Three LAPD Officers Facing Criminal Charges For Faking Gang Database Records

Legal Issues

from the [thinking-face-emoji]-who-are-the-REAL-gangsters-here dept

Law enforcement “gang databases” are a joke. And definitely not a funny one. Officers can convert innocent citizens into gang members just because they live in the same neighborhood or attend the same schools as gang members. Wearing the “wrong” clothes can get people “nominated” for extra law enforcement harassment. So can simply talking to gang members, like volunteers of outreach programs often do.

This has filled gang databases with a bunch of junk data. But it’s junk data that can disrupt lives, if not destroy them completely. Los Angeles cops trying to look busy (this is the best spin I can put on this) have been tossing people into CalGang with zero justification whatsoever. More than a twenty officers are under investigation for falsifying records related to the state’s gang database.

The investigations continue but it appears at least a few LAPD officers might be heading to jail.

Three Los Angeles police officers were charged Friday with falsifying records and obstructing justice by claiming without evidence that people they stopped were gang members or associates, Los Angeles prosecutors announced Friday.

[…]

The 59-count complaint charged officers Braxton Shaw, Michael Coblentz and Nicolas Martinez with conspiracy to obstruct justice and multiple counts of filing a false police report and preparing false documentary evidence.

Three down. At least twenty to go. One of the three charged did most of the falsifying. Officer Shaw falsified 43 field interview cards, with the others only contributing a total of nine fakes.

Turns out these officers were ratted out by their own equipment.

They allege the officers wrote on cards that people admitted to being gang members, when footage from the officers’ body cameras showed no such admissions or showed the people had explicitly denied gang affiliation.

The falsification went beyond lying about interactions with Los Angeles residents. Officers also conjured up at least a dozen fictional gang members to add to the database.

Some of this can be chalked up to quotas-that-aren’t-quotas. Quotas have pretty much been banned everywhere, but law enforcement agencies still rely on metrics that generate the same pressure the now-forbidden quotas did. The LAPD uses field interviews with gang members as a productivity measurement, which encourages officers to engage in fraudulent behavior to secure pay raises and promotions. This doesn’t appear to have infected the entire department. Just the one that dealt with gang members the most: the Metro Division. A division with 4% of the force turned in 20% of the department’s field interview cards.

The criminal complaint and the multiple ongoing investigations have — for the moment — killed CalGang.

Last month, amid widespread protests over police abuses, [LAPD Chief Michael] Moore and Mayor Eric Garcetti announced the LAPD would stop submitting new entries into the CalGang database. Moore this week told the Police Commission that a months-long review found glaring inconsistencies and inaccuracies in how the LAPD used the database, and recommended it permanently halt its participation.

Hopefully, this recommendation sticks. And, just as hopefully, the LAPD won’t look to fill this gangland void in the future by creating something else just as damaging and easily-abused once the heat has died down. But if it does create CalGang 2.0, it could fill the database pretty quickly simply by taking a look at the sheriff’s deputies next door.

Filed Under: fake records, gang database, lapd, police