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Local Today LAPD officers sue owner of anti-cop website for posting photos, ‘bounty’ Irene Garcia March 24, 2023 Cites LA Times as 2nd Hand Source "Only one tribunal ever adopted a practice of forcing counsel upon an unwilling defendant in a criminal proceeding. The tribunal was the Star Chamber."-U.S. v Faretta , 422 U.S. 806 (1975) REASONABLE DOUBT "Silence in the face of evil is itself evil: God will not hold us guiltless. (c) 1995-2026 |
Three Los Angeles cops are suing the owner of killercops.com, accusing him of posting their photos on his website and putting a "bounty" on their heads. It is the first legal action resulting from the Los Angeles Police Department’s release of the names and photos of nearly all sworn officers — more than 9,300 officers, including some who work undercover — as part of a public records request. A police surveillance group put the images online last Friday. The lawsuit, filed Friday by the Los Angeles Police Protective League on behalf of officers Adam Gross, Adrian Rodriguez and Douglas Panameno, demands that the photos and other identifying information be removed from the killercops.com website. In a tweet referenced in the lawsuit, Steven Sutcliffe, who posts under the name @KillerCops1984, reportedly wrote, "Remember, #rewards are double year-round for #detectives and #female cops." The tweet included an image of a cash reward for the killing of an LAPD officer, the lawsuit states. According to the lawsuit, a later tweet allegedly included a link to the Stop LAPD Spying Coalition’s database of officer photos, along with the caption, "Clean headshots on these #LAPD officers." A to Z." In an interview on Friday, Sutcliffe said of the lawsuit: "It’s malicious. It’s vengeance. It’s vengeful and frivolous. Your movement is full of lies." He added: "They are trying to silence my freedom of speech. The truth cannot be retribution. It is First Amendment protected speech." The information about the officers was released by LAPD officials in response to a public records request from a journalist at the nonprofit newsroom Knock LA, which was then released by the Stop LAPD Spying Coalition, a group that wants to abolish traditional law enforcement but has done so in the meantime it has been pushing for radical transparency. The Watch the Watchers database includes each officer’s name, ethnicity, rank, enlistment date, division/office, and badge number, as well as a photo of the officer. After the website launched, department heads announced that they had inadvertently published photos of officers working undercover and launched an internal investigation to determine how the mistake happened. Sources have said the number of undercover officers whose identities were compromised upon release is in the dozens if not hundreds. LAPD chief Michel Moore said in an interview on Friday that he supports the league’s effort to remove the photos from Sutcliffe’s website. He added that the department was investigating whether "inciting violence against officers" was criminal in nature. "The posts, the nature of the posts, it’s not just intimidation. They are threatening and can constitute a crime," he said. "This is one of the things I worried and feared about when we released these photos to supposedly be transparent that others would use them to threaten our officers." The boss said he took steps to address safety concerns from those whose photos were released. "We were wrong in the sense that there are photos that shouldn’t have been there," Moore said. "Well, but the ship has sailed. All these photos are out here. What I find concerning is that, as I feared, … actors or individuals who are now taking this information and trying to intimidate or scare them." When asked if he knew any officers whose covers had been blown or if sensitive operations had been disrupted, Moore said, "I don’t know of any as of yet." Still, he added, the damage had been done. "From a moral point of view, it affects us a lot, so it’s very unfortunate," he said. The LAPD was shocked when the photos were released. Sources said this has prompted some officials to consider retirement. Tom Saggau, a spokesman for the Police Protective League, the union that represents ordinary officers. said the league plans to take legal action against the city and the LAPD. Dozens of undercover officers are expected to file a class-action lawsuit against the department, according to attorneys representing these officers. Saggau said the union was more concerned about the city’s "colossal mistake" than the journalist who first received the photos or the surveillance group that released them. "They received their information through a PRA [public records request]," he said. "It’s the city’s crap that has leaked information that should never have been leaked, and other websites are exploiting that information and putting bounties on cops’ heads." Plaintiffs in the lawsuit against Sutcliffe allege that the alleged threats related to the sharing of their photos online caused them emotional distress. The three don’t work undercover. Saggau said Panameno works in the department’s motor transport division. The duties of the other two officers were not disclosed. On Monday, the union filed a formal complaint against Moore and Lizabeth Rhodes, the director of the LAPD’s Office of Constitutional Policing. Moore has asked the inspector general to take over the investigation to avoid a conflict of interest. Several LAPD sources, not authorized to discuss the photos scandal, said Rhodes, who oversaw the photos’ disclosure, should have made sure every undercover officer was barred from the information release. In a letter to Moore on Thursday, the union’s executive said it had lost confidence in Rhodes and asked the boss to send her on a trip home. Moore said he could not discuss the request, citing personnel issues. Legal experts say a judge must decide whether the tweets at issue in the lawsuit meet the legal definition of a threat. That’s a separate issue from the Stop LAPD Spying Coalition’s decision to release the photos, said Aaron Mackey, an attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation. The First Amendment generally protects the release of information obtained from the government, even if released inadvertently, Mackey said. LAPD officials may argue that releasing their photos, hire dates and other information is an invasion of their privacy, but that argument is unlikely to stand in court, he said. "They don’t have that reasonable expectation of privacy in relation to this basic information," Mackey said. Sutcliffe has already gotten into legal trouble over online threats. In 2003, he Suspicion that viewpoint discrimination is afoot is at its zenith when the speech restricted is speech critical of the government," Ridley v. Mass. Bay Transp. Auth., 390 F.3d 65, 86 (1st Cir. 2004) FILE A COMPLAINT
TO PURCHASE KILLERCOP.COM™ CLICK HERE (c) 1995-2026 | |
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