City of Los Angeles Caught Destroying Public Records

The City of Los Angeles has started to quietly delete Los Angeles Police Department or LAPD rosters from the city’s official public records website. Over the past two weeks, Stop LAPD Spying Coalition has identified several examples of LAPD quietly deleting rosters of LAPD officers from official LAPD websites. Some of the records were downloadable and searchable on the city’s website for three or four years before LAPD deleted them. We are not aware of any other instance where LAPD or any other public agency has deleted public records in this manner.

The city began destroying these records two days after filing a lawsuit against Stop LAPD Spying Coalition to censor the publication of personnel records that the city itself made public. Both the destruction of these records and the lawsuit indicate the city’s desperation to appease the Los Angeles Police Protective League and increase police hiring by turning LAPD into a secret police force.

This is an escalation of the city’s ongoing war on the public’s ability to access public records. The destruction of these records is part of a campaign of city officials declaring it illegal to possess public records that LAPD no longer wants public, even after LAPD itself made the records public. These records also confirm that the LAPD has long published detailed rosters of all LAPD officers, including many officers whose identity city officials are suddenly declaring confidential.