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A judge this week signed a decision ending a separate lawsuit brought over the release of photos of thousands of Los Angeles Police Department officers, ending a year-long legal battle for a freelance journalist who first obtained the photos through public records. is likely to come to an end. demanded and subsequently became the subject of a lawsuit.
“This was a learning experience for me,” said reporter Ben Camacho. “We were extremely fortunate to have access to a relentless legal team who defended this case to the end.”
The Los Angeles City Attorney’s Office unsuccessfully sued Camacho and the Stop LAPD Spies Coalition after the photos were published in a searchable online database, seeking to have the photos removed from public view and the digital files returned.
The final dismissal in the case was filed Oct. 4, and a related lawsuit filed by dozens of officers who worked undercover and say they were put at risk by the release and publication of the photos was filed Dec. 4. It effectively came to an end.
The city attorney’s office did not immediately respond to inquiries about the judge’s decision.
Camacho first requested a list of LAPD officers and their ID photos under the California Public Records Act in 2021, and received the files a year later.
“What I’m doing is necessary for the community because the community needs radical transparency from the police department,” Camacho said in a statement.
The city will have to pay Camacho $300,000 in legal fees and may incur additional attorney fees in related cases.
The city said in a court filing last month that many of the officers in the photos released were on actual covert missions, jobs that required their names and personal information to be removed from public view. He admitted that he didn’t, and that he wasn’t actually working. .
The city, the Los Angeles Police Department, and the police union initially argued that the city’s release of the images exposed the undercover officers.
“There is only one class of undercover officers in the Los Angeles Police Department,” the City Attorney’s Office wrote in a Nov. 8 filing, noting that no photos or information about these officers have been released. He confirmed that none of the approximately 900 police officers who sued the city were undercover officers. He was truly an undercover investigator.
City records obtained by NBCLA in 2023 show that the City Attorney’s Office promised to remove the undercover agent’s profile before the records were created.
Camacho said Thursday that it took a long and expensive legal battle to reach that statement, but she’s glad the city has finally clarified that the photos released never included sensitive profiles. He said he thought so.
“The city was facing millions of dollars in legal costs and finally told the truth,” Camacho said.
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