Former Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department homicide detective Mark Lilienfeld accused police officers who attended his training class last year of making racist remarks and repeatedly giving Nazi-like salutes during the class. Because of the accusation, he is deemed ineligible for reemployment. According to an internal affairs report.
The officer, who is black, also joked that if Lilienfeld let someone jump him in the parking lot after a lecture in May 2023, he and another black officer in his class would be the most likely suspects. claimed to have said.
As a result of the investigation, the Sheriff’s Office decided this year to place a “do not rehire” designation in Lilienfeld’s personnel file, according to a department statement this week and a 40-page report released this month. The report contains little information about investigators’ reasoning, but includes a three-page summary of about 30 witness interviews, followed by a summary of alleged policy violations and recommended discipline. .
Tom Yu, a lawyer representing Lilienfeld, said the accusations against his client were “totally baseless” and questioned why the woman who made the complaint, a Los Angeles Police Department traffic investigator, took the class in the first place. questioned.
“The city of Los Angeles would be a safer place if she devoted that much energy and time to her case,” Yu told the Times. “Although the investigation allegedly concerned discrimination based on race and gender, my client is now retired and has no standing to challenge or grieve a one-sided investigation.”
The California Peace Officer Standards and Training Commission, which oversees law enforcement training standards across the state, said in a statement Tuesday that it only recently learned of the incident. The commission currently approves instructors based on information submitted by local agencies and has no way to remove instructors it deems unsuitable, the statement said.
“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.
In the meantime, the commission said the sheriff’s department and other agencies should “take due diligence, including verifying who the leader is and whether there have been previous incidents.”
This is not the first time Lilienfeld has run afoul of department policy. Internal affairs records show that in 2008, he received a written reprimand for calling a woman a “bastard” and repeatedly using profanity during another training lecture. After retiring in 2016, he began working as an investigator for the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office and was later caught on camera posing as a deputy to provide contraband fast food to inmates at Men’s Central Jail. It was done.
The Sheriff’s Office then temporarily banned him from the jail. After Alex Villanueva took over as sheriff in late 2018, he rehired Lilienfeld to join his public corruption unit, which specifically investigated a Times reporter who leaked a list of problematic lawmakers.
Lilienfeld left the department again in January 2023 after Villanueva lost re-election. During his interrogation with the Public Corruption Unit earlier this year, Lilienfeld testified that the incident at Men’s Central Prison was part of a plan to overturn a wrongful conviction by gaining the trust of the real perpetrator and extracting a confession.
By the time of the May 2023 training incident, Lilienfeld was working as an outside vendor. The Sheriff’s Office announced this week that it would no longer hire him to teach future classes.
The complaint that led to the investigation and “no-rehire” designation stemmed from a two-week homicide investigator course held at the Holiday Inn in La Mirada. The state paid for the guest lecturers, but the sheriff’s department designed the curriculum and planned the speakers.
On May 8, the first day of class, Lilienfeld gave a morning lecture on the mindset of a homicide detective, followed by an afternoon lecture on case management and interacting with witnesses. Approximately 30 police officers and deputies from across Southern California participated in the training. The sheriff’s department redacted all names of everyone listed in the report, as well as the name of the Los Angeles police officer at the center of the complaint.
A Los Angeles Police Department officer later told investigators that the sergeant who oversaw the training told students at the beginning that some of the instructors were “outdated” and “a little harsh.” He said he warned him. (According to the report, when investigators later questioned the sergeant, he said he did not remember making any statements to that effect.)
“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 the officer’s interview.
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.”
The woman told investigators that she did not know whether the Nazi salute was intended because she had only seen it on television. According to the report, she thought Lilienfeld might have done it as a joke or in a “stressful situation,” but said she felt it was inappropriate because “it looked like something a white supremacist group was doing.”
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.
Los Angeles police officers then detailed their concerns to a sheriff’s department detective who was monitoring the class, who alerted the sergeant who was coordinating the class.
When the sergeant pulled the officer aside to talk, she didn’t give many details because she wasn’t sure if she could trust him. Still, the report said, she told the sergeant that she was offended by Lilienfeld’s presentation, particularly his mention of two black women as hypothetical suspects.
Officer Menifee told investigators that he remembered Lilienfeld being funny, but did not find his humor offensive or find his jokes special. She recalled hearing him say something about one of the Asian students, but couldn’t remember what it was. She said she did not remember seeing him give the Nazi salute.
And although she told investigators she remembered hearing Lilienfeld’s comments about black women “jumping him,” she thought it was just a joke and wasn’t offended. He said no.
Several months later, when internal affairs investigators interviewed more than 20 other police officers and members of Congress who had attended or observed the class, nearly all said they had no recollection of seeing anything inappropriate. Some found Lilienfeld interesting, while others praised his lectures. One person said Lilienfeld “kept putting his foot in his mouth” when speaking to two black women.
Another Laverne police officer, whose name was also redacted, said Lilienfeld repeatedly did “strange things” during class, clicking his heels and raising his arms in what the officer described as a “Nazi salute.” He is said to have acted in a similar manner. Police officers told investigators that Lilienfeld saluted two or three times during the lecture and at one point uttered something similar to “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 immediately began recording and then asked several questions about the incident before refusing to be interviewed, according to the files. That same month, Lilienfeld began working as a detective with the South Pasadena Police Department, according to state commission records. It is unclear whether he still works there.
Mr. Lilienfeld’s case is at least the second time in recent months that a prominent former department member has been designated as a “do not rehire.” The Times reported in January that Villanueva was also deemed ineligible for rehiring after authorities found he discriminated against Los Angeles County Supervisor Max Huntsman. Villanueva later sued the county over the decision. A federal judge dismissed the lawsuit in September, but Villanueva later refiled the case and the case remains pending.
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