Lack of sound in Chicago police videos raises more questions

CHICAGO — A police dash-cam video that captures a white Chicago officer fatally shooting a black teenager 16 times has no sound, nor do videos from four other squad cars at the scene.

The silence is almost sure to figure into the ongoing federal investigation of the case, and it raises questions about whether officers were careless with the recording equipment or, worse, attempting a cover-up.

Several experts on the type of equipment commonly installed in police vehicles said it’s plausible for a single squad car to have a glitch preventing sound recording, but they could not imagine how an entire fleet of cars would ever lose audio at the same time and place by mere happenstance.

The silent video at the core of the shooting case in Chicago shows officer Jason Van Dyke stepping out of his car on Oct. 20, 2014, and almost immediately opening fire on Laquan McDonald as he walks away from officers.

On the same day that the video was released last week by the city, the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office charged Van Dyke with first-degree murder.

If the lights aren’t used during an incident, officers should turn on the system manually, according to a directive on the police department’s website.

Sound can be central to understanding what happened at a crime scene, said Ed Primeau, a Michigan-based audio and video forensics expert.

In an e-mail to the Associated Press, he wrote: “As with any technology, at times software issues or operator error may keep the cameras from operating as they normally should.”