LA Sues Journalist Over Publication Of Undercover Cop Pics

LOS ANGELES, CA — A journalist and a watchdog group involved in publishing the names and photos of Los Angeles Police Department offers are being sued by the city in a bid to get the photos back. The city mistakenly released the photos of hundreds of undercover police officers in response to a records request by journalist Ben Camacho of Knock LA and the Stop LAPD Spying Coalition.

The images have been online in a searchable database for weeks. The lawsuit appears to be an effort to mitigate the damage to the police department and a threat to undercover officers and ongoing investigations.

The Los Angeles Superior Court lawsuit names as defendants journalist Ben Camacho of Knock LA and the Stop LAPD Spying Coalition. The suit states the defendants received the photos, names and work locations of 9,000 officers through a public record request.

"Defendants Ben Camacho, Stop LAPD Spying Coalition and (unidentified others) are willfully exposing to the public the identities of Los Angeles Police Department officers in undercover assignments on the website Watch the Watchers, despite knowing that they are not entitled to possess this information," the lawsuit brought Wednesday states. "The city seeks the return of these inadvertently produced photos to protect the lives and work of these undercover officers."

Following the photos' release, the officers' information appeared on a website named "Killer Cops," which allegedly offered a bounty to anyone that killed an officer, prompting a separate legal action by the union representing LAPD officers.

Reacting to the city's lawsuit seeking to recover the information, the Stop LAPD Spying Coalition stated on its Twitter page, "This is a new low. The city is suing community groups and journalists for publishing public records."

Also on Wednesday, Camacho said on Twitter that "Public records are for the public."

A spokesman for LAPD Spying Coalition recently told Patch it was up to the department to protect the identities of undercover officers because the coalition has no way of knowing which officers are undercover.

"We released pictures thoroughly vetted by the department. They came through the city attorney’s office and the LAPD itself," said Hamid Khan, a spokesman for the LAPD Spying Coalition. "We wouldn’t know who was undercover."

The group published the names, photos, ethnicities and serial numbers of more 9,300 LAPD officers in an effort to help the community hold public servants accountable for their behavior on the job, Khan said.

"The LAPD are notorious for refusing to identify themselves when asked, and, by California law, they are supposed to do that," he added. "Many times they cover their badges and nameplates as well."

On Tuesday, undercover officers filed damages claims — a precursor to a lawsuit — against the city and the department over the photos' release.

Speaking at a news conference Thursday, Mayor Karen Bass declined to comment specifically on the newly filed city lawsuit against the coalition and Camacho, but she again criticized the release of the information on undercover officers as "egregious."

"As it stands now, law enforcement is down several hundred officers, and with retirements that can come in the next year, we are in a situation where law enforcement can lose a lot of its workforce," Bass said. "I'm very worried that with the officers that have been revealed, it might increase people leaving the department. So I have been very, very worried. I think this was an egregious mistake. I think we need to get to the bottom of how this happened and people need to be held fully accountable."

On his Twitter page, Camacho retorted, "@MayorofLA you asked again how it happened, I answered previously that they were physically handed to me, by your attorneys' staff, after a lawful CPRA (public records) request. Now that same attorney office is suing me? For handing me a flash drive? That I bought for y'all?"

City News Service and Patch Staffer Paige Austin contributed to this report.