LA Group Posts Names, Photos of Undercover Officers

Department inadvertently turned over information on undercover police
By Newser Editors and Wire Services
Posted Mar 23, 2023 7:05 PM CDT
LA Group Posts Names, Photos of Undercover Officers
Police officers stand guard near the site where three Los Angeles officers were shot on March 8.   (AP Photo/Ringo H.W. Chiu,File)

The Los Angeles police chief and the department's constitutional policing director are under investigation after the names and photographs of undercover officers were released to a technology watchdog group that posted them online. LAPD Chief Michel Moore offered his "deep apologies" to the undercover officers, who were not given advance word of the disclosure, during a police commission meeting Tuesday, per the AP. The watchdog group Stop LAPD Spying Coalition posted more than 9,300 officers' information and photographs Friday in a searchable online database, the Los Angeles Times reported, following a public records request by a reporter for the news outlet Knock LA.

The database includes information on each officer, including name, ethnicity, rank, date of hire, badge number, and division or bureau. It was not immediately clear how many of the officers listed have undercover posts. Stop LAPD Spying Coalition opposes police intelligence-gathering and says the database should be used for countersurveillance. "You can use it to identify officers who are causing harm in your community," the group wrote. "Police have vast information about all of us at their fingertips, yet they move in secrecy." The department's release of the undercover officers' names and photographs was inadvertent, the Times reported. The department's inspector general launched the investigation of Moore and constitutional policing director Liz Rhodes after the Los Angeles Police Protective League, the union that represents rank-and-file officers, filed a misconduct complaint against them Monday.

While the city attorney's office determined the agency was legally required to turn over the records under California law, per the AP, exemptions are often made for safety or investigative reasons. Police officials say the database's photos pose safety risks to officers who are currently undercover, as well as those who might work in that capacity in the future. The Knock LA reporter, Ben Camacho, tweeted that he filed the records request as well as a lawsuit last year to get the photographs. The department had not previously raised the issue of officer safety in arguing against their release, he said. "The only officers they are excluding from disclosure are undercover officers, which is expected," a deputy city attorney wrote in a 2022 email to Camacho's attorney, according to a screenshot the journalist posted online.

(More Los Angeles stories.)

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