Union calls leak of racist recordings illegal, but LAPD has not been asked to find culprits or offer to release them
In the LAPD’s new motto, ‘Protecting the public, serving the public’, the agency’s top cop is being lauded for his handling of the ongoing police scandal involving the department’s surveillance of Muslim communities.
The LAPD is calling it a ‘stark reminder’ that a ‘culture of corruption and abuse of power have no place in this department’.
But its new chief, Charlie Beck, is facing criticism that the department has not been forced to release documents that could reveal who had watched the controversial surveillance recordings, the location of the recording equipment, who owned the equipment or the names of the surveillance officers.
In a letter to Beck on Monday, the Los Angeles City Attorney’s office said that while he was legally entitled to the information requested, Beck’s refusal to provide it made him ‘guilty of contempt of court … for willfully violating the court’s order’.
The LAPD said the request was ‘unreasonable’ and ‘disproportionate’ and the information would instead be handed over to the public through another document request system, the Los Angeles Times and other media organisations have reported.
In the LAPD’s new motto, ‘Protecting the public, serving the public’, the agency’s top cop is being lauded for his handling of the ongoing police scandal involving the department’s surveillance of Muslim communities.
The LA Times, LA Weekly, the San Diego Union-Tribune, the Huffington Post, the LA Sentinel, the Guardian and the LA Daily News have all reported the LAPD is trying to hide the identities of the officers who recorded the conversations with the community’s leaders following the recent attack on a police station that was caught on camera. Most of the media are reporting on the same thing: the LAPD secretly recorded the Muslim leaders saying “heck no” to the police presence and surveillance at their