LAPD upgrades car cameras to increase transparency in police interactions, chief says

The Los Angeles Police Department is updating the cameras in its patrol cars to capture wider angles with higher resolution and allow for video to upload from the field to a station, in hopes of increasing transparency in police interactions, Chief Michel Moore announced.

The LAPD partnered with Axon, a private company based in Scottsdale, Ariz., to install the new Axon Fleet 3 in-car camera system, which will be rolled out on all vehicles over the course of a year, Moore said.

“We recognize [our current systems] are based on technologies that sometimes are more than a decade old or more,” Moore said at a news conference Thursday. “We know that when that happens with technology you are falling behind … Technology is constantly improving.”

The cameras will also record high-quality video within the squad cars, according to the LAPD, and feature “knee-to-head” video in the passenger area and “enhanced night view capabilities.”

The new Axon Fleet 3 will also allow LAPD officers to use their body cameras as a microphone, meaning they no longer have to carry separate microphones, which could become dislodged during interactions with civilians.

In addition to the new cameras on the LAPD’s fleet, Moore announced the installation of new cloud-based routers from the Boise, Idaho-based company Cradlepoint that are being installed in the back of the LAPD’s black-and-whites.

The Cradlepoint NetCloud Manager routers will quickly transport data from the squad car back to LAPD stations so watch commanders can see things like body-worn-camera video and video from the car’s new cameras instead of the information being stored within the car.

Moore called the updates to LAPD’s technology the “next step” to “modernize” the department.