Patrols are the earliest form of LAPD surveillance.

A patrol is when police travel or move through an area with the purpose of surveillance, or looking around for information. Besides seeing, another purpose is to be seen, or make police presence visible and known.

LAPD patrols may be on foot or horse, or by car, bicycle, motorcycle, or helicopter. Car patrols may be in marked or unmarked cars.

Data capture by patrols happens initially by the act of a police officer surveilling with their eyes, ears, and other senses.

Image description: Three officers in uniform walk down the sidewalk in front of store fronts. Image source: ladowntownnews.com

As a result of what is perceived, a police officer may take a certain action or not, and may leverage their claimed perceptions or observances as justification for their actions.

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Instances of police lying about their observances and/or perceptions are also well documented, even though those observances may be used as the foundation for a report, such as a Suspicious Activity Report (SAR); or may cross the threshold of “reasonable suspicion” to the point where a person may be stopped, searched, detained, arrested, or otherwise harmed by police.

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Police “data capture” using their own eyes, ears, and other senses while on patrol is harmful for community members. All data points collected by police count as police contact, as it gives potential access or a reason to stop or search a person.

Police patrols are rooted in colonial systems. When the first modern police department was created, the London Metropolitan Police (or MET) in the United Kingdom in 1829, its police patrols were modeled on military and colonial practices designed to suppress anti-colonial unrest and insurgency, as well as the practices of slave patrols that originated in the British Caribbean and Carolinas (Julian Go discusses this in his book Policing Empires: Race, Colonialism & Militarized Power in the US & Britain). Inspired by colonialism, early police departments used a “beat system” to divide up the territory to be controlled into smaller “beats” - assigned areas that a police patrol was expected to cover.

Over time, patrols have become increasingly armed with tools and devices to enable film, video, and digital data capture both actively and passively.