![]() Such exemptions could include officers working undercover only part time, Moore wrote. Among them are: divisional narcotics enforcement details vice units gang enforcement details the Gang and Narcotics Division Major Crimes Division Robbery-Homicide Division Special Investigation Section Special Operations Division Crime Impact Team Internet Crimes Against Children all division or bureau-based surveillance teams and officers who regularly serve on task forces. He included a list of units and divisions whose officers’ photos would automatically be excluded from future public disclosures. Apologies only go so far, and words must be followed by action,” Moore wrote. I recognize that many of you feel that the Department did not meet this expectation. “As employees of this Department and dedicated guardians of the City of Los Angeles, you deserve to feel protected and supported by your employer. Certain roles, he wrote, “require this added level of anonymity to preserve officers’ safety and to ensure that investigations are not compromised if the identity of the employee as a police officer is revealed.” In a departmentwide email last week, Moore said he ordered an audit of officers in more sensitive roles whose personal information wouldn’t be released in the future. ![]() The city’s suit was roundly condemned by 1st Amendment and media rights experts who said it smacks of restrictions on free speech - particularly since the city itself provided the images.Īmid the unfolding controversy, LAPD officials have avoided the term “undercover.” Moore has repeatedly used the phrase “sensitive assignment” - a term that could encompass a broad variety of officers. The disclosure has spawned several legal challenges, the most recent of which came last week when city officials filed a lawsuit against Camacho and Stop LAPD Spying over the photos’ publication. But after the photos were published last month, LAPD Chief Michel Moore and other officials began to suggest in news interviews that the photos of some undercover officers were accidentally released and posed a safety risk. They argue that the danger such public photos present to officers who have assumed aliases to infiltrate the underworld overrides calls for transparency.īut some critics dismiss the LAPD’s claims as overblown and accuse the department of drumming up hysteria in the media as cover for its efforts to expand the definition of which officers’ identities should be kept from the public.Ĭamacho has posted communications with city officials prior to the photos’ release in which they said the disclosure did not include any undercover officers. The fraught and complicated issue of covert police activity has been made more so, as Los Angeles Police Department and police union officials try to claw back the images released in response to a March public records request. Or should it also include those who only go undercover part time, busting johns who solicit sex or bartenders who sell alcohol to minors? And what about officers with fake online profiles? Should it only be officers involved in the most sensitive assignments - embedded with drug cartels, terrorists and other criminal networks - who grow beards, dye hair, shed their identities? As fallout continues around the Los Angeles Police Department’s release of undercover officers’ pictures, the question of who actually works undercover is far from settled.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |