By Gregory Korte
The Cincinnati Enquirer

Dashboard-mounted video cameras in Cincinnati police cruisers often break down or aren't turned on by officers, frustrating investigators in police misconduct cases.

Those concerns are raised in dozens of cases investigated by the Citizen Complaint Authority and reviewed by the court-appointed monitor overseeing the Cincinnati Police Department.

Board members of the seven-member citizen watchdog panel say they're seeing too many complaints that pit the word of an officer against the word of a suspect. Too often, board members said, there's no videotape to corroborate either version, leading them to find insufficient evidence of police misconduct.

Some of the video cameras, called "mobile video recorders" or MVRs, are 7 years old. With cruisers driven around the clock, it's not uncommon for the cameras to fail during critical incidents, police said.

The department is starting a pilot program that will put new, digital recorders in 62 police cruisers, at a cost of $353,000. They are more reliable, use less power and have almost unlimited storage space - reducing worries that leaving the cameras on will drain the cruiser's battery or cause them to run out of videotape.

But equipping every cruiser with similar technology would cost $1.5 million - money the department doesn't have.

John Eby, vice chairman of the Citizen Complaint Authority and an electrical engineer, said the new equipment will help.

With fewer wires and no moving parts, the devices should be more reliable. And because video heads don't have to get up to speed, the recording is instantaneous with digital cameras. The CCA is likely to recommend in its soon-to-be-released annual report that the police department track technical failures in order to get a better handle on how widespread the problem is.

But that's only part of the problem, Eby said. Too many situations leave it to the discretion of the officer whether to turn on the camera, he said.

"Most of the MVR problems stem from the police not turning the thing on," he said.

Video cameras have also been a significant concern of Saul Green, the former federal prosecutor in Detroit appointed by a federal court to monitor the Cincinnati Police Department.

Six of the 27 disciplinary files reviewed by the monitor in his Jan. 15 report involved some failure to use the MVRs properly - most often because officers failed to turn on their microphones.

CCA case files and the quarterly monitor's reports are littered with examples of malfunctioning or improperly used video equipment:

• A Cincinnati police officer transporting a mouthy prisoner last April did what he was supposed to do - he turned around the dashboard-mounted camera to tape what was going on in the back seat. But when the prisoner used a racial epithet on the prisoner sitting next to him, Officer Mark Yontz turned off the camera, reached into the back seat and punched the prisoner, CCA investigators said.

Yontz's union representative said he was simply trying to separate the two passengers, and he denied punching anyone. City Manager Valerie Lemmie is awaiting the results of a related internal police investigation before deciding disciplinary action.

• Officers chasing a paroled murderer in Madisonville a year ago cornered him on a dead-end street. The cruiser tape inexplicably cut off - and investigators were unable to determine whether the camera malfunctioned or was intentionally turned off. The suspect, Thomas Jones, later complained that he was tackled, kicked and punched by the officers and denied medical treatment.

Without a tape, the oversight panel could not sustain the allegations. But the lack of a tape also led a grand jury to clear the suspect of charges of resisting arrest.

• And then there's the 96 seconds missing from the video of Nathaniel Jones' fatal struggle with police. When Officer James Pike arrived at the North Avondale White Castle Nov. 30, he turned off his cruiser - automatically deactivating the camera. The situation escalated, and 96 seconds later Pike turned the camera back on by a remote control button on his belt.

Police Chief Tom Streicher said Pike did exactly what he was expected to do. But the missing part of the tape became a rallying cry for police critics. In the days following, new graffiti popped up in some parts of town. It said, "96 seconds."

The Rev. Jesse Jackson, writing in the Chicago Sun-Times, demonstrated just how skeptical many police critics are when the cameras aren't on.

"Police claim that the camera was turned off because they were certain that everything was under control and turned it on again when it went out of control," Jackson wrote. "Given Cincinnati's history, it would take a heroic act of faith for the African-American community to believe that."

A lawyer representing the Jones family said he still doesn't buy the official explanation of the missing 96 seconds. But he said new policies alone won't fix the problem.

"The State Highway Patrol seems to have no problem with their microphones working or their videotapes working," said lawyer Kenneth L. Lawson, who also represented the plaintiffs in a class-action lawsuit alleging racial profiling by the Police Department.

Police officials say they're working on improving the system - but worry that some might have unrealistic expectations that the cameras will resolve every dispute.

"I see what the CCA is saying," said S. Greg Baker, the city's executive manager of police relations. "We'd like to capture everything on tape, and that way everything is clearly understood. We'd love to have the whole Jones incident - what happened off screen and even below the camera.

"You'd like to capture everything you can, but that would entail a film crew following an officer around for each eight-hour shift," he said.

Still, police watchdogs said there are things the department can do to make the existing equipment more effective.

After more than a year reviewing complaints against police, the Citizen Complaint Authority is set to release its first policy recommendations to the city manager.

Draft recommendations would make the use of the cameras mandatory when transporting violent prisoners and searching vehicles.

Under policies mandated by the U.S. Justice Department in 2002, cameras are required in those situations only "to the extent practical."

The post-arrest handling of prisoners has emerged as an especially thorny issue.

The monitor and the authority said they've found many cases in which suspects said they were sprayed with chemical irritant and then denied the opportunity to wash their faces.

Few of those incidents were captured on tape.

But beyond the equipment and procedural changes, police critics said there's another factor at work: the very culture of the police department.

Not long ago, some police officers starting a shift jockeyed for cruisers with missing or broken cameras, which they called "Indict-a-Cams."

But police said that's changed as more cruisers were equipped with the cameras and some officers found they could use the technology to their advantage - using the tapes as evidence against criminals and to exonerate themselves from frivolous complaints.

Indeed, Keith Fangman, a District 1 officer who is vice president of the Fraternal Order of Police, has quickly developed a reputation - even among his fiercest critics - as the "King of the MVR."

Fangman has twice used his cruiser camera to disprove allegations of improper conduct. In one case, a woman was charged and convicted of filing a false police report after she accused Fangman of screaming profanities at her.

"The police critics who originally pushed for the MVRs did so in the hopes that they would catch officers doing something wrong," Fangman said. "I have stated from day one that if officers conduct themselves professionally, and by the book, they should have nothing to fear from the MVRs."

Fangman said he worries that the cameras often record incidents out of context, and that people with limited knowledge of police procedures will look at the tape of the Jones incident and draw the wrong conclusions. But he said the benefits of the cameras still far outweigh the pitfalls.

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E-mail gkorte@enquirer.com