LAPD Thinks Best Response To Leaked Recording Of Councilmembers’ Racist Remarks Is Going After Reddit Users
from the maybe-the-real-problem-is-the-councilmembers dept
The Los Angeles Police Department is here to serve and protect… the powerful. The rest of you are on your own.
Earlier this year, someone leaked an audio recording of a closed-door meeting attended by the city’s Latino lawmakers. The comments made during this meeting were extremely disturbing, exposing the racism and bigotry of the meeting’s attendees.
In this surreptitiously recorded conversation from October 2021, Los Angeles City Council President Nury Martinez — while speaking with Councilmembers Kevin de León and Gil Cedillo as well as Los Angeles County Federation of Labor President Ron Herrera — made racist remarks and insults about various elected officials.
Martinez focused in particular on Councilmember Mike Bonin, who is white, and Bonin’s young son, who is Black. At one point, Martinez called Bonin a “little bitch” and referred to his son as “Parece changuito,” or “like a monkey.” She also said Bonin’s son had misbehaved on a parade float and needed a “beatdown.”
The recording didn’t surface until nearly a year later. It debuted at Reddit, posted by a now-suspended user. There’s more to the recording, none of it good.
“I see a lot of little short dark people,” Martinez said of that section of Koreatown, employing stereotypes long used against Oaxacans in Mexico and in the United States.
“I was like, I don’t know where these people are from, I don’t know what village they came [from], how they got here,” Martinez said, before adding “Tan feos” — “They’re ugly.”
Martinez says “F— that guy … He’s with the Blacks” while speaking about Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. George Gascón.
The correct response from law enforcement would have been to do nothing. If councilmembers didn’t want to come off as bigoted idiots, they shouldn’t have said the things they did. But power protects power and the LAPD has decided to get involved, wielding a wiretapping statute in hopes of finding out who created and leaked this recording.
Police have sought a search warrant for the Reddit website as they try to identify the person who leaked a racist discussion between Los Angeles City Council members and a powerful labor leader, causing a scandal that has rocked the community and shaken faith in its lawmakers.
The LAPD is trying to determine the origin of the recording that appeared on the site in October, according to a Tuesday statement.
“The investigation involves interviews of persons present and any potential witnesses that have insight into this investigation. A search warrant request has been initiated to Reddit in order to identify the person responsible for posting the recording,” said the statement.
Wrong. Wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong. The problem is the councilmembers, not the person who leaked the recording. Chances are, the person who made the surreptitious recording had attended similar meetings, heard similar slurs uttered, and decided they’d had enough of it. This is public service. This is not, as the LAPD claims, something to be investigated.
Unfortunately, California is not a one-party consent state. According to state law, everyone being recorded must consent to the recording, which makes this recording illegal. Whether or not prosecutors think this is worth prosecuting remains to be seen, but for now, the LAPD is applying a tentative jackboot to the First Amendment, choosing to punish protected expression just because it has a statute it can abuse to deter others from similarly recording disturbing conversations between public officials.
The LAPD made a choice here. It could have taken a report from (presumably) a councilmember caught on tape and tossed the paperwork into a filing cabinet where it would never be looked at again. Instead, it decided it would help powerful bigots identify the source of the recording — something that will likely result in both civil and criminal cases against this person. The PD didn’t need to come down on the side of evil. But that is what it has chosen to do with its discretion. And now, a very powerful force is aiding powerful people in their quest to punish the person who exposed them for who they are.
Filed Under: gil cedillo, kevin de leon, lapd, leaks, nury martinez, ron herrera, wiretapping
Companies: reddit
Comments on “LAPD Thinks Best Response To Leaked Recording Of Councilmembers’ Racist Remarks Is Going After Reddit Users”
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Stop it
The police uphold the law. They have no discretion.
If you don’t want a weaponized police force, vote for a better DA.
If you want to change the law, vote.
Vote.
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If only it were that simple…
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“They have no discretion”
Oh rot. Police exercise discretion all the time. And this would be a good time for them to do so.
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“The police uphold the law. They have no discretion.”
There’s a lot of stories that disprove this, of course, including ones where the cops don’t actually need to know the law.
“If you want to change the law, vote.”
Always good advice. If you don’t like the current status quo, chances are the people who are fine with it will turn up to vote, so make sure your voice is heard. If you don’t vote, you’re basically saying you’re fine with other people making the decision for you, so don’t complain when they choose something other than what you want.
Re: "If you don’t want a weaponized police force, vote for a better DA"
“….that guy” [George Gascón, Los Angeles County Dist. Atty] “He’s with the Blacks”
As a as a fourth generation (1870) Angelino, and a resident of South Central, and having run a (80% first-generation Korean) church since 1988…. Gascón is the FIRST chance anyone has in this City. F yourself
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Or they could simply not assume that everyone is out to get them or opt for escalation at every opportunity? More relevant to this case, this idea that councilmembers need permission to be recorded sounds suspiciously like the claim that police officers should never be recorded. It’s fair to argue that the LAPD may have been “just following orders”, but that’s a terrible way to foist responsibility. The cops should not be working as the personal reputation guardians for councilmembers.
Ah, yes, the old adage of “everyone gets the government they deserve”. I imagine that worked out well for the Republicans, which is why they’ve been spending the last two years bitching and whining about it.
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They absolutely have discretion. Don’t lie to protect them.
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The police uphold the law. They have no discretion.
One need only look at their response(or lack thereof as it were) when one of their own breaks the law to see that yes, they absolutely do.
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It’s interesting that the TechDirt community collectively chooses to hide/obscure a post that merely encourages people to vote if they want to change the law.
Apparently the general consensus here is anti-democracy.
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It would be.
There’s more than one point raised in that post, but it’s noted that you leapt to the assumption that only one could be at issue here.
Christopher Dorner, you’re needed again.
Re: Actually...
Chis Dorner can’t help here we need more reporting & transparency.
So perhaps what we really need is more Greenwald, Manning, & Snowden?
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We definitely don’t need more Glenn Greenwald considering his gradual mental decline…
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What we need are consequences for these assholes. Greenwald, Manning, and Snowden didn’t bring any real consequences.
When it’s consequence time, you need a Dorner.
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…just finishing up this affidavit for a search warrant…
Re: Re: Re: The best screenwriters work for "law enforcement"
The Christmas movie ‘Django Unchained’ was released December 25, 2012 then Christopher Dorner’s manifesto was “published” on a Facebook® page February 7th. The manifesto “calls out names such as Todd Phillips (The Hangover franchise), Max Brooks (World War Z), Charlie Sheen (Dorner writes, “He’s effin’ awesome.”), and singles out Ellen DeGeneres for her “excellent contribution to entertaining America and bringing the human factor to entertainment.””
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SCdqybEfy9w
Poor Schmuck. Now my neighborhood (USC) has a uniformed guard on each and every street corner; Sell Fear
https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Latest-News-Wires/2013/0212/Christopher-Dorner-Hollywood-anti-hero-casts-self-in-real-life-drama
Disclaimer: In the mid-1980’s, i owned & sold the best fake blood formula in Hollywood, selling as much as 30 gallons a month
Note the dates https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_accolades_received_by_Django_Unchained
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I’ll take significantly less of Greenwald. As he currently is anyway.
Councilmember is outed as wildly racist and the problem is… the person who outed them.
Looks like the council member isn’t the only racist in the equation.
Unless...
Unless there was a bug planted (unlikely) I assume the list of suspects is pretty narrow and includes mainly people inside the clique. Sounds like infighting to me. I guess they all deserve each other.
This also provides another interesting lesson – when yo post to something like Reddit – or anywhere that associates you with a userid – your whole history of years of posts provides a clue who you are ( “just got back from Christmas vacation in Cancun”, or “My uncle just died”, or “I graduated 30 years ago”). The moral is to (a) always use a throwaway account especially for illegal things and (b) always VPN and (c) change to a new user account every so often to minimize the ID chain.
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I don’t believe it.
Democrats can’t be racist.
This is a fake story.
Wonders
Arnt these public meetings?
Didnt they start RECORDING all public meetings?
Think this is the best way to Show the people WHAT these folks do in a Meeting.
Audio recording? EASY, turn on phone and just Sit there.
Video recording? its best to point it at the group. Abit of a pain.
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I don’t think so.
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-10-09/la-city-hall-leaked-audio-martinez-cedillo-de-leon-bonin
Wire or Shield, doesn't matter ACAB
Someone called up Aceveda and had them bring down the Mackey to intimidate the recorder.
Public Business
Weren’t these comments in public meetings, in which case the same rules that apply to cops in public should apply here?
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“Closed-door” is a phrase meaning “not public”.
Whether it is a good thing that governments can close their doors at whim (or, indeed, that they are usually closed and only occasionally open) is a mental exercise for citizens.
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“Ralph M. Brown Act” is California’s “sunshine” law for local government, and REQUIRES public access, quoting the 1953 act:
“The people of this State do not yield their sovereignty to the agencies which serve them. The people, in delegating authority, do not give their public servants the right to decide what is good for the people to know and what is not good for them to know. The people insist on remaining informed so that they may retain control over the instruments they have created.”
As the California Attorney General explained:
“This definition makes it clear that the body need not take any action in order for a gathering to be defined as a meeting. A gathering is a meeting if a majority of the members of the body merely receive information or discuss their views on an issue. A meeting also covers a body’s deliberations, including the consideration, analysis or debate of an issue, and any vote which may ultimately be taken…….A Brown Act meeting does not have to be formally announced, agendized, or convened in order to be subject to the Act, serial meetings, either in person or by text, telephone, fax or go-betweens, constitute a meeting if done to discuss public business, regardless of whether the group actually forms a consensus.”
https://oag.ca.gov/system/files/media/the-brown-act.pdf
Human failing…
They have shown you who they are, they have double and tripled down upon it and STILL some people support them.
If this does go to charges and court, I cannot but wonder how these councilmen are going to react to finding out that would then be required to be active participants in a full-blown discovery process of all their closed-door meetings
Pretty sure LAPD was pressured into an investigation by certain council members.
Right right right right right
When you break the law you MUST be healed accountable.
Activism, even the rarity today of meaningful activism, does not shield you from the law.
If you have a problem with this situation, take it up with lawmakers to change the law.
Not the criminal who broke it.
No, the problem was the meeting itself. All the predictable hysteria over racism completely eclipsed the fact that we had city officials meeting with Big Labor to gerrymander the city’s voting districts.
Why did Big Labor have a seat at that table and no one else? Because they shovel mountains of money to Democrats?
You back a truck full of cash up to the Democrat city council, and you get to decide where and for whom the rest of us can vote?
But no, we completely ignore that in favor of collectively clutching our pearls and running for the fainting couch over some crude comments.