from the hoping-two-wrongs-will-make-things-right dept

Things remain troubling in Los Angeles. The city is still trying to somehow punish investigative journalist Ben Camacho and activist group Stop LAPD Spying Coalition for a mistake its own police department made.

Camacho made a public records request for LAPD officers’ photos. After some litigation, the LAPD finally complied. Camacho — who writes for Knock LA — sent these to Stop LAPD Spying, which then added them to its searchable database of LAPD officers.

All of this was completely above board. It involved a public records request and a response from the LAPD. Then everything got litigious. The LAPD’s union sued the city for releasing these photos, claiming doing so endangered undercover cops. The chief of the LAPD then started making his own noise, demanding the city sue Camacho and Stop LAPD Spying for… well, publishing records they had legally obtained.

The city complied. It sued both Camacho and Stop LAPD Spying, seeking an “emergency” order blocking the publication of officers’ photos and demanding the return of photos the LAPD had apparently accidentally released.

The city argued that the release of these photos (and their subsequent publication) undercut the public’s interest in public safety. According to the city’s attorneys, the public had more interest in protecting cops’ identities than learning more about their public servants.

It somehow managed to secure an obviously unconstitutional order last year:

In August, a judge ruled that the city could justifiably censor the free speech of Stop LAPD by forcing it to stop publishing pictures of officers online. Stop LAPD and Camacho have appealed the decision, which legal experts have described as unusual.

The order isn’t being complied with at the moment. The appeal process is still ongoing, so everything remains exactly where the LAPD and city of Los Angeles don’t want it: accessible to the general public.

The lawsuit filed against the city by the police union is still ongoing as well. And while that winds its way through the legal system, the city has decided to double down on its legal actions against journalist Ben Camacho and the Stop LAPD Spying Coalition.

In an effort to curtail unlawful LAPD overreach and entrapment, several activists across the city created a database of LAPD officers, an action that qualifies as free speech. Rather than heed the call-in by the public to Stop LAPD Spying, LA City Attorney Hydee Feldstein Soto has chosen to further the city’s attacks on the freedom of the press by issuing a lawsuit for these actions against Knock LA photo editor Ben Camacho.

Through this lawsuit, the city of Los Angeles has chosen to suppress the right of the public to hold police officers accountable instead of examining the culture of misconduct that has been proven to exist within the LAPD. Feldstein Soto and her office have expressly demonstrated the city’s use of censorship to suppress  information that keeps the public safe and free.

Being wrong twice isn’t going to make the city right. There’s a high bar to meet if the city wants to route itself around the First Amendment. It’s unlikely to clear it. The city screwed up when it released the photos of undercover officers. The recipients of inadvertent disclosure are under no legal or constitutional obligation to engage in self-censorship just because the city screwed up. The city, however, has plenty of obligations to the Constitution, so its best bet in this case would be to concede the loss and get back to defending itself against the police union’s allegation of a “negligent, improper, and malicious” photo release.

And that’s where things are going to get super-tricky for the city. The Los Angeles Times’ coverage of this second lawsuit details the defenses being offered up by the city in response to the police union lawsuit. Its primary defense makes it pretty clear it should never have sued Camacho and Stop LAPD Spying once, much less twice.

The city said it sought “indemnity and contribution” from Camacho and Stop LAPD. In its anti-SLAPP motion filed Jan. 16, the city called the release of the photos an “inadvertent production,” which, “while regrettable, is not actionable.”

If the city’s release of the photos was “regrettable” but “not actionable,” how can it possibly justify the legal actions it is pursuing against the recipients of its “inadvertent production?” It can’t. And I guarantee its defense of its actions against the police union’s allegations will be used against it in its lawsuits against Camacho and Stop LAPD Spying.

That’s an unforced error. But maybe the city feels it would be better or cheaper to get the police union’s lawsuit dismissed than somehow emerge with a victory against journalists and activists. If so, it’s (finally) correct. It would do far less damage to the city and its residents’ rights to convince a judge it simply made a (non-actionable) mistake. But its insistence on laying the blame for the alleged harms on the recipients of legally obtained information suggests it may ultimately feel it’s better to stay on the union’s good side, even if it means the First Amendment has to pay the price for its litigious actions.

Filed Under: 1st amendment, ben camacho, hydee feldstein soto, journalism, lapd, stop lapd spying