

In July, for instance, a Georgia sheriff's deputy in a patrol car pursued a man who was running across a field, struck him and broke both of his legs, according to news accounts.

Police initially reported that the deputy's car struck the suspect after skidding 47 feet on wet grass, and closed the case.

Then someone sent a videotape of the incident - recorded by the deputy's own in-car camera - to the Fox News program ``The O'Reilly Factor,'' which promptly aired the tape.

The tape showed the deputy's car making sharp turns to follow the suspect, the suspect then disappearing under the patrol car hood and finally the deputy jumping on the suspect, punching downward repeatedly.

Cameras provide an objective account, said Jim Horton, a retired Eugene police captain who helped start the agency's earliest in-car camera program.

"This way it's all above board, it's all out there - whether it's good or bad," he said. "If it's bad, we stand tall and take our lumps and learn from it for the next time. If it's good, everybody benefits from that, too."

Catching drunken drivers

The other major use for in-car video cameras is collecting evidence in drunken driving cases.

Mothers Against Drunk Driving - the chief organization fighting the crime - is an enthusiastic backer of the technology, and members across the country have bought units for police agencies, sometimes as a memorial to a loved one killed by a drunken driver.

Sandy Nelson, Oregon chapter vice chairwoman, said she'd buy a camera for every Oregon officer who writes drunken driving citations if she could.

"They allow for good, clean reported arrests," she said. "They provide for fairness for the defendant and for the officer. It's kind of an even playing field. It's fair for everyone."

Oregon State Police have used cameras for traffic stops for a decade, and today 43 percent of the agency's patrol cars are equipped. Officers in the Springfield detachment make aggressive use of in-car video cameras for drunken driving enforcement.

"It gives the police a record of what actually went on at the arrest scene," said Bill Rice, president of the Lane County Mothers Against Drunk Driving.

"Normally when the drunk comes to court he has a suit and tie on, and he looks like he's a perfect honest citizen. But if you look at 2 a.m. when he was arrested and when he's falling down and cussing out the police, it makes the case a lot easier."

Tapes from in-car cameras can show a car weaving across a lane as it travels ahead of a police car. They show drunken drivers leaning on the car for steadiness while they talk with the police officer. They show goofs and stumbles as a suspect takes the field sobriety test, which involves walking heel-to-toe and counting backwards.

The evidence is so convincing in some cases defense attorneys advise clients to accept a plea bargain, Lane County Deputy District Attorney Erik Hasselman said.

"Their lawyers look at (the tape) and say a jury is not going to believe you when you say the police officer is lying because they're going to see you on tape," he said.

From the judge's perspective, the ability to watch arrests as they unfold, to hear the statements as they were made and to measure the timing of actions is a substantial help, said Judge Darryl Larson of the Lane County Circuit Court.

More accurate record

But, again, the evidence cuts both ways. If a driver is too impaired to drive legally but isn't falling down drunk, the impairment is sometimes hard to see on video.

Police officers can measure the level of drunkenness through subtler clues, such as observing how a suspect's eyes follow a pen light. But the movements are tiny and aren't visible on the tape.

Some juries aren't interested in the nuances of officer observations. For them, seeing is believing. If defendants don't look sloppy drunk on the tape, jurors may surmise that they probably aren't drunk - so they vote to acquit.

On occasion, prosecutors have decided not to press charges based on how good a suspect looked on a police videotape, Hasselman said.

"We knew that that was going to be too high a hurdle to convince a jury beyond a reasonable doubt that the person had been impaired by alcohol at the time they were driving," he said.

Further, drunken driving arrests require officers to perform a set of delicately timed and carefully ordered legal procedures. The tape record gives defense attorneys the ability to challenge details of the officer's performance.

Defense attorneys who specialize in drunken driving cases suspect the real reason that some agencies such as Eugene police aren't using in-car cameras routinely is that the tapes don't necessarily contribute to a conviction, but rather exonerate defendants a fair percentage of the time.

"They're not working for them," defense attorney Bob Larson said.

From the defense perspective, the more officers rolling videotapes the better, say top attorneys who handle local drunken driving cases. It just makes a more accurate record, they say.

But Oregon State Police Trooper Jim Hawkins - who uses videotapes in drunken driving arrests more than any other officer in Lane County - says videotapes on the whole are more helpful to the prosecution than not.

"It depends on the jury," Hawkins said. "Some juries will hang their hat on the blood alcohol level - or the lack thereof if a person refuses to take a breath test.

"Other juries will pay close attention to the field sobriety test. Others will just listen to the way a person talks and carries themselves (on tape) and decide.

"You have to cover the whole because you never know with a jury what's going to be important to them."

CAPTION(S):

"This way it's all above board, it's all out there - whether it's good or bad. If it's bad, we stand tall and take our lumps and learn from it for the next time. If it's good, everybody benefits from that, too." JIM HORTON retired Eugene police captain