lapd – Techdirt (original) (raw)

LAPD Raids Medical Lab For (Nonexistent) Weed, Get Gun Stuck In An MRI Machine

from the keystone-kops-handling-the-Drug-War dept

Some of our nation’s finest Drug Warriors are at it again. And by “at it,” I mean doing seriously stupid, seriously unconstitutional stuff in hopes of finding drugs or (better yet!) cash that will somehow prove they’re doing anything at all to stem the flow of illegal drugs.

And yet, they weren’t even after a truly illegal drug here. The LAPD was going after some supposedly “unlicensed” weed, which means weed that isn’t generating tax dollars, rather than the substance that is mostly legal in a lot of places, including Los Angeles, California.

The raid was botched in more ways than one, but it led off with the claim always made by Drug Warriors when they need an excuse to start violating the Constitution. (h/t Radley Balko)

The owners of NoHo Diagnostic Center are suing the LAPD, the city of Los Angeles and multiple police officers, alleging they violated the business owners’ constitutional rights and demanding an unspecified amount in damages. Officers allegedly raided the diagnostic center, located in the Van Nuys neighborhood of Los Angeles, thinking it was a front for an illegal cannabis cultivation facility, pointing to higher-than-usual energy use and the “distinct odor” of cannabis plants, according to the lawsuit.

Yep, cops on Drug War duty are peeping electric bills to locate grow operations. Even when they’re wrong, they still feel they’re right. There are lots of reasons a place might be using more electricity, whether it’s someone’s desktop Bitcoin rig or, in this case, a place that uses a lot of high-powered, highly-specialized medical equipment. And “distinct odor” is just a useful dodge — something used to justify otherwise illegal entries that can’t be readily disputed because there’s no body cam on the market (yet) that is capable of identifying odors.

What the body cams can catch is the butchery of rights and some incredibly incompetent policing. We’ll see if any of this footage survives — not just because the LAPD might want to cover this up, but because the officers just sort of blundered around the building, poking and prodding at x-ray machines, ultrasound devices, CT scanners, and — most comically — an MRI behind a door that clearly told everyone entering not to bring anything metal into the room. And for good reason, as one officer immediately discovered.

The MRI machine’s magnetic force then allegedly sucked his rifle across the room, pinning it against the machine…

An officer then allegedly pulled a sealed emergency release button that shut the MRI machine down, deactivating it, evaporating thousands of liters of helium gas and damaging the machine in the process. The officer then grabbed his rifle and left the room, leaving behind a magazine filled with bullets on the office floor, according to the lawsuit.

Please tell me more about this “training and expertise,” Officer Disarmed-By-An-MRI-Machine. Also, explain to me why it was worth the sacrifice of a multi-million dollar machine to save a gun that’s far more replaceable than you are, Officer Doesn’t-Know-What-The-Fuck-He’s-Doing. The cop shop will always issue you another one. But without securing a win or a settlement in this lawsuit, the medical facility will have to cover the repairs out of its own pocket due to your inept blundering.

The lawsuit’s [PDF] allegations further highlight the complete ineptitude of everyone involved in this raid, starting with the officer who secured the search warrant. Behold this amazing display of detective work by someone who shouldn’t be allowed to operate MS Word, much less a handgun.

OFFICER FRANCO conducted surveillance on multiple dates in 2023, reporting the “distinct odor of live cannabis plant and not the odor of dried cannabis being smoked,” tinted windows – which he attributed to efforts to conceal cannabis cultivation, security cameras –which he associated with locations where cannabis is grown to prevent theft, and two individuals in similar attire at the premises – whom he concluded were performing maintenance or expanding the cultivation operation.

Pretty hard to square the claim of a pervasive marijuana odor with the distinct lack of marijuana on the premises. And everything Officer Franco claims is illustrative of illegal operations is also illustrative of plenty of fully legal operations — like the operation and housing of incredibly expensive medical equipment by trained professionals.

That’s not all the stupid, though. There’s more from Officer Franco, who couldn’t even be bothered to compare the NoHo Diagnostic Center to its nearest electricity-using neighbors to see if he was actually witnessing something anomalous (and, I guess, drug-related) or just the sort of normal usage split one would expect in a situation like this.

OFFICER FRANCO compared the power usage of the TARGET PREMISES to nearby businesses and found it significantly higher.

OFFICER FRANCO, therefore, concluded that the TARGET PREMISES was cultivating cannabis, disregarding the fact that it is a diagnostic facility utilizing an MRI machine, Xray machine, and other heavy medical equipment—unlike the surrounding businesses selling flowers, chocolates, and childrens’ merchandise, none of which would require significant power usage.

Officer Franco also claimed to have performed an “internet search” linking the lab to “Fouad Ashour,” despite publicly-available business records showing the business had been incorporated in 2021 by its Chief Executive Officer, Ustiana Shaginian.

This isn’t “training and expertise.” It certainly isn’t “expertise.” And if this is how Officer Franco makes inferences, there’s something seriously wrong with the LAPD’s training, as the lawsuit points out. (Emphasis in the original.)

Despite the TARGET PREMISES’ legitimate business certification, OFFICER FRANCO, as a natural next step, contacted LAPD’s Gang and Narcotics Division Cannabis Support Unit. OFFICER FRANCO learned that the TARGET PREMISES, a medical diagnostic center, does not have a license to cultivate cannabis, a finding he promptly labeled a “violation of the California Health and Safety Code.”

Based on his 15 years as an LAPD officer and twelve hours of narcotics training, and based upon the presence of security cameras (typical of any reasonable commercial business), tinted windows (a reasonable practice for any medical facility concerned with patient privacy), high power usage (as any diagnostic facility), the alleged odor of cannabis plants (in a busy shopping plaza with no prior reports), the absence of a cultivation permit (which no diagnostic healthcare facility would possess), and the presence of two men wearing identical company branded shirts (unexpected of individuals involved in illegal cultivation), OFFICER FRANCO found probable cause for cannabis cultivation at the TARGET PREMISES.

Burn him. Burn him to the ground. This wasn’t an investigation. This was an officer working backwards from conclusions he’d apparently generated without any reasonable suspicion that would warrant the initiation of an investigation until he arrived at the point he could get a warrant and start violating rights.

Given these allegations, I would sincerely hope the city of LA already has a check half-written. All it needs now is the settlement amount. Allowing this to move forward just means more cops are going be asked more questions. And the one cop, whose name leads off the lawsuit, has answered plenty of those with actions, and has raised a similar number of disturbing questions whose answers are just going to generate more liability for the PD.

And while it’s always difficult to hold a city or entire police department accountable for officers’ actions, every time these officers attest to their “training” and “experience” in warrant requests, depositions, or direct testimony, they’re implying the errors (or willful violations) they committed were at least partially based on the training provided by their employers and their service to the higher power (the city) that signs their paychecks. This is embarrassing on several levels. Hopefully, NoHo Diagnostic will get some justice here. And even more hopefully, the city will decide to make some heads roll in hopes of deterring future actions like these that not only violate residents’ rights, but insult their intelligence and rob them of their tax dollars.

Filed Under: 4th amendment, drug war, lapd, lawsuit, police misconduct
Companies: noho diagnostic center

LAPD Officers Gather In Court To Bitch About Having Their Photos Inadvertently Released

from the flow-my-tears,-the-histrionic-policemen-said dept

You would think this is a done deal, but it isn’t. It just keeps getting stupider.

Last year, journalist Ben Camacho filed a public records request for photos of all active Los Angeles PD officers. After a couple of rounds of litigation, the city agreed to release the sought records. Camacho shared these with the Stop LAPD Spying Coalition, which added the photos to its existing searchable database of current LAPD officers.

All (litigation) hell broke loose shortly thereafter. The city sued Camacho, demanding the “return” of the digital files it had given him. LAPD officers sued the city for releasing the photos. The LAPD’s union was also involved in the litigation.

As for Camacho, he’d done nothing wrong. He lawfully acquired the files. And he lawfully shared the files with others. This was confirmed by the settlement paid to Camacho by the city of Los Angeles, which agreed Camacho had obtained these photos legally. And that settlement is part of its defense in the lawsuit filed against by LAPD officers — the admission that a mistake was made by releasing the photos, but it was neither malicious or legally negligent. Furthermore, the city has asserted its own immunity, saying its decision to release this information (whether intentionally or not) is beyond the reach of the officers’ litigation.

Not that it matters to the officers, who still seem to think that if they whine enough, someone will do something about it. Obviously, whatever the result, the publication of the photos has already happened and cannot be undone. So, the officers have decided the best way forward with their litigation is to make a bunch of unverifiable claims about how this publication has endangered them.

Are you guys fans of conclusory statements and vague assertions? Great news! The affidavits being filed by LAPD officers have plenty of both, as the Los Angeles Daily News reports.

Multiple Los Angeles police officers have given sworn declarations in opposition to a motion by the city of Los Angeles to dismiss lawsuits collectively filed by hundreds of officers with sensitive assignments who allege their safety was affected by the mistaken release of the plaintiffs’ photographs in 2023.

“Since the release of my service photo, I avoid public spaces and am very cautious when I am in a public space,” says one such officer identified only as John Doe 137. “I am in constant fear that someone will be able to identify me, follow me home and harm me or my family.”

Doe 138 says he always carries his firearm when he leaves home, even if just to go grocery shopping.

Another officer, John Doe 2, says he was working undercover when at the time of the dissemination of his photo and that his life has changed “forever” as a result.

“Since the release of my personal and private information, I have been forced to alter my social media accounts, change my mailing address and alter my family trust and real estate holdings in order to get back some of the privacy that I have lost,” Doe 2 says.

LOL. What even is this? The first officer seems to believe people are performing searches of the Stop LAPD Spying database and performing citywide searches in person to stalk officers whose photos were made available. Officer Doe 138 is probably just doing what he has always done: going to the grocery store strapped. And the third officer is asserting an extreme overreaction to the publication of a service photo — one that expresses a desire to reclaim “privacy” but says nothing about the presumptive danger of being identified by criminals as an undercover officer.

That’s only part of the stupidity. Another officer claims the release of his photo “affected his mental health” because at some time in the past, he once worked in county jails to elicit confessions from people already imprisoned for other crimes. At no point does this affidavit suggest this is something he is still doing, much less why this release would change anything at all about the danger level since presumably the people he questioned in jail ALREADY KNOW WHAT HE LOOKS LIKE.

It’s all very dramatic and all very useless. As the city has pointed out — something buttressed by its settlement with Ben Camacho — what happened here was unfortunate, but inadvertent. Since it wasn’t deliberate, there’s no cause for action. And even if it was deliberate, the city government’s litigation privilege makes it immune to this lawsuit.

There you have it, aggrieved coppers. Welcome to the reality you rarely have to encounter: the invocation of immunity by someone other than yourselves. Maybe you’ll learn something from the experience. Then again, if regular officers are filing affidavits claiming emotional distress from release of the photos, they’re way off the mark. The only thing the city agrees was “unfortunate but inadvertent” was the release of photos of undercover officers. Any regular officer who performs their duties in public, undisguised, and (most likely) while wearing an LAPD uniform, has zero chance of demonstrating the release of their photo changed the danger matrix of performing their day-to-day job.

Suck it up, self-proclaimed heroes. The affidavits sworn to here only contain fantasies about theoretical danger. If a cop can actually demonstrate a link between the release of these files and any current threats/harassment, they should definitely do so. Given that no one has, this is just a bunch of people whining because one of their extra rights was inadvertently (and momentarily) ignored.

Filed Under: foia, lapd, lawsuit, los angeles, public records

Conviction Secured For LAPD Officer Who Falsely Added People To PD’s Gang Database

from the putting-'lawbreaker'-back-in-'law-enforcement' dept

Pretty much any “gang database” is a vehicle for abuse. While there’s some investigative value in maintaining a database of affirmed gang members, most of these data collections are run without oversight or guardrails, allowing officers to add almost anyone they want to the collection, so long as they happen to live, work, or travel through any area these same cops have unilaterally declared to be gang territory.

You’d think a data collection like this would be far more useful if it was carefully curated and regularly pruned to ensure fewer resources were wasted by targeting people who weren’t in gangs but just had the misfortune of being near them from time to time.

But that’s not how law enforcement thinks. Apparently, agencies ranging from local PDs to the NSA still believe quantity is better than quality and do whatever they can to keep the data stores fully stocked. And when it comes to cop shops, it’s always handy to have a reason to harass or arrest someone, even if that “reason” is nothing more than falsified data that’s easily accessible.

Adding all of this together results in ridiculousness, rights violations, lawsuits, and — in this case — criminal charges for the officers who falsely added Los Angeles residents to the LAPD’s gang database. It’s not just a US problem either, despite this nation being home to several extremely large gang databases. An Australian police officer was labeled a gang member simply because he happened to be seen on the same street as two gang members who were passing through the neighborhood.

Closer to home, things get worse and more stupid. The Chicago PD’s gang database has at least 15,000 people who the city’s Inspector General determined to have “no specific gang membership” and “no reason provided” by officers for their inclusion in the database. Boston’s gang database has designated people as gang members for acts as innocent as “wearing Nike shoes” or being beaten up by gang members. The database at issue here — CalGang — has allowed cops to “nominate” literal infants as suspected gang members.

Fortunately, someone decided to start doing something about this abuse. Six months after reports surfaced that LAPD officers were falsely adding residents to the gang database, prosecutors started getting busy. In the end, it was more performative than game-changing. Six officers were hit with criminal charges. Of those six, only one will actually be convicted of a crime.

An officer accused of falsifying records as part of an L.A. Police Department gang-framing scandal pleaded no contest Thursday to six felony counts.

Prosecutors alleged Braxton Shaw falsified dozens of interview cards that police fill out while in the field, labeling as gang members 43 people who had made no such admission or had outright denied affiliation. Some of those people ended up in a state gang database.

The 41-year-old officer entered the plea as part of a deal with prosecutors to resolve multiple felony counts that could have seen him sentenced to decades in prison.

Officer Shaw got hoisted by his own petard — his body cam footage that showed him falsifying gang database reports. The other five officers facing similar charges were at least smart enough to not create permanent video records of their wrongdoing.

Shaw isn’t a scapegoat, though. He’s the sacrificial lamb — the one offered up by the city as evidence it actually cares about overseeing a department that has done little more than wander from scandal to scandal since its inception.

And, while’s it far more than likely that people falsely named as gang members spent some time in lock up (either pre-trial or after pleading guilty to false association charges), Officer Shaw won’t have to spend a day behind bars, despite pleading no contest to multiple charges. As the Los Angeles Times reports, Shaw’s six felony charges will be converted into two year’s probation and 250 hours of community service. The only upside is that Shaw will have to surrender his cop certification, which means he can’t be hired by other law enforcement agencies in California. But that certainly won’t prevent him from plying his corrupted trade elsewhere in the nation after satisfying his probation requirements.

Will this be enough to deter other LAPD officers from adding people to CalGang just because they want to? Oh my no. The state decided to only go after six cops and it only managed to talk one of them into accepting criminal convictions. The LAPD is home to around 9,000 officers. The very eventual punishment of one officer isn’t going to change a thing. Police misconduct remains the heavy favorite going forward.

Filed Under: braxton shaw, fake records, gang database, lapd, los angeles, los angeles police department

City Will Pay $300k Settlement To Journalist It Sued For Legally Obtaining LAPD Officers’ Photos

from the one-lawsuit-down,-one-to-go dept

This is one of the stupidest things ever in terms of public records lawsuits. And that’s saying a lot, considering how often this site has covered public records lawsuits.

This traces back to April of last year. Ben Camacho, a Los Angeles journalist who contributes to sites like Knock LA, sent out a records request for photos of all active LAPD officers. After some early litigation (filed by Camacho), the city agreed to turn over the records. The photos then were placed in a searchable database by activist group Stop LAPD Spying Coalition.

That made LA cops very angry. The police chief demanded the city “prosecute” Camacho for legally obtaining records from the city. The LAPD’s union got in on the action as well, suing the city for releasing the photos and demanding Camacho and Stop LAPD Spying “return” the photos Camacho had lawfully obtained.

That didn’t go anywhere, but the city apparently still felt compelled to oblige the LA police union. It filed a cross motion naming Camacho and Stop LAPD Spying as defendants while simultaneously asking the judge to excuse it from the lawsuit, arguing that it had done nothing wrong.

That’s an insane argument to be making when you’re also arguing the people who received the records you released are somehow doing something wrong. And that probably explains why the city is now buying its way out of one of the lawsuits related to these photos it’s currently engaged in, as Libor Jany reports for the LA Times.

The city of Los Angeles has agreed to pay the legal bills for a local journalist and a group of activists whom it took to court last year for publishing photographs of LAPD officers, part of a tentative settlement that will end a lawsuit some saw as an assault on media freedom.

Under the agreement, which still needs to be approved by the City Council, Knock LA journalist Ben Camacho and the group Stop LAPD Spying Coalition will receive $300,000 for lawyer fees. They were sued for publishing thousands of officers’ pictures that the city had itself provided in response to a public records request.

That’s just the proposal. The defendants still need to agree to it and then a judge needs to wave a gavel above it to make it final. As is almost always the case in lawsuit settlements, Camacho and Stop LAPD Spying will have to agree the city did nothing wrong before being allowed to cash the check.

That likely won’t be a problem for the defendants. After all, the city — as it stated in its own cross-motions in the lawsuit filed against it by the police union — stated it had done nothing wrong by complying with the records request. And the recipients of the legally obtained records likely feel the city didn’t break the law here, either. While they may have some hard feelings about the bogus litigation, they’ll be getting paid for having their time, money, and energy wasted.

But it’s not all over yet. As the LA Times article notes, there’s still plenty of litigation that hasn’t been settled or ruled on, including the union’s lawsuit against the city. That’s the one where the city has tried to convert the recipients of the photos into the defendants, despite the fact the union sued the city over the release of the photos and never bothered to name Camacho or Stop LAPD Spying as defendants.

However, that lawsuit really isn’t Camacho or Stop LAPD Spying’s problem at the moment. The bigger problem might be the LA city attorney, Hydee Feldstein Soto. Seemingly distressed by this inadvertent transparency (and the resulting litigation), Soto is seeking to make things worse for California residents.

Feldstein Soto also began lobbying California lawmakers to weaken the state’s public records law to allow government agencies to decline future public records requests that seek “images or data that may personally identify” employees.

Finally, despite all assertions otherwise, the LAPD and the union suing the city have yet to provide any evidence that any officers’ safety has been threatened or otherwise diminished by the release of these photos. The early claims were that undercover officers would be jeopardized by public dissemination of officer photos. But in the year-plus since the data dump, nothing has come to light showing the publication of the photos did any harm to the LAPD or its officers.

Filed Under: 1st amendment, ben camacho, foia, journalism, lapd, public records, stop lapd spying, transparency

When ‘Lol, No’ Is Not Enough: Lawyer Explains Why Bogus Takedown Over ‘Fuck The LAPD’ Shirt Should Result In Paying Legal Fees

from the lol-nope,-plus-a-bit-more dept

You may recall last month’s hilarious story of lawyer Mike Dunford’s response to a vexatious angry demand letter from IMG, representing the LAPD Foundation, claiming that a t-shirt with the following “Fuck the LAPD” logo violated its IP rights:

The response was as simple as it was direct: Lol, no.

As we highlighted in our post, the threat letter was ridiculously vague about what “IP” the LA Police Department Foundation believed it owned. It’s not difficult to figure out why: because nothing in the image above could possibly constitute either trademarks or copyright belonging to the LAPDF. Still, we had a few paragraphs explaining how if they claimed copyright, it would be wrong and another few paragraphs on why they’d be wrong about trademark too.

It turns out that in addition to the “LOL, no” letter, Dunford also sent a more detailed response to someone higher up at IMG, the rights company that sent the original, basically asking why his client, Cola Corporation (makers of fine anti-police wear), shouldn’t seek attorneys’ fees from IMG for their vexatious takedown.

If you’re wondering why the two separate letters were sent, it’s almost certainly because the first short one was the response. This second, much longer (but still hilarious) one was to basically say “y’all fucked up so bad, that you probably need to pay us for the time you wasted.”

The letter is a rollicking good time, as posted by Cola Corporation on Bluesky:

The second letter that @questauthority.bsky.social sent to LAPD reps on my behalf. Even more savage than “LOL, no.” I’ve highlighted my fave parts. What are yours?

[image or embed]

— Cola (@cola.baby) May 13, 2024 at 12:30 PM

I’ve extracted the letter and PDF’d it, which you can see embedded below.

It’s a hoot, and shows that Dunford is good for more than simply “lol, no” responses.

I write to give you and the thin-skinned bullies you represent an opportunity to provide whatever reason you can think of why my client should not seek to recover attorneys’ fees in this matter under 17 U.S.C. § 512(f) — and, really, to ask you to explain why any of you ever thought any of this was in any way a good idea.

Tell us how you really feel, Mike.

As you know, and I know, and every competent intellectual property lawyer knows, the ‘C’ in DMCA stands for “Copyright.” Unsurprisingly, a valid DM CA takedown therefore requires a valid, good-faith claim of copyright infringement. But you obviously do not have any such claim — or anything that is in the same time zone as such a claim. Neither the LAPDF nor the Los Angeles Police Department itself owns a copyright to the acronym “LAPD.” Nobody does, and nobody can. It is black letter law that individual words and short phrases are not subject to copyright protection. We both know that. Students in Intro to IP classes know that. But as a professional courtesy and on the off chance you somehow forgot, the footnote call at the end of this sentence is a relevant string cite.

I’m going to just post an image of the two footnotes on this page, because, for some reason, the OCR isn’t working great on the PDF copy I made, so I’m retyping all the quotes in this article, and there’s no way I’m retyping all these citations. But, yeah, you get the idea:

If you cannot see it, it’s a long string of recent cases that all highlight the point stated above, and then noting (“wow, that’s a lot of cases saying the same thing from just the last six months, right?). For the sake of brevity, we’re not providing you with a citation from every federal district court to prove the point. We’re pretty sure we could.”

Now, I wasn’t entirely sure that DMCA 512(f) would apply, because looking over the original letter that was sent to Cola Corporation that we posted with the original article, it does not directly purport to be a DMCA takedown. I recognize that “DMCA” has become shorthand for any sort of request for a takedown or any kind of copyright claim, but to be a true DMCA 512 notice for the purpose of demanding a takedown it requires some specific things.

However, as Dunford’s more verbose letter indicates, the guy who sent it, a lawyer named Andrew Schmidt, gave the document the title: “DMCA Takedown Notice – LAPD – The Cola Corporation.” And then emailed it with the subject line “DMCA Takedown notice.” It may be fine (well, not fine, but understandable) for a lay person to use the shorthand of calling something a DMCA notice. But, not a lawyer.

It seems clear that Schmidt was either lazy… or (more likely) was hoping that because “DMCA takedowns” are so widely known as a concept, that simply calling his document as such would lead an unsophisticated individual at Cola Corporation to get scared and fold.

Dunford further makes it clear that the format of the letter “mirrors the requirements” of an official DMCA takedown notice, to effectively argue that even if it wasn’t officially a “DMCA takedown notice,” it was substantially close enough that Cola Corporation might actually have a legitimate 512(f) claim.

Now, if you’ve followed Techdirt for any length of time, you probably know that DMCA 512(f) claims for filing a misleading DMCA takedown claim are nearly impossible to win for a variety of (mostly stupid) reasons. But, damn, if this weren’t a case where it’s pretty clear that, not only was IMG misrepresenting stuff, but that they knew full well they were misrepresenting stuff. And that means that it’s a situation where a 512(f) claim might actually be legit.

17 U.S.C § 512(f) provides a cause of action to those who are harmed by a knowing material misrepresentation that material was infringing. The representation that “Fuck the LAPD” infringes on the LAPD’s copyrights is clearly false. As noted above, your client owns no copyright relevant to the alleged infringement, because the phrase “LAPD” is not remotely subject to copyright protection. As it is literally impossible to infringe on a copyright that cannot exist, the “DMCA takedown” misrepresented both the ownership and infringement of the copyright. And it did so materially — it affected my client’s response to the purported takedown by leading it to pay me to deal with your blatant bullying.

And, yes, the one area where 512(f) claims most often fall down was whether or not the sender really “knew” it was misrepresenting things. In the Lenz case, famously, the court said as long as the sender subjectively believed the notice was legit, that’s all that’s necessary. But here…

Your company does this type of work professionally. Schmidt is an attorney, senior counsel to your company. Either he knew that there was no conceivable copyright claim here, much less a good faith one, or he is staggeringly incompetent. I would honestly prefer not to believe that IMG knowingly sent a false DMCA takedown to aid and abet a police organization in bullying my client — who was, at the time you sent the document containing the knowing misrepresentations, an unrepresented party — for exercising its First Amendment rights. Yet I simply cannot believe IMG hires attorneys so terrible at their job that IMG was unaware that its client did not have a copyright claim when it sent a DMCA takedown based, in part, on allegations of copyright infringement.

Ouch.

And while the DMCA 512(f) claim is specific to the copyright arguments (the C part, remember), the letter also makes it clear that IMG can’t get away with claiming there was at least good faith in the trademark part. Because there clearly is not.

I could explain why such a claim would fail by methodically working through the eight Sleekcraft factors, but, really, all that would do is waste all of our time. Let’s not pretend: it is inconceivable that a reasonable person, no matter how unobservant or hurried, would be confused into thinking that the Los Angeles Police Department or the Los Angeles Police Department Foundation are the source of “Fuck the LAPD” merchandise.

There’s a fun footnote 7 wedged in that paragraph for law nerds, but I’ll leave that for you to check out on your own.

The next part is just good old-fashioned fun:

That only becomes more obvious when the First Amendment implications of this deplorable incident are examined. The LAPD is to state the obvious a police department. They are an arm of the state. Criticism of the state is protected speech even when it is profane and disrespectful; “speech cannot be restricted simply because it is upsetting or arouses contempt.” Snyder v. Phelps, 562 U.S. 443, 458 (2011). That, too, is black-letter law, taught in every law school. The First Amendment acts to ensure that “individual expressions of ideas remain free from governmentally imposed sanctions,” Hustler Mag., Inc. v. Falwell, 485 U.S. 46 (1988), it does so when that speech is critical of the government, and it even does so when that speech insults those in power. That’s not just basic law. It’s part of what makes America America.

I’m sure your response to that is going to be something along the lines of “but we don’t actually represent the LAPD, we’re acting on behalf of the LAPD Foundation, which really is different from the LAPD and just wants to protect its economic interests in selling licensed stuff that says “LAPD” on it. But we all know that’s not what this was about. There’s no likelihood of confusion, no infringement of copyright, no conceivable reason to think that people who like the LAPD will stop buying LAPD stuff if they can instead buy a shirt that says “Fuck the LAPD”. This isn’t about the IP. It’s about the LAPD and the LAPD Foundation being thin-skinned bullies who resent the existence of “Fuck the LAPD” merchandise.

Too damn bad.

The LAPD is not expected to like the existence of “Fuck the LAPD” merchandise. But their sole remedy is to not do things that result in people wanting to buy and wear “Fuck the LAPD” merchandise. I understand that would be a difficult task. But I promise you that it would still be easier than trying to get a court to rule that “Fuck the LAPD” shirts violate the LAPDF’s intellectual property rights.

To be honest, when we wrote our original post on Techdirt about all this, I had wanted to dig in deeper on all of these issues but felt like maybe I was going too hard in response to an issue that really only required “lol, no.”

But I do appreciate that Dunford also was willing to go deep and point out the obvious absurdities here. I eagerly await finding out if IMG ever replied…

Filed Under: 1st amendment, 512f, copyright, fuck the lapd, lapd, mike dunford, misrepresentation, trademark
Companies: cola corporation, img, lapf

‘Lol, No’ Is The Perfect Response To LAPD’s Nonsense ‘IP’ Threat Letter Over ‘Fuck The LAPD’ Shirt

from the fuck-the-lapd dept

We’ve had plenty of posts discussing all manner of behavior from the Los Angeles Police Dept. and/or the LAPD union here at Techdirt. As you might imagine if you’re a regular reader here, the majority of those posts haven’t exactly involved fawning praise for these supposed crimefighters. In fact, if you went on a reading blitz of those posts, you might even come away thinking, “You know what? Fuck the LAPD!”

Well, if you wanted to display your sentiments while you went about your day, you might go over to the Cola Corporation’s website to buy one particular shirt it had on offer there before they completely sold out.

Now, it’s not uncommon for misguided entities to issue intellectual property threat letters over t-shirts and apparel, even when it is of the sort that is obviously fair use. Given that, you might have thought it would be the Los Angeles Lakers that sent a nastygram to Cola Corp. After all, the logo in question is clearly a parody of the LA Lakers logo.

Nope!

It was the Los Angeles Police Foundation via its IMG representatives. The LAPF is something of a shadow financier of the LAPD for equipment, including all manner of tech and gear. We have no idea how an entertainment agency like IMG got in bed with these assbags, but it was IMG sending the threat letter you can see below, chock full of all kinds of claims to rights that the LAPF absolutely does not and could not have.

If you can’t see that, it’s a letter sent by Andrew Schmidt, who represents himself as the Senior Counsel to IMG Worldwide, saying:

RE: Request to Remove Infringing Material From www.thecolacorporation.com Dear Sir/Madam:

I am writing on behalf of IMG Worldwide, LLC (“IMG”), IMG is the authorized representative of Los Angeles Police Foundation CLAPF) LAPF is one of two exclusive holders of intellectual property rights pertaining to trademarks, copyrights and other licensed indicia for (a) the Los Angeles Police Department Badge; (b) the Los Angeles Police Department Uniform; (c) the LAPD motto “To Protect and Serve”; and (d) the word “LAPD” as an acronym/abbreviation for the Los Angeles Police Department (collectively, the “LAPD IP”). Through extensive advertising, promotion and the substantial sale of a full range of licensed products embodying and pertaining to the LAPD IP, the LAPD IP has become famous throughout the world; and as such, carries immeasurable value to LAPF.

We are writing to you regarding an unauthorized use of the LAPD IP on products being sold on your website, www.thecolacorporation.com (the “Infringing Product”). The website URL and description for the Infringing Product is as follows: https://www.thecolacorporation.com/products fack-the- lupd pos-1&sid=435934961&&variant=48461787234611 FUCK THE LAPD For the avoidance of doubt, the aforementioned Infringing Product and the image associated therewith are in no way authorized or approved by LAPF or any of its duly authorized representatives.

This letter hereby serves as a statement that:

1. The aforementioned Infringing Product and the image associated therewith violate LAPF’s rights in the LAPD IP
2. These exclusive rights in and to the LAPD IP are being violated by the sale of the Infringing Product on your website at the URL mentioned above;
3. [Contact info omitted]
4. On information and belief, the use of the LAPD IP on the Infringing Products is not authorized by LAPF, LAPF’s authorized agents or representatives or the law.
5. Under penalty of perjury, I hereby state that the above information is accurate and I am duly authorized to act on on behalf of the rights holder of the intellectual. property at issue I hereby request that you remove or disable access the above-mentioned materials and their corresponding URL’s as they appear on your services in as expedient a manner as possible.

So, where to begin? For starters, note how the letter breezily asserts copyright, trademark, and “other licensed indicia” without ever going into detail as to what it thinks it actually holds the rights to? That’s an “indicia” of a legal threat that is bloviating, with nothing to back it up. If you know what rights you have, you clearly state them. This letter does not.

If it’s a copyright play that the LAPF is trying to make, it’s going to go absolutely nowhere. The use is made for the purposes of parody and political commentary. It’s clearly fair use, and there are plenty of precedents to back that up. Second, what exactly is the copyright claim here? It’s not the logo. Again, if anything, that would be the Lakers’ claim to make. The only thing possibly related to the LAPD would be those letters: LAPD. And, no, the LAPD does not get to copyright the letters LAPD.

If it’s a trademark play instead, well, that might actually work even less for the LAPF, for any number of reasons. Again, this is parody and political commentary: both First Amendment rights that trump trademarks. More importantly, in trademark you have the question of the likelihood of confusion. We’re fairly sure the LAPF doesn’t want to make the case that the public would be confused into thinking that the Los Angeles Police Foundation was an organization that is putting out a “Fuck the LAPD” t-shirt. Finally, for there to be a trademark, there has to be a use in commerce. Is the LAPF selling “Fuck the LAPD” t-shirts? Doubtful.

But that’s all sort of besides the point, because the LAPF doesn’t have the rights IMG asserted in its letter. Again, the only possible claim that the LAPF can make here is that it has ownership to the letters LAPD. And it does not. Beyond the fact that it had no “creative” input into LAPD, the LAPD is a city’s law enforcement agency and you cannot copyright or trademark such a thing. And, as we’ve discussed multiple times in the past, government agencies don’t get to claim IP on their agency names. The only restrictions they can present are on deceptive uses of logos/seals/etc.

But that is clearly not the case here. And we already have some examples from a decade ago of government agencies demanding the removal of parody logos and… it not ending very well for the government.

So, what is actually happening here is that the LAPF/LAPD (via IMG) is pretending it has the right to screw with private citizens in ways it absolutely does not, and is using those false rights to harass those private persons with threatening behavior to intimidate them into doing what the LAPF wants. Which, if I’m being totally honest here, is certainly on brand as roughly the most police-y thing it could do in response to a simple t-shirt that is no longer even for sale.

Now, you might imagine that the Cola Corporation’s own legal team would reply to the silly threat letter outlining all of the above, crafting a careful and articulate narrative responding to all the points raised by the LAPF, and ensuring that their full legal skills were on display.

Instead, the company brought on former Techdirt podcast guest, lawyer Mike Dunford, who crafted something that is ultimately even better.

If you can’t read that, you’re not missing much. It says:

Andrew,

Lol, no.

_Sincerel_y,
Mike Dunford

Perfect. No notes. May it go down in history alongside Arkell v. Pressdam, or the infamous Cleveland Browns response to a fan complaining about paper airplanes, as the perfect way to respond to absolutely ridiculous legal threat letters.

For what it’s worth, Dunford’s boss, Akiva Cohen, noted that this letter was “a fun one to edit.” We can only imagine.

This was a fun one to edit

[image or embed]

— AkivaMCohen (@akivamcohen.bsky.social) Apr 18, 2024 at 2:47 PM

Filed Under: copyright, intellectual property, lapd, lol, lol no, mike dunford, police, threats, trademark
Companies: cola corporation, img, la lakers, lapf

City Of Los Angeles Files Another Lawsuit Against Recipient Of Cop Photos The LAPD Accidentally Released

from the hoping-two-wrongs-will-make-things-right dept

Things remain troubling in Los Angeles. The city is still trying to somehow punish investigative journalist Ben Camacho and activist group Stop LAPD Spying Coalition for a mistake its own police department made.

Camacho made a public records request for LAPD officers’ photos. After some litigation, the LAPD finally complied. Camacho — who writes for Knock LA — sent these to Stop LAPD Spying, which then added them to its searchable database of LAPD officers.

All of this was completely above board. It involved a public records request and a response from the LAPD. Then everything got litigious. The LAPD’s union sued the city for releasing these photos, claiming doing so endangered undercover cops. The chief of the LAPD then started making his own noise, demanding the city sue Camacho and Stop LAPD Spying for… well, publishing records they had legally obtained.

The city complied. It sued both Camacho and Stop LAPD Spying, seeking an “emergency” order blocking the publication of officers’ photos and demanding the return of photos the LAPD had apparently accidentally released.

The city argued that the release of these photos (and their subsequent publication) undercut the public’s interest in public safety. According to the city’s attorneys, the public had more interest in protecting cops’ identities than learning more about their public servants.

It somehow managed to secure an obviously unconstitutional order last year:

In August, a judge ruled that the city could justifiably censor the free speech of Stop LAPD by forcing it to stop publishing pictures of officers online. Stop LAPD and Camacho have appealed the decision, which legal experts have described as unusual.

The order isn’t being complied with at the moment. The appeal process is still ongoing, so everything remains exactly where the LAPD and city of Los Angeles don’t want it: accessible to the general public.

The lawsuit filed against the city by the police union is still ongoing as well. And while that winds its way through the legal system, the city has decided to double down on its legal actions against journalist Ben Camacho and the Stop LAPD Spying Coalition.

In an effort to curtail unlawful LAPD overreach and entrapment, several activists across the city created a database of LAPD officers, an action that qualifies as free speech. Rather than heed the call-in by the public to Stop LAPD Spying, LA City Attorney Hydee Feldstein Soto has chosen to further the city’s attacks on the freedom of the press by issuing a lawsuit for these actions against Knock LA photo editor Ben Camacho.

Through this lawsuit, the city of Los Angeles has chosen to suppress the right of the public to hold police officers accountable instead of examining the culture of misconduct that has been proven to exist within the LAPD. Feldstein Soto and her office have expressly demonstrated the city’s use of censorship to suppress information that keeps the public safe and free.

Being wrong twice isn’t going to make the city right. There’s a high bar to meet if the city wants to route itself around the First Amendment. It’s unlikely to clear it. The city screwed up when it released the photos of undercover officers. The recipients of inadvertent disclosure are under no legal or constitutional obligation to engage in self-censorship just because the city screwed up. The city, however, has plenty of obligations to the Constitution, so its best bet in this case would be to concede the loss and get back to defending itself against the police union’s allegation of a “negligent, improper, and malicious” photo release.

And that’s where things are going to get super-tricky for the city. The Los Angeles Times’ coverage of this second lawsuit details the defenses being offered up by the city in response to the police union lawsuit. Its primary defense makes it pretty clear it should never have sued Camacho and Stop LAPD Spying once, much less twice.

The city said it sought “indemnity and contribution” from Camacho and Stop LAPD. In its anti-SLAPP motion filed Jan. 16, the city called the release of the photos an “inadvertent production,” which, “while regrettable, is not actionable.”

If the city’s release of the photos was “regrettable” but “not actionable,” how can it possibly justify the legal actions it is pursuing against the recipients of its “inadvertent production?” It can’t. And I guarantee its defense of its actions against the police union’s allegations will be used against it in its lawsuits against Camacho and Stop LAPD Spying.

That’s an unforced error. But maybe the city feels it would be better or cheaper to get the police union’s lawsuit dismissed than somehow emerge with a victory against journalists and activists. If so, it’s (finally) correct. It would do far less damage to the city and its residents’ rights to convince a judge it simply made a (non-actionable) mistake. But its insistence on laying the blame for the alleged harms on the recipients of legally obtained information suggests it may ultimately feel it’s better to stay on the union’s good side, even if it means the First Amendment has to pay the price for its litigious actions.

Filed Under: 1st amendment, ben camacho, hydee feldstein soto, journalism, lapd, stop lapd spying

California Cops Now Have To Lead With The Pretext When Making Pretextual Stops

from the do-YOU-know-why-you-pulled-me-over? dept

A law passed last year has now taken effect in California. This attempt to limit pretextual stops and biased policing means California law enforcement officers will no longer be able to start every traffic stop with an impromptu Q&A session. They’ll have to get right to the point.

Here’s what the law says:

(a) A peace officer making a traffic or pedestrian stop, before engaging in questioning related to a criminal investigation or traffic violation, shall state the reason for the stop. The officer shall document the reason for the stop on any citation or police report resulting from the stop.

And this is what it would look like in practice, as stated late last year by a California law enforcement official:

“This is instead of the officer asking a driver, ‘Do you know why I pulled you over?’” LAPD Captain Steven Ramos told the commission. “Now, the onus is on the officer to tell the individual why they pulled them over.”

Which is the way it should always be everywhere. That question has always been stupid. You pulled me over. You tell me. It’s not a serious question.

If the LAPD official seems receptive to this change, it’s probably because the LAPD has already made steps to limit pretextual stops by requiring something more than “let’s go on a fishing expedition!”

Under a policy approved in March, officers must have a reason to suspect a more serious crime is afoot before initiating a pretext stop, and they are required to record their reasoning on body camera before the stop.

[…]

The change appears to be having the intended effect. A Times analysis of LAPD records has found that in the months since the new policy went into effect, officers are stopping far fewer people for the minor violations that can mark the start of pretext stops and are conducting fewer searches during those stops.

Go figure. Requiring cops to actually suspect something before engaging in a stop results in fewer stops, fewer searches and… more contraband. According to the data, LAPD officers have seen a slight uptick in discovered contraband since the policy change, which suggests the quality of stops may be increasing despite the number of stops over small violations dropping from 21% to 12% of all stops.

The LAPD’s policy requires officers to tell people why they’ve pulled them over and document that on their body-worn cameras. This new law basically codifies that policy and expands it statewide.

Of course, there’s an exception.

Subdivision (a) does not apply when the officer reasonably believes that withholding the reason for the stop is necessary to protect life or property from imminent threat, including, but not limited to, cases of terrorism or kidnapping.

That loophole will need to be monitored closely. It can’t possibly be closed, given the reality of law enforcement. Suggestions abound — some tied to other traffic/pedestrian stop reporting mandated by the same law. But the way forward is still unclear.

It’s not clear who would decide whether an officer’s refusal to disclose the basis for a stop was reasonable; a state board has been considering regulations to require officers to tell their superiors, and the state, why they believed full disclosure would endanger them.

They’d better come up with some good excuses. It’s no longer a matter of breaking policy. This sort of thing is now literally breaking the law.

And, of course, law enforcement unions are against this, even if they can’t seem to muster coherent counterarguments.

In opposition, the California State Sheriffs’ Association argued that “traffic stops can be among the most dangerous types of interactions that peace officers encounter” and they should remain free to take immediate action without first explaining their reasons.

So… the union thinks cops can’t state the reason for the stop into their recording devices during the time it takes to exit the car and walk up to the stopped car? There’s absolutely no logic to this statement. If it’s a guns-out stop, it isn’t pretextual. This law is intended to limit pretextual stops and that’s what it will do. The CSSA’s argument is one of pure desperation — the kind made by people who firmly believe law enforcement should be treated as a law unto itself, answerable to no one.

This is a good thing and should be copied by more states. It will increase the quality of stops, deter exploratory stops and searches, and force officers to focus on serious crime, rather than poorly lit plates or dangling air fresheners. If traffic stops are truly “among the most dangerous types of interactions,” anything that reduces the number of stops is bound to increase officer safety, right? I mean, that’s what the union rep said. Better stops, more production, and a whole lot less hassle is going to work out better for everyone.

Filed Under: 4th amendment, biased policing, california, fishing expeditions, lapd, police, pretextual stops

Corrupt LA Cops Saddle The City With More Lost Convictions

from the efficiency-at-its-worst dept

The LAPD’s handling of gang violence hasn’t gone well. For years, gang task forces roamed the city, violating rights repeatedly. Adding insult to these injuries, the city spent millions funding a predictive policing program that did little more than encourage biased policing.

Then there’s the LAPD’s gang database, a horrendous mess filled with people designated as gang members simply because they live or work in areas where gangs operate. As of early 2020, the gang database contained 90,000 names. Removal options weren’t even introduced until 20 years after this database’s debut. On top of that, the gang unit apparently faked paperwork to add people to the database for no other reason than these officers knew they’d likely get away with it.

Some officers in the PD’s gang units have been suspended or fired for altering or vanishing body cam footage that undercuts their narratives. In July 2020, three of these officers were hit with criminal charges for filing false reports and falsifying evidence.

Three years later, the investigation into LAPD’s gang unit continues, this time with the FBI attached. According to allegations, members of this unit routinely failed to document stops. On top of that, some were caught editing camera footage to remove evidence that might undercut their chosen narratives.

Some people believe it’s best to take a hands-off approach to specialized units like these. Some of these people are local legislators but most of these people are LAPD supervisors. The theory is cops can deal with crime better when they don’t have someone staring over their shoulders. The LAPD has spent decades sacrificing goodwill and respect for small gains in law enforcement efficiency.

Or so it seems to believe, despite evidence to the contrary. The “gains” provided by a specialized unit that apparently routinely violated LAPD policies and broke actual laws are being rolled back because of these violated policies and broken laws.

The Los Angeles Times reports a few hundred convictions are now in jeopardy, thanks to the actions of the officers who helped secure them.

With criminal charges looming against the officers at the center of the Los Angeles Police Department’s latest corruption scandal, county prosecutors have started a broad review of hundreds of cases that rely on testimony or evidence from at least two members of a gang squad suspected of making illegal stops and stealing items from suspects, according to multiple law enforcement sources.

The sources, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss deliberations within the Los Angeles district attorney’s office, said as many as 350 criminal cases have been identified as potentially compromised.

When your gang unit appears to be completely compromised, it’s hardly a surprise the convictions it obtained might be “potentially compromised.” All of this was carried out under the heading of making the streets safer. But no one’s gaining any more safety when officers and investigators are undermining their own convictions because they’re unwilling to do the job without violating rights or engaging in criminal activity of their own.

According to the LAPD, at least 15 members of its gang unit are implicated in this debacle. Only two officers appear to be on the chopping block, however, which means the LAPD still isn’t taking this as seriously as it should. The remaining officers have been suspended with pay or assigned to desk duty. For the moment, the gang unit does not exist.

And, as is almost always the case when a bunch of officers are facing criminal charges, the person on top wants to pretend there’s nothing to get upset about… at least not yet.

In a briefing at Tuesday’s Police Commission meeting, LAPD Chief Michel Moore said he wanted to let the investigations play out before commenting further.

“I will not project or guess the number of charges and the outcomes of this; I’ll wait for the investigation and I’ll look forward to the prosecuting agencies making those determinations,” he said.

That’s the chief putting some distance between himself and the people he was supposed to be overseeing, all without specifically condemning any of the confirmed crimes/violations committed by these officers. These are empty words meant to do nothing more than allow Chief Moore to gracefully exit a briefing without having to answer any tough questions.

As for the alleged body cam footage alterations performed by gang unit members, the chief is even less willing to take any responsibility for allowing this to happen on his watch.

On Tuesday, Moore said the department’s review found “a lack of consistent understanding about our supervisors’ ability to review body-worn video.”

See? It’s all just a misunderstanding. Probably no one did anything wrong. Things were misunderstood, although Chief Moore isn’t capable of saying who they were misunderstood by, nor what these misunderstandings entailed. Instead, it’s a thing that occurred that was committed by no one.

Just more of the same for a police department that has routinely refused to earn the respect of the people it serves, much less respect their rights when “serving” them. At the end of this, convicted criminals will walk and residents will be on the hook for every lawsuit settlement linked to this scandal, not to mention the pension plans of every officer allowed to resign, rather than face termination.

Filed Under: gang activity, la, lapd, michel moore

LAPD Releases Recording Two Cops’ Decision To Pursue Pokémon Rather Than Robbery Suspects

from the serving-(ultra-balls)-and-protecting-(leaderboard-position) dept

In the annals of law enforcement’s neglect — if not actual disdain — for its alleged desire to “serve and protect,” this is surely on of the weirdest and most specific episodes in its ongoing infamy.

It hearkens back to a simpler time when smartphones were mere extensions of people’s desire to catch digital creatures while wandering the real world — an augmented reality game filled with bugs, cheaters, and disappointment. It was also an undeniable hit — a cross-cultural fulfillment of the promise of always-on smartphones that was somewhat tempered by the flawed reality of its… well… reality.

Sure, the average American has long grown accustomed to the careless actions of phone users, whether it’s pedestrians wandering into traffic with their eyes glued to their phones or drivers wandering all over traffic lanes with their eyes glued to their phones, they surely didn’t expect their hired guns were doing the same thing. It’s one thing when some rando does it. It’s quite another when sworn servants and protectors decide to abdicate both responsibilities because they’ve decided the best use of their (paid for by the public) time is hunting down a digital good for internet points.

When LAPD officers Louis Lozano and Eric Mitchell decided they were better off trying to round up a Togetic with the Pokémon Go app rather than respond to a robbery call, they were (quite correctly) fired for failing to do the job they were being paid to do.

Of course, these two officers sued, claiming their firing was unjustified. According to the officers, they weren’t ignoring a robbery call in their immediate area to play Pokémon Go. No, they were just using a tracking app to determine what “rare” Pokémon might be in their immediate area.

Petitioners… denied playing Pokémon Go while on duty. They claimed they were monitoring a “Pokémon tracker” application on their phone, but not playing the game itself. As for “catching” Pokémon, Officer Lozano insisted this referred to “capturing [an] image” of the Pokémon on the tracking application to share with friends, while Officer Mitchell said his statements about “fighting” the Togetic referred to “relaying that information to the groups on my app,” adding that, “in order to take the picture, occasionally, the creature will fight.” Lozano said they were not engaged in a game; rather, it was a “social media event.” Mitchell said he did not consider the application a game because it was not “advertised as a game.” Petitioners admitted leaving their foot beat area in search of Snorlax, but they insisted they did so “both” as part of an “extra patrol” and to “chase this mythical creature.”

That argument failed to impress the court handling their case, which declared their firing justified while also holding them responsible for the legal fees racked up by the city to defend this completely defensible firing.

Sure, we know cops are regular people. But we expect cops to be better than us and not so easily distracted by the app-du-jour when in uniform. We expect officers — like anyone else employed anywhere — to fulfill the requirements of the job and put their social lives (or social apps) on hold until they’re off the clock.

Not helping these officers in their court case was the transcript of the dash cam recording. This recording showed the officers actively ignored calls while (just as actively) attempting to hunt down a rare Pokémon. It also showed the bizarre we-just-used-a-tracking-app defense was a lie. These cops were hunting digital creatures rather than robbery suspects, something that was revealed by the LAPD with its release of (I am not even kidding) dishonesty.pdf.

Lozano: “You’re still trying to catch it.” Mitchell: “Yeah man.” Lozano: “Gee. I’m lucky then. Dog gone it.” Mitchell: “Still trying to catch it. Holy crap.” Lozano: “Ultra-ball. I’m lucky right now I haven’t really needed ultra-balls. I have 250.” Mitchell: “Yeah, that’s good…what the heck man. Holy crap man. This thing is fighting the crap out of me. Do I have good stats at least? Decent defense blown away by stats.” Lozano: “You said you did or didn’t have one of these?” Mitchell: “I don’t have one.” Lozano: “You got lucky catching that thing.” Mitchell: “Sure did.” Lozano: “It shouldn’t be this difficult though.” Mitchell: “This thing is crazy difficult. Holy crap.” Lozano: “I saw you mess that up. It still bounced out. Is there going to be another poke-ball higher than that one?” Mitchell: “Yeah. There’s a master ball.” Lozano: “At level what?”

At level what, indeed. From there, the officers decided their fellow cops (who they decided not to assist) were going to be far more impressed with their Pokémon haul than their law enforcement work.

Mitchell: “Holy crap! Finally! The guys are going to be so jealous.” Lozano: “Let’s go back to the 7-11 and sit there.”

Truly one of several nadirs of law enforcement — all of it captured on camera. And that’s what former Vice Media journalist Jason Koebler brings to us from his new home at 404Media. Koebler has obtained the dash cam footage of this bizarre incident via a public records request. The full video of the non-stop inaction runs about three hours. The edited version captures the Pokémon hunt determined to be more worthy of tax dollars than the hunt for robbery suspects in the officers’ immediate area.

It also includes footage of the dangerous driving these officers engaged in during their hunt for this Pokémon Go rarity:

The pair tailgate various cars, who understandably move out of the way. They complain about a light staying red, then clearly drive faster than the speed limit through residential streets, zooming over speed humps as they seek to get to Snorlax before a two-minute timer runs out (which is presumably when the Pokémon would disappear, which they reference by saying “we’ll get the same result as friggin’ yesterday and it’s gonna go pink and change into something else.”) They nearly go the wrong way down a one-way street, strategize which way might be fastest, then ultimately run a stop sign and eventually turn and park facing the wrong way against traffic on what appears in the video to be a one-way street (Google Streetview shows lots of construction in the area).

Sure, this event may not represent all cops. But it’s a pretty good representation of all people, many of whom tend to prioritize the wrong things. “Cops” remain a subset of “people.” Expecting them to be better than the people they’re supposed to serve ignores the basic realities of humanity. The thing is that cops take cop jobs under the assumption they won’t be as bad as prioritization as the general public. Unfortunately, this is just another incident that clearly demonstrates they’re no better than the rest of us, even if they have uniforms, guns, badges, and the power to deprive us of our rights at any given time.

Filed Under: eric mitchell, lapd, louis lozano, pokemon go