South Pasadena police have been arrested after recent allegations that a veteran detective who once got into trouble for sneaking into Men’s Central Jail disguised as a lieutenant repeatedly gave a Nazi-like salute during a police-sponsored training session last year. He resigned from the department. According to a Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department news release and internal records.
City police officials arrested Mark Lilienfeld on Wednesday, hours after the Times first reported on the sheriff’s department’s investigation into the 2023 charges that ultimately resulted in Mark Lilienfeld being given a “no-rehire” designation. announced Mr. Feld’s decision to resign.
The investigation found that Lilienfeld violated equality policies while speaking at a homicide detective training session in May 2023, as detailed in a 40-page internal affairs report released by the Sheriff’s Office earlier this month. It turned out. According to the report, one of the officers present, a black LAPD officer, accused Lilienfeld of making several inappropriate comments, once calling an Asian officer a “Chinese” and later calling her an Asian officer “Chinese.” He said he and another black officer in the class said “Chinese.” Then, if someone jumps him in the parking lot, he becomes the prime suspect.
At the time of his presentation, Lilienfeld had already retired from the Sheriff’s Office and was working as an outside vendor. He began working as a detective in South Pasadena earlier this year, according to state records.
“The City of South Pasadena and the Police Department take this report seriously and the department will never tolerate this type of conduct by city employees,” a South Pasadena news release said last week. “The officer in question submitted his resignation, which was accepted by Police Chief Brian Solinski.”
Also last week, the sheriff’s office announced it would not hire Lilienfeld to teach future classes. Meanwhile, the California Peace Officer Standards and Training Commission, which oversees training standards for law enforcement agencies across the state, said in a statement that it only recently learned of the allegations and is currently acting on information submitted by local agencies. He said that he recognized the instructors, but in reality, this was not the case. We have the means to remove them.
“The committee met last week to discuss this regulatory issue and will make changes to allow for the removal of such instructors in the future,” the statement said.
Mr. Lilienfeld did not respond to a request for comment Saturday, but his lawyer Tom Yu said last week that the allegations were “totally unfounded.” Because Lilienfeld is now retired, he is “not entitled to challenge or complain about the unilateral investigation.”
In 2008, Mr. Lilienfeld was disciplined for calling a woman a “bastard” and repeatedly using profanity during another training lecture, according to internal affairs records. After retiring in 2016, he began working as an investigator for the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office, but was later caught on camera posing as a deputy to provide contraband fast food to inmates at Men’s Central Jail. It was captured by
He was then temporarily banned from the county jail. In 2019, he returned to the Sheriff’s Department to join then-controversial Sheriff Alex Villanueva’s public corruption team. The team is accused of targeting critics of the sheriff, including supervisors, county leaders and a former Times reporter who received the leaked list of problems. Member of Parliament.
Lilienfeld left the department again in January 2023 following Villanueva’s re-election and has since said the incident at Men’s Central Prison was part of a plan to overturn wrongful convictions by gaining the trust of the real perpetrators. states.
The complaint that led to the “no-rehire” designation stemmed from a two-week homicide detective course that brought together about 30 police officers and lieutenants from departments across Southern California. The sheriff’s department redacted everyone’s names in the 40-page report, as well as the name of the Los Angeles police officer whose concerns sparked the investigation.
“Throughout the lecture, subject Lilienfeld was rude, condescending, unprofessional, and made inappropriate comments to several students in the class,” investigators wrote in a summary of interviews with Los Angeles police officers. There is.
Police believe Lilienfeld targeted Asian and Black students with off-color jokes, called the only two Asian students “Chinese” and repeatedly made fun of a woman’s name. He said he was there. The officer also told investigators that Lilienfeld talked “a lot of nonsense” about the Los Angeles Police Department and how the investigation was “messed up.”
During the speech, the report said, “Lilienfeld also clicked his heels like Hitler, extended one arm, and said something that sounded like “hike” or “hi hi.”
A Los Angeles police officer thought Lilienfeld might have done it as a joke, but said it was inappropriate because it “looked like it was being done by a white supremacist group,” according to the report.
At the end of the class, Lilienfeld apologized to her and another black woman, an officer with the Menifee Police Department, and thanked her for letting them tease her, she claimed. Lilienfeld then allegedly told the class participants to look at the two black women as suspects if they saw a woman with two gunshot wounds to the back of the head in the parking lot outside.
Officer Menifee told investigators that he remembered Lilienfeld being funny, but that he didn’t feel singled out by his jokes. She told investigators she remembered hearing Mr. Lilienfeld’s comments about black women “jumping him,” but said she was not offended. She also said she did not remember seeing him give the Nazi salute.
Internal affairs investigators interviewed other officers and deputies in the class, and most said they had no recollection of seeing anything inappropriate. Others said they found Lilienfeld interesting and praised his talk. One La Verne police officer, whose name was redacted, said Lilienfeld repeatedly did “strange things” during class, such as clicking his heels and raising his arms, which the officer described as a “Nazi salute.” He said he did. The officer told investigators that at one point Lilienfeld said, gesturing, “Sieg Heil.”
The officer said he thought Mr. Lilienfeld had given the Nazi salute to make a case for one of the investigations he led, but said he could not remember the details.
After the class, a Los Angeles police officer detailed his concerns in a class evaluation, which triggered an internal investigation.
When investigators attempted to interview Lilienfeld in April, he asked several questions about the incident before refusing to be interviewed, according to the files. Earlier this year, after an internal investigation concluded, the department confirmed it had placed a “do not rehire” designation on Lilienfeld’s file.
Hours after the Times published its story on Wednesday, Hans Johnson, a member of the sheriff’s civilian oversight board, sent an email to South Pasadena officials expressing his concerns.
“Why is someone who raises such disqualifying red flags of misconduct now on staff at the South Pass Police Department?” Johnson said, according to a copy of the email shared with the Times. I wrote this: “Is the South Pasadena Police Department so strapped for resources that they don’t thoroughly check the backgrounds of the detectives they hire, or worse, ignore red flags when they see them?”
It’s unclear how many others have reached out with similar concerns, but in a news release last week, the South Pasadena Police Department said it had received “numerous calls and messages” regarding the matter.
“I want to make it clear that our police department does not tolerate racism or unacceptable epithets of any kind from members of our organization,” Solinsky wrote in the release. “This type of behavior is inconsistent with our values and the expectations that our council and residents have of our police force.”
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