It appears that what he was trying to protect himself from was speeding tickets, having had the experience of believing he wasn't speeding when he got one. He apparently lives in a municipality that's used to keeping it's city treasury going with a speed gun. Since he couldn't produce any evidence it became a case of his word against the cop's, and the system says he can't win that. The video camera is pointed at his dash. The apparent intent is to record what he's doing, not what the cop is doing. That doesn't sound like a "setup" to me.
The tape is essentially an impartial witness. I see what he did as indicative of someone who has been falsely accused/ticketed/railroaded by the police in the past, and he had enough of it--and as it turns out, he was right, he was being threatened and harassed. Maybe nobody believed him the first time, so this time he was going to get the proof, if it happened again. And it did!
In this case the proof turned up an abusive, dirty cop who deserved to go. If he behaved himself and did his job right, there would be no story here and no one would have been "set-up."
Funny how it's considered a "set-up" by some when it's a citizen doing the taping to protect himself, but it's okay if the police do it.