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Los Angeles Superior Court. | Photo courtesy of Amaury Laporte/Flickr (CC BY 2.0)
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The city of Los Angeles has filed a lawsuit against a journalist and watchdog group, hoping to recover photos of officers mistakenly released last year, including some who work undercover.
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.
The city mistakenly included information regarding officers working undercover assignments.
“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 offered a bounty to anyone that killed an officer.
“This is a new low,” Stop LAPD Spying stated on Twitter on Wednesday. “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.”
On Tuesday, undercover officers filed claims against the city and the department over the photos’ release.
