Los Angeles Times & Ted Rall: Forensic Video Response

I was hired by the LA Times to perform a forensic audio investigation on a 2001 recording of a jaywalking citation being given to Ted Rall. The LA Times posted my results in a recent article to clarify the reasons behind Ted Rall’s dismissal from the paper. Ted Rall has since posted a rebuttal to this article on his blog, in which he made various claims about the results of my investigation. I would like to clear any confusion or misinterpretations about my forensic investigation and the results it produced. In the list below I have outlined points which I believe address the issues Mr. Rall published in his article:

  • I did not hear a crowd of people on the audio recording that I enhanced of former Los Angeles Times freelancer Ted Rall being ticketed by an officer for jaywalking.  I heard two people other than Rall and the officer talking on the recording.  At most, I could make out the word jaywalking being spoken by one of the two people.  I did not hear anything about “handcuffs” on Rall’s enhanced version of the recording or on the version that I enhanced.
  • We have an established chain of custody of this recording by the Los Angeles Police Department since officer Willie Durr recorded it in 2001.
  • We have no signs of tampering anywhere in the recording.  I found no evidence of tampering when I performed my authentication test.
I have created the following video to clear up these misunderstandings as well as clarify the actual results of my investigation.

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