Hundreds of undercover officers with the Los Angeles Police Department filed a negligence lawsuit against the department and the city for releasing their identities.
The officers’ personal information and headshots were posted by Stop LAPD Spying Coalition, an anti-police group, to a searchable online database.
The website, called “Watch the Watchers,” is intended as a tool to empower community members engaged in copwatch and other countersurveillance practices,” according to the group.
“You can use it to identify officers who are causing harm in your community. The website’s ease of use also makes it a political statement, flipping the direction of surveillance against the state’s agents,” it added.
The group, which aims to abolish traditional law enforcement agencies, released the names and photographs of more than 9,300 officers. The leak involved nearly every sworn officer on the force, including 321 undercover cops, some of whom work with the Mexican mafia and cartels.
According to one of the cops’ lawyers, Matthew McNicholas, the leak foiled several undercover operations and placed officers’ lives at risk.
The Los Angeles attorney’s office claimed that the LAPD was required to turn over the information in response to a journalist’s public records request. However, state law carves out exceptions for safety and investigative reasons.
The officers’ lawsuit accuses the LAPD of the “negligent, improper and malicious” release of personal information.
“The City of Los Angeles’ reckless production of the undercover officers’ identities does irreparable damage to these individuals — their lives, careers and ongoing investigations are at risk,” McNicholas told the Los Angeles Times. “The City of Los Angeles and LAPD have a duty of care to their employees and should have had appropriate safeguards in place to ensure nothing like this ever happened. They need to face responsibility for their catastrophic negligence.”
The officers’ attorney stated that the department “ultimately incorrectly included undercover active-duty police officers and officers with prior undercover assignments,” allegedly without the knowledge of Chief Michel Moore.
“We erred in the sense that there’s photographs that are in there that should not have been in there,” Moore stated. “Now … that ship has sailed.”
In addition to the undercover cops’ lawsuit, the Los Angeles Police Protective League filed a separate case against the city and Moore. The union hopes the lawsuit will force the department to “claw back” the photographs of the officers and prevent future leaks.
Stop the LAPD Spying Coalition fired back and the union’s lawsuit, calling it an “assault on people’s rights to access.”
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