How to Surveil the Police (with William Gude)

22:13That's there and it's being done on our public sidewalks using our public infrastructure. I have a little bit of a problem with that.

22:20William Gude:Yeah. So we did some reporting where basically like when there have been instances of people messing with these robots, the company can give that footage to the police. There's nothing stopping them from giving footage of some crime or anything that they sort of incidentally film to the police. The police could subpoena it. And I think it's a similar problem with Waymo, which are also all over L.A. It's like these are cameras on wheels that are filming at all times. they're being retained and they're not specifically for police use, but they are surveilling at all times and cops either know or they're going to find out that it's not a secret that they can go get this footage from these companies.

23:03William Gude:These are technologies that I don't know, theoretically a driverless car. I drive around LA, people are horrible drivers. Like some, sometimes these Waymo's I'm like, Oh, you're driving quite safely. But then there's been multiple instances where either Waymo has called the cops on its passengers or where cops have taken footage from Waymo where the Waymo just happened to film some other sort of like potential crime. And so then I started thinking like, well, is this just an extension of the surveillance state? At the end of the day, if they can get a subpoena for it, that makes me uncomfortable.

23:37But a lot of times I'm thinking they won't need to get a subpoena for it. They can just go to the company and the company will gladly deliver it to the police department because of course they want to be in good standing with them because they want to get more approvals and expand what they're doing. It makes me uncomfortable. Again, we can't think about what they're doing today. We have to think about where this is going to lead. And like when we talk about these, you know, the police robot dogs, the quadruped spider, whatever you want to call it. In theory, it sounds like, oh yeah, it's just going to get a picture of the person that's over there, how long before they have a gun attached to it?

24:14Like it's going to end up there eventually. So you have to think about where does it go with Waymos? Do we get to the point where, yeah, I mean, do you even need flock anymore? You have the Waymos everywhere. Are they able to retain all the information and track using the information? Is it then given to a third party or directly to the police department? Is it given to like the police foundation gets the information and then is giving it to the police department? There's a lot of questions that makes me uncomfortable.

24:40William Gude:Yeah, let's talk about Flock. I actually learned about this OIG report. For people who don't know, it's Office of the Inspector General. Most government agencies have something like this, where basically it's an oversight board that's quasi-independent. It usually is somewhat independent, depends. It definitely depends on the department, depends on what it is. But as we're recording last week in LA, they came out with an OIG report that I basically found that the automated license plate readers in Los Angeles are being used all the time to pull over innocent people, essentially, because these license plates are ending up on a hot list, which is basically like the alert system that you can put in there.

25:22And basically, like because of data entry errors and all of this sort of thing, innocent people are getting pulled over because the car is suspected as stolen.

25:31William Gude:What did you make of this whole report? I saw you posting about it quite a lot. Yeah, I've been on the other end of these over the last couple of years where they've been these stops. People have been pulled over for these stops and they were innocent. This happened probably maybe a year ago, this last one. You got to understand, OIG even says these are high-risk stops. So that's code word for you get this hit, they go to pull somebody over. They're not just turning on their sirens. Before they even turn on their sirens, they're on the radio saying this is a code 37 stolen car. I need backup, air unit, and a supervisor.

26:06So you're asking for every cop in that area to come flying code three, lights and sirens. You're asking for the helicopter to get there and it's going to be there within seconds to minutes. And the supervisor is coming to scene immediately. Once that happens, they're going to be ordered out of the car. They're going to be told to turn around, walk backwards to them, get down to ground, lay down on the ground, helicopter in the air, circling low. It's crackling. Person that's given the command, you can barely hear what they're saying. So you have this guy who's or woman on the ground laying there and they can't really hear the command.

26:41So they're kind of looking over their shoulder and anything can happen in those situations. Luckily, we haven't had a shooting in one of those situations I remember in recent years. It's inevitably going to happen. And it's happening because of not a human error, but a flock error. Like you said, the OIG report, it's interesting. It's important to understand. The inspector general, yeah, quasi-independent, but not really. Like the mayor appoints a chief, the mayor appoints the police commission, and the police commission appoints the OIG. The police commission is literally part of the LAP. They are the head of the LAPD, and they are putting in place the OIG.

27:23So it's like they're not really independent. Would that have been said? this report was astounding because they were so forthcoming with the problems. And getting that sort of honesty was surprising to me. That tells you that the problem is way worse than we think, right? They had this flock contract. It's been in place for three years. It wasn't even signed by the city attorney. I work in finance. If you don't have contracts signed, It's not executed. But they were operating with this MOU for three years without it. They even submitted to ethics and it has to be resubmitted every three months.

28:01They never did that. But yet they had this contract in place. Nobody was able to get access to this contract until the earliest I was able to find it was February of this year. Secret contract with Flock and when they were trying to get answers on how this data is being shared, they didn't really have answers for it. And that report is the one that says that we're having during a two-month period, three high-risk stops a day because of these flock errors on hit lists.

28:32William Gude:Yeah, I believe it's 116 in a two-month period. 161. 161, yeah. So I want to talk a little bit about how some of those errors may have come to pass because it does say in that OIG report, basically like the LAPD has Motorola, it has Axon, and it has Flock. The Motorola ALPRs and Flock ALPRs are both pole-mounted, so basically with static cameras. And then Axon, they have, I think, 2 ,500 of them or something like this. And they're in every single cruiser, police cruiser that LAPD has. And basically, there's like a data sharing agreement between Axon and Flock where the cops are using Phlox backend to search the Axon ALPRs are going into that backend.

29:15William Gude:And so basically like what's happening in addition to just like clerical errors, like typos, like people in other cities, like putting a stolen car on a hot list, what's happening is either a car is being stolen at some point and then it's either being found or misreported stolen. And then it's supposed to be taken off of this list and it's not because they're combining data from multiple different departments or multiple different technologies at once. And I think this just speaks a little bit to the fact that cops are taking all of these different surveillance systems, like smashing them together and the oversight is a disaster.

29:51Yeah. I mean, listen, on the basic level, the LAPD is going to mess up in their process as is. Then you add in all these other systems, agencies and, you know, providers. I've seen people who were pulled over high-risk stop, guns pulled, helicopter. Their car was stolen. The LAPD found their car. They said, come pick it up from the storage yard. The person had to come to the LAPD station, sign off the paperwork, go to the yard, pick up their car. Two days later, they're getting pulled over. Why? For a stolen car by the LAPD, even though the LAPD was the one that released it. So if they're messing up on that level, now start adding in different systems and different agencies, and it's going to be an absolute mess.

30:39Maybe before you start entering into these sort of agreements, nail your own systems. Make sure that your own records are kept up to par because they're not right now.

30:50William Gude:What do you think, this is a crazy question, but what do you think the biggest problem with the LAPD is right now. Lack of accountability. There's no accountability. In fact, this is getting worse, right? So we have an agency, again, they get 47 % of our budget. If they decide their own policies, right? I'm actually fine with their policies overall, right? I think there are people talk about what policy changes you want to see with LAPD. I don't want to see any. I think there are enough rules in place that kind of cover everything. Like don't beat people, follow the law. It's like simple stuff.

31:23The key thing is accountability. If a cop violates the law, violates policy, are they held accountable? The answer is no. So 4 % of public complaints are sustained, only 4%. And, you know, you can catch a person, I have an instance right down the street, four or five blocks down, there was a guy who was handcuffed, had his legs bound by the cops on the ground, And a cop came over and stepped on his face. This was picked up by multiple cameras. It was on the news. I confronted the LAPD about it. Chief Moore at the time went on TV and said, we can see clearly what happens. This is, you know, this is terrible.

32:05There's gonna be accountability, that stuff. a year i filed complaints over it a year later i get a disposition saying that my complaint was demonstrably false and i wanted an explanation as why they ruled it that way the top civilian at the lapd wrote me and said looking at the body cam video we can see that man when he stepped on his face he didn't actually make contact with his face and that the person on the ground never complained about it, even though it's on video. You can see the guy having his face hit, skin stretch, head jerk around. And then the guy says like 20 seconds later, why'd you step on my face?

32:46They just outright said it didn't happen. Here is video evidence that everybody can see. They said it didn't happen. And that's the end of the story. That's the system we're operating with. And then it's getting worse, right? So you have different classifications. A complaint can be sustained, which guilty, can be unfounded, not guilty. Then you have this middle one. It's called officer could have done differently, which basically means they're guilty, but we're not going to say it. And that way it's not counted in our sustained numbers. And because of that, you will never get access to that discipline file.

33:20And again, it's officer could have done differently, not should. So they're making it sort of optional when they violate the rules. But then the lowest one is demonstrably false. Demonstrably false means that when you, as soon as you reported it, we determined that day that it didn't happen. It's provably incorrect. And we closed out the case that very first day without an investigation. Worse than that, now you are potentially at risk of being prosecuted for a misdemeanor for filing a false complaint against an officer. when you again when you have those demonstrably false they're just they never even get to the internal affairs i can go to police station file a complaint with the sergeant he says demonstrably false right there it's thrown out that's the end of it we used to have four or five of those a year and then it went up to 50 and then 100 2020 i think might have been 10 or 15 last year there were close to a thousand of those so they're just throwing out complaints without without even investigating.

34:20And it's like, it's really kind of messed up. Back in 19, I don't, was it 2004? I think you had the consent decree. And they went to the LAPD and said, you know, you're taking too long to adjudicate these complaints. Why? They said, oh, we're just, we're overloaded. We don't have the manpower. If you want us to adjudicate complaints faster, you got to allow us to throw out complaints at the station level that we deem frivolous. They said, if you allow us to do that, we will adjudicate complaints in four to five months. Well, now they're able to throw them all out and it still takes a year, 18 months before you'll even see a disposition.

34:54So it's complete nonsense. So again, like you said, what's the biggest problem with LAPD? There's no accountability. The cops know it. The chief right now, he has never ruled a shooting out of policy since he's been chief. You know, I see Scovin on the police commission. He's a commissioner, really, the only one worth a damn. I think he's rolled three or four out of policy in the last six months. People listen to the chief, right? He's allowed these cops, and I said this to the commission the other day, he's allowed the police to feel untouchable. And because of that, shootings in LAPD went up 60 % last year.

35:29You look at the surrounding agencies, LASD went down by 40%. Long Beach, they didn't have a single shooting last year. So they've gone down everywhere else, but up at the LAPD because it's the culture of lack of accountability. And this is with fewer public contacts. They're having less contact with the public and shootings are going up. That's an institutional problem.

35:51William Gude:this is a somewhat frivolous example, but for people who kind of don't know what the process looks like, one of my favorite stories that I have done about the LAPD is about two officers who are fired for ignoring an armed robbery to go play Pokemon Go, which happened, I think like Southwest division. Yeah. And it was like maybe four or five years ago at this point. And I really like doing stories that are like ridiculous that kind of like demonstrate the problem to some degree because they get attention and then you can kind of like tell a bigger story through this but basically like these two cops were in a cruiser they got a call on the radio saying like hey there's an armed robbery happening at this mall they listen to it and then they're talking about like oh actually they're they're both playing pokemon go and they're like oh my god like a snorlax just appeared like a few blocks over and they ignore the radio, they go play Pokemon Go, they catch the Snorlax, they're having like a great time, and they get caught doing this somehow.

36:50William Gude:I don't remember exactly how they got caught. But I filed like freedom of information requests for like, the internal investigations, the body camera footage, like all the stuff that was associated with this. And I did get it back. But it took three years, it took a really long time for this very ridiculous thing to kind of wind its way through the system. And I think that when you have like such a big, sprawling city and big, sprawling police department, it's like serious things get swept under the rug. And then like Pokemon Go, it did get investigated. These officers did get fired over this, but it took a very long time for this to happen.

37:28William Gude:And I think that you just like apply it to actual serious problems where police are abusing their power, where they are doing violent things to constituents, things like this, they get swept under the rug. And when they do get investigated, it takes forever. Yeah. I mean, it hits on a number of things. So first off, I believe it happened like during COVID, right? During COVID, first off, the police department didn't take COVID seriously. And at any given time, there'd be like 10%, 15 % of the force would be out on COVID leave. So then they were complaining that we don't have enough officers on the street.

38:02We need more officers. But you see what they're doing while they're on the street. You know, one of the biggest things you'll hear right now, especially from Mithyarama is running for mayor, is that response times are slow. Well, it doesn't help when these guys are playing Pokemon Go back in an alley over here and not responding. And I've seen calls down the street where there was a car crash because a man and a woman were fighting. It was a domestic incident. Fighting in the car, causing the car to crash. They called it in over the radio asking people to respond. And I didn't hear any cops, you know, respond and they kept on asking cops to respond.

38:37Nobody was doing that. And I was watching a cop like literally three blocks away. I was three blocks away when this happened and they're on sitting in the car on their phones. All right. So we're dealing with response times. Maybe if the cops aren't sitting in the parking lots, smoking their vapes or whatever they're doing, hanging out in there doing nothing. And if they were actually doing something, maybe response times would be better. Maybe you wouldn't be asking for more money Because that's always the fix. But then again, you hit on the fact that when there is some sort of incident that happens, how hard is it to get the documentation?

39:09How hard is it to get the CPRA fulfilled? I deal with that all the time. I think that's probably the second biggest issue in LAPD right now, is the fact that you have these public requests, and they're breaking the law and not fulfilling. First off, getting video from the LAPD is nearly impossible. It is impossible without a subpoena. it's just not going to happen. You know, if they happen to film a car accident that was out there, they're not just going to hand it over to your lawyer, your insurance company, you have to get the subpoena. So you're dealing with that. But then when you try to get some sort of information from the LAPD, they put you through all sorts of hoops.

39:46It shouldn't be that way, right? So I deal with CPRAs all the time. I have a number of lawsuits in place right now against the LAPD to get information.

39:54William Gude:CPRA is California Public Records Act, if you didn't know. So basically like California's public records law. Yeah. And it's like, it's different than a FOIA. They're harder to get taken care of. And there aren't many lawyers out there that want to do this type of work. Here's an example. I was looking through a discipline report that came out. It's buried in the LAPD website. They released it by accident like five years ago. I happened to find it. And then I was like, I confronted the police about some of the stuff that was in there and forced them to answer. and it kind of became normalized where they release it into the bowels of their website.

40:30And I'm looking at the discipline report in January. It says two cops had sustained complaints for a number of different things, including being members of a law enforcement gang. So I saw a law enforcement gang. You have gang members in the LAPD? Who are these cops? I need to know who they are because they have some people in jail right now. I'm sure those people that are in jail who are convicted and their lawyers would like to know about this information, not to mention they had sustained complaints for unlawful search, for biased policing. I wanted to know. The law says under SB 1421 that they have a maximum of 45 days to turn that information over.

41:05The only exception is they can extend it another 60 days if there's a criminal investigation. But there are no other exceptions under the law. You have to turn it over in 45 days. They routinely, when I request this information, extend these things for years. Just outright breaking the law. They say, well, we don't have enough staff. That's nonsense. You get half of our budget. You can make if there's three cops sitting at the Hollywood station in the lobby right now watching SportsCenter doing nothing with their feet kicked up. Like, I don't know, send some of those guys over to the CPRA department.

41:37You have like four people over there that handle these. But yet trying they violate the law regularly. And their whole thing is, hey, if you really want it, then sue us. And you'll sue and you'll win. Right. And my lawyers will sue when they win. and they'll get their fees covered, $15 ,000,$20 ,000 for these lawsuits, who's paying for that? The taxpayers are paying for it, not the LAPD. So they don't care. Their whole thing is delay, delay, delay, break the law. There's a law that says that police are not allowed to post pictures of people arrested on social media with their handcuffs on or anything like that because it's prejudicial.

42:12You're not allowed to do that under the law, but the LAPD does it all the time on their social. It's right now on their LAPD Rampart website. There's their Facebook page. They have that all the time. I tell them to take it down, bring it to the commission. Commissioners know it needs to come down. They confront them. The LAPD doesn't do it. They do what they want.

42:30William Gude:We've seen a lot of ICE activity in LA over the last 24 months or so. I know that you have filmed some of that. I'm curious, what did you see in those interactions? What was the dynamic between ICE and the LAPD? What did you make of sort of the experience that you had documenting that? Well, it's funny, right? So from the first operation back in, I think it was probably June 5th or June 6th of last year, I remember they were setting up, it was Border Patrol, FBI and all that. I mean, they were in Chinatown, set up in the parking lot. It was nine o 'clock one night. They must have had 70, 80 personnel out there, armored vehicles, all that stuff.

43:12And I remember I was just, you know, they had some protesters out there. People were pissed off. You're doing this right in the middle of Chinatown. Like, it's kind of really, it's like disrespectful. And there was this one FBI guy, they were getting ready to do a raid. And he was kind of like laughing at the crowd, just mocking me. And I was getting really annoyed. And my thing is, like, I've been, when I see a cop, I just take pictures of them usually, especially during COVID, like when they were required to wear masks during COVID. I would take pictures of them when they didn't have masks because there's just an easy way to mess with them.

43:45But I also wanted their pictures because I wanted to create a database of cops. They track us. I want to track them for when they commit misconduct. I see this guy acting like a jerk. I'm like, you know, this guy's going to eventually do something. I want to know who he is now. So using their own tools or similar tools against them, I took a picture of him. I ran him through the facial recognition database. And I'm like, yeah, is this you right here? You know, with your wife on the beach. having a steak dinner? Is your wife proud of you out here mocking the crowd? And he, look on his face. He just sunk.

44:19And then he went over to his supervisor, started pointing at me, started taking pictures of me like they're going to have me arrested. And I'm telling the lady next to me, I'm like, here, get ready to take my phones, you know, in case they try to arrest me. But it's funny how you were uncomfortable when I was doing a little research into you, the same things that you're walking around doing yourself. You know, you guys are all wearing your masks, trying to hide your face, you know why. And I'll be honest with you, some of the times those masks don't even, you know, you're able to just with the eyes alone a little bit of, you know, especially if they're wearing like a, like a shiesty type mask, you can still figure out who they are.

44:53It's funny how when the tables are turned, you don't like it. So when it came to like ICE stuff, I usually just go out there, try to document the cops, figure out who they are. They act like jerks when they're doing their operations. Like, why can't you just be a professional and just like do your thing. Instead, you have to like rub it into people's faces and agitate the community. It's frustrating. And so therefore, I'm going to do what little I can back. You know, if a mother who works at a fruit stand is taken, she leaves her two kids behind who are eight and 12. Can we gather the resources to get the kids taken care of?

45:26That's the only thing I can do. It's frustrating. Going up against the federal government, it is what it is. But yeah.

45:32William Gude:Do you have like a favorite interaction that you have filmed? Some of them are funny. Some of them are bleak and dire. Sometimes you have this very interesting back and forth with cops because they know you at this point. Yeah, it's funny because a lot of times it's traumatic for me. I'll film something that happens. And trauma to me isn't seeing somebody beaten up. Do I see cops beating up people often? No, it's protests all the time. All the time. But regular policing, it doesn't happen. They don't do it right in front of your face. They see a camera there. Like, we're all different. You know, when camera, when the people are watching, we act differently, right?

46:09Cameras are on us. We're gonna act different. When I'm at home and nobody's watching, I'm dancing with my dog and things like that. So people, you know, cameras change behavior and that's a good thing. But then there's those moments like, you know, seeing guys, I think one guy, he was working late night. He did office cleaning and, and floor waxing, gets off work, gets into his car, he's driving home and some lady just randomly says this guy an hour ago shot at me and he's pulled out of the car and put on the ground and they pull everything out of his car and then they just like it was over to his left and then they uh you know the guy's sitting there his stuff's on the ground and he wasn't able to just get in his car and leave he was so shaken he had to sit there for 45 minutes and his car was partially blocking traffic on Hollywood Boulevard, but he couldn't drive.

47:04I mean, that's one of them. But I got to tell you, I could think of, I could think of so many stories like that. I could think of so many stories where during COVID and everything closed and these kids would just come to Hollywood Boulevard to hang out because you could at least have some human interaction. These kids lost their whole senior year of high school. So they just want to come out there and they're filming. Back then, they didn't have any entertainment except for like what, TikTok and Instagram. So they're out there walking down Hollywood Boulevard, filming their little videos And the cops would say, oh, you must gangbang.

47:31Let's put them up against the wall and handcuff them and search them. And now those kids, after that, they're just demoralized. And again, that affects not just them, it affects their family members. It affects their community. so I don't like I have so many I can't think of any one that sort of stands out there's just so many at this point they've all kind of become blended and sort of rotted my mind

48:00William Gude:have there been any cases that you've filmed where you feel like there was accountability on the other side not all the time again back here when I first started in the HED there were 71 cops assigned to it so from Hollywood Boulevard from La Brea down to Gower, between like Sunset to Franklin. That was their area. They had 71 cops there when I first started. Within a year, that was knocked down to 23. And during that time, crime went down. So you constantly hear the only way to decrease crime is to hire more cops, more police spending. What I showed is that with fewer cops, crime goes down. So it doesn't mean that fewer cops reduces crime.

48:43It just means that that narrative that you have to increase the number of cops to decrease crime is just false. So I've seen that happen. I've seen policing in Hollywood is just way different. Anybody who lives in Hollywood, if you've been on Hollywood Boulevard in 2020, 2021 at night, you were going to see a police stop happening at that time. You just don't see that happening. Hollywood Boulevard has other problems. The economy is not doing well. Tourism is terrible. Hollywood is a mess. And there's that. It had an effect on quite a few things.

49:15William Gude:Do you have any advice for people who may want to document the police in their local communities? Listen, I think that if you see something happening, just go record it. It's going to change behaviors. It keeps people safe. Like I said to the cops, it might protect you for all you know, in case something happens. Who knows? All you have to do is just do the basic thing. You see something happening, go ahead and record it. You don't even have to record it. You can standing. Standing there is good enough. And then if you want to take it further than that, if you want to start going out to the systems, good.

49:46But just kind of being present, kind of standing there, document, record if you can, if you feel comfortable. If you don't feel comfortable, I get it. I can understand why somebody doesn't feel comfortable. But again, just being there is enough. And you don't have to argue. You don't have to interject yourself in the situation. You don't have to make any accusations. You don't have to be super close. You know, my thing is, I don't cameras. I can always zoom right as long as you're not blocking the angles. That's what pisses me off You tell me to go behind a car where I can't see what's going on I have a problem if you're at eight feet away and they say step back to 12 feet and like do it's not a big deal and It's helpful if you know the laws and the policies

50:27William Gude:Yeah, I was gonna ask if you feel like you need a specific type of demeanor to do this This kind of work because because I see you you have a lot of patients And it's pretty tense sometimes, but you keep your cool when you're doing this. Yeah, I feel like I know what I'm doing. And I know LAPD policy. And I'm reasonable. Yeah, I don't really get too excited over things. Listen, if I'm angry and yelling at somebody, I might be pissed, but I'm under control. I'm not out of control. I don't know if it takes a certain demeanor. I just know what works for me. I know the person that I am. I'm not going to back down.

51:00If you ask me something unreasonable, I'm not going to do it. And if I see a policy being broken, it's hard for me to stay quiet. And it's not just the cops. It's just like if I see somebody being wronged out there in the street, if I walk into the gas station, you got this guy booing the old lady cashier. Like, I got a problem with that. It's hard for me to keep my mouth quiet. So I only kind of know what works for me. I always felt like I have a, I don't know, like a multiplier effect because I would go out there and film these incidents and then go ahead and post it on social media so I can create this sort of media narrative.

51:33And I like to tie things, tell a story along with it and tie it into other things. That works for me. I don't know if you can necessarily duplicate that for everybody, but you just have to find what does work for you and do your part.

51:46William Gude:Well, thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate it. Thank you for the work that you do. It's very important. People can find you at Film the Police LA on every platform. Yeah, everywhere. Cool. Thank you. Thank you, man. thanks so much to William for doing this episode with me and for the work that he does you can find his work at Film the Police LA on all social media platforms this episode was filmed at Third Wheel Podcast Studio in Hollywood it was edited by Alyssa Midcalf you can subscribe to 404 Media at 404media.co if you like this episode please tell your friends about us and if you're listening audio only consider checking us out on YouTube also I'm Jason Kebler we'll be back with a new episode in a few days