Emails Show The LAPD Cut Ties With The Citizen App After Its Started A Vigilante Manhunt Targeting An Innocent Person

from the well-thank-fuck-for-that dept

It didn't take long for Citizen -- the app that once wanted to be a cop -- to wear out its law enforcement welcome. The crime reporting app has made several missteps since its inception, beginning with its original branding as "Vigilante."

Having been booted from app stores for encouraging (unsurprisingly) vigilantism, the company rebranded as "Citizen," hooking um… citizens up with live feeds of crime reports from city residents as well as transcriptions of police scanner output. It also paid citizens to show up uninvited at crime scenes to report on developing situations.

But it never forgot its vigilante origins. When wildfires swept across Southern California last year, Citizen's principals decided it was time to put the "crime" back in "crime reporting app." The problem went all the way to the top, with Citizen CEO Andrew Frame dropping into Slack conversations and live streams, imploring employees and app users to "FIND THIS FUCK."

The problem was Citizen had identified the wrong "FUCK." The person the app claimed was responsible for the wildfire wasn't actually the culprit. Law enforcement later tracked down a better suspect, one who had actually generated some evidence implicating them.

After calling an innocent person a "FUCK" and a "devil" in need of finding, Citizen was forced to walk back its vigilantism and rehabilitate its image. Unfortunately for Citizen, this act managed to burn bridges with local law enforcement just as competently as the wildfire it had used to start a vastly ill-conceived manhunt.

As Joseph Cox reports for Motherboard, this act ignited the last straw that acted as a bridge between Citizen and one of the nation's largest law enforcement agencies, the Los Angeles Police Department. Internal communications obtained by Vice show the LAPD decided to cut ties with the app after the company decided its internal Slack channel was capable of taking the law into its own hands.

On May 21, several days after the misguided manhunt, Sergeant II Hector Guzman, a member of the LAPD Public Communications Group, emailed colleagues with a link to some of the coverage around the incident.

“I know the meeting with West LA regarding Citizen was rescheduled (TBD), but here’s a recent article you might want to look at in advance of the meeting, which again highlights some of the serious concerns with Citizen, and the user actions they promote and condone,” Guzman wrote. Motherboard obtained the LAPD emails through a public records request.

Lieutenant Raul Jovel from the LAPD’s Media Relations Division replied “given what is going on with this App, we will not be working with them from our shop.”

Guzman then replied “Copy. I concur.”

Whatever lucrative possibilities Citizen might have envisioned after making early inroads towards law enforcement acceptance were apparently burnt to a crisp by this misapprehension that nearly led to a calamitous misapprehension. Rather than entertain Citizen's mastubatorial fantasies about being the thin app line between good and evil, the LAPD (wisely) chose to kick the upstart to the curb.

The stiff arm continues to this day. The LAPD cut ties and has continued to swipe left on Citizen's extremely online advances. The same Sgt. Guzman referenced in earlier emails has ensured the LAPD operates independently of Citizen. When Citizen asked the LAPD if it would be ok to eavesdrop on radio chatter to send out push notifications to users about possible criminal activity, Guzman made it clear this would probably be a bad idea.

“It’s come up before. Always turned down for several reasons,” Guzman wrote in another email.

And now Citizen goes it alone in Los Angeles. In response to Motherboard's reporting, Citizen offered up word salad about good intentions and adjusting to "real world operational experiences." I guess that's good, in a certain sense. From the statement, it appears Citizen is willing to learn from its mistakes. The problem is its mistakes have been horrific rather than simply inconvenient, and it appears to be somewhat slow on the uptake, which only aggravates problems that may be caused by over-excited execs thinking a few minutes of police scanner copy should result in citizen arrests.

Filed Under: citizen, lapd, vigilantes
Companies: citizen

Court To Cops Who Caught Pokemon Rather Than Robbery Suspects: That's A (Justified) Firin'

from the but-can't-even-catch-a-case dept

I saw Snorlax today
Near the stealing…

Sometimes you can't always get what you want. In this case -- argued in front of a California court -- you can't even get what you need.

Ex-officers Louis Lozano and Eric Mitchell wanted their jobs back. They used to be cops working for the Los Angeles Police Department. On the way to a call about a robbery in progress, the officers -- ostensibly "running towards the sound of gunfire" -- found something far more compelling than the job they were hired to do.

The opinion [PDF] -- highlighted by Jake White on Twitter to the amusement of thousands -- is a blast to read. The headline and the opening hijacking of the Rolling Stones makes it clear where this is headed. But even if the destination is clear, you'll still enjoy the ride.

Here's what the cops should have been doing, as recounted by the court:

It was a “busy” Saturday in the Southwest Division— there were more calls than police cars available to respond and there had been a homicide earlier in the day. While en route to the homicide scene, Captain Davenport heard a radio call for “a 211 [robbery] in progress” with multiple suspects at the Macy’s in the Crenshaw Mall. When the call came in, the Captain could see the Macy’s from where he was stopped, and to his right he noticed a police car tucked back in an alley just feet away. He was not able to identify the unit, and when the unit did not respond to the radio call, the Captain assumed it might be a traffic unit or a unit from a different division using a different radio frequency. Consequently, Captain Davenport decided he would respond to the call and notified communications he was going “Code 6 on the call”—i.e., responding to the location of the robbery. At around the same time, the Captain saw the police car start to back up down the alley, then negotiate a left-hand turn to leave the area.

The two officers trying to recover their jobs also claimed to be going "Code 6" on the same call. This seemed peculiar to Sergeant Gomez, who asked the officers if they were headed to assist Captain Davenport. He received only a cryptic "no" in response to his question. He tried to follow up on the officers' failure to follow up on this robbery call, asking to meet them at a nearby 7-11 store where the officers were (and now we'll use the word "allegedly") engaged in an illegal merchandise investigation.

At that point, the officers claimed it was hectic and noisy and that they had heard no call for backup. They said "it was really loud in the park, especially on a Saturday." Sgt. Gomez reminded them radio calls could be the difference between life and death. The officers agreed and said they'd try not to hang out in noisy areas in the future if possible.

Unfortunately for the lying officers, their actions had been captured by their dash-cam. The DICVS (digital in-car video system) showed the officers were otherwise occupied during the time their presence was needed at the Crenshaw Mall.

First, they blew off being part of the thin blue line:

The DICVS recording disclosed that, immediately after Captain Davenport’s Code 6 broadcast, Officer Lozano asked Officer Mitchell if they were Code 6 on the Crenshaw Corridor or on the corner near the mall where they were parked. Mitchell responded they were “[a]t the corner” and noted the broadcast radio call was “Davenport.” Lozano then instructed Mitchell to put them Code 6 “at the corridor,” adding (after some laughter) regarding Captain Davenport, “I don’t want to be his help.” Petitioners’ unit then moved backwards through the alley and turned away from the mall, as Captain Davenport had observed.

For the next several minutes the DICVS captured continued radio traffic regarding the robbery and pursuit of multiple suspects. After communications made a second attempt to contact petitioners, Officer Lozano asked if they should “ask [communications] if there’s a message.” Officer Mitchell replied, “It’s up to you. Whatever you think. I don’t want them to think we’re not paying attention to the radio.” Lozano responded, “Aw, screw it.” Petitioners made no attempt to respond over the radio when their unit was called.

Then they went hunting for something apparently far more worthy of their time, attention, and tax dollars than the reported robbery.

After carefully listening to the DICVS recording a number of times, Detective McClanahan also became concerned that petitioners were playing “the Pokémon Go video game” while on duty the day of the robbery. The recording showed that, at approximately 6:09 p.m. (just five minutes after Officer Lozano said “screw it” to checking in with communications about the robbery call), Officer Mitchell alerted Lozano that “Snorlax” “just popped up” at “46th and Leimert.” After noting that “Leimert doesn’t go all the way to 46th,” Lozano responded, “Oh, you [know] what I can do? I’ll [go] down 11th and swing up on Crenshaw. I know that way I can get to it.” Mitchell suggested a different route, then told Lozano, “We got four minutes.”

That's the response to an officer in need of backup: "screw it." Also, "I don't want to be his help." Also, "Snorlax."

And so much for "four minutes." The hunt for Snorlax continued for much longer than this original estimate. The hunt was on and no amount of law enforcement responsibility was going to stand between these officers and their quest to catch 'em all.*

^{* "All" may not include criminal suspects.}

For approximately the next 20 minutes, the DICVS captured petitioners discussing Pokémon as they drove to different locations where the virtual creatures apparently appeared on their mobile phones. On their way to the Snorlax location, Officer Mitchell alerted Officer Lozano that “a Togetic just popped up,” noting it was “[o]n Crenshaw, just South of 50th.” After Mitchell apparently caught the Snorlax— exclaiming, “Got ‘em”—petitioners agreed to “[g]o get the Togetic” and drove off.

When their car stopped again, the DICVS recorded Mitchell saying, “Don’t run away. Don’t run away,” while Lozano described how he “buried it and ultra-balled” the Togetic before announcing, “Got him.” Mitchell advised he was “[s]till trying to catch it,” adding, “Holy crap, man. This thing is fighting the crap out of me.” Eventually Mitchell exclaimed, “Holy Crap. Finally,” apparently in reference to capturing the Togetic, and he remarked, “The[] guys are going to be so jealous.” Petitioners then agreed to return to the 7-Eleven (where Sergeant Gomez later met them) to end their watch. On the way, Mitchell remarked, “I got you a new Pokémon today, dude.”

Clearly not your everyday disciplinary hearing subject matter, as can be ascertained by this perhaps unintentionally comical footnote:

According to evidence admitted at the board of rights hearing, “Snorlax” is a Pokémon creature known as “the Sleeping Pokémon.”

Truly a shame Niantic wasn't called in to testify about the relative rarity of Snorlax and/or the tactics necessary to subdue this infinite good made artificially rare by outside time and location constraints. On the other hand, we have the officers' testimony about why the pursuit of an infinite good was more important than the pursuit of a much rarer, far more finite (public) good: a robbery suspect. While it's presumably far less entertaining than an app developer attempting to explain why people with badges might be compelled to hunt large Pokemon rather than criminals, it's still instructive as to the testimony default mode when cops are caught fucking up:

Petitioners… denied playing Pokémon Go while on duty. They claimed they were monitoring a “Pokémon tracker” application on their phone, but not playing the game itself. As for “catching” Pokémon, Officer Lozano insisted this referred to “capturing [an] image” of the Pokémon on the tracking application to share with friends, while Officer Mitchell said his statements about “fighting” the Togetic referred to “relaying that information to the groups on my app,” adding that, “in order to take the picture, occasionally, the creature will fight.” Lozano said they were not engaged in a game; rather, it was a “social media event.” Mitchell said he did not consider the application a game because it was not “advertised as a game.” Petitioners admitted leaving their foot beat area in search of Snorlax, but they insisted they did so “both” as part of an “extra patrol” and to “chase this mythical creature.”

As if that somehow makes things better. It's such a terrible lie it can't even elevate the officers' actions about "wasting tax dollars" or "possibly endangering a fellow officer." The officers apparently hoped that capturing screenshots of Pokemon was somehow a better use of their time than "hunting" Pokemon.

The courts -- including the trial court, the police internal hearings, and the California appeals court -- agree: this is some bullshit. You may not have your jobs back, former officers Lozano and Mitchell.

The judgment is affirmed. The City and the Chief of Police are entitled to costs, if any.

Great news, ex-cops! You are free to waste all the time you want from now on. The public, however, will not be paying for your non-police-related activities. You truly have caught them all, by which I mean "yourselves" with the unexpected superball powers of your in-car cameras. Perhaps the private sector will be more willing to put up with your desire to get paid for doing stuff completely unrelated to your employment, but I doubt it. The public sector is the most forgiving employer, what with its institutional resistance to accountability and transparency, and you somehow managed to reach the end of its patience. If the world seems particularly anti-cop at the moment, just wait until you see how it treats ex-cops.

Filed Under: eric mitchell, lapd, louis lozano, pokemon go, snorlax

Facebook (Again) Tells Law Enforcement That Setting Up Fake Accounts Violates Its Terms Of Use

from the LAPD-teaching-respect-for-the-law-by-playing-by-its-own-rules-wtaf dept

Law enforcement agencies routinely engage in surveillance of social media accounts. Some of this is accomplished with third-party tools that use keywords and geofences to give cops info that may be relevant to investigations. These tools also give cops a lot of garbage data that law enforcement is free to sift through for officers' own entertainment or to bypass constitutional protections surrounding speech and warrantless searches.

Does it actually help combat crime? The jury (if a court would ever allow one to consider these issues…) is still out on that. But social media surveillance continues under the theory that anything someone published publicly should be accessible by cops since it's accessible by everyone else.

But the constitutional metric changes (or at least should) when cops set up fake accounts to engage in surveillance of suspected criminals. In these cases, cops may be welcomed into more private circles where information can't be accessed unless a person has been given access.

This isn't a new problem. It dates back to 2009, when Facebook was gaining critical mass and Twitter was just starting to generate enough interest to become (very eventually) sustainable. Twitter's account verification process allows users to engage without turning over much personal info. The same can't be said for Facebook, which would prefer to have its user base verified with as much personal info as possible -- something that was supposed to limit abusive behavior but just ended up giving the platform plenty of actionable (and sellable) demographic info. Facebook insisted on real people and real names and altered its policy to inform users that setting up bogus accounts was something that could result in account termination.

Cops didn't care. They had online lurking to do in hopes of finding something prosecutable without ever leaving the office. Facebook warned law enforcement that setting up fake accounts wasn't permissible in 2018 after news surfaced showing cops were bypassing these rules to do a little online fishing for potential criminals.

Facebook is now Meta. It is also still Facebook, albeit under a new umbrella corporation. The rules about "real names" still apply to Facebook account creation. And law enforcement officers are still continuing to ignore this rule. Three years after its last letter addressed to cops about terms of service violation Meta is sending out another one [PDF]. It reiterates what officers already know but are apparently of the belief Facebook/Meta won't actually do much to enforce.

The letter references Los Angeles Police Department activities exposed by the Brennan Center. The LAPD apparently encourages officers to set up fake accounts to locate and surveil criminal suspects. The practice is common enough that the LAPD actually has policies governing the use of social media surveillance via dummy accounts. But the policies ignore Facebook's rules, which take precedence over the LAPD's rules. After all, it's Facebook's platform, not the LAPD's playground.

According to the Brennan Center for Justice and media reports the Los Angeles Police Department (“LAPD”) has been instructing its officers to create fake (or “dummy”) Facebook accounts and impersonate legitimate users. Not only do LAPD instructional documents use Facebook as an explicit example in advising officers to set up fake social media accounts, but documents also indicate that LAPD policies simply allow officers to create fake accounts for “online investigative activity.” To the extent these practices are ongoing they violate our terms of service. While the legitimacy of such policies may be up to the LAPD, officers must abide by Facebook’s policies when creating accounts on our services. The Police Department should cease all activities on Facebook that involve the use of fake accounts, impersonation of others, and collection of data for surveillance purposes.

This alone won't prevent the LAPD from violating Facebook's terms of service to engage in online surveillance. Facebook will have to determine which accounts are fake and terminate them. But this letter gives the LAPD notice that when its bogus accounts are terminated, it will have zero recourse.

The letter also says the LAPD is violating other Facebook rules, albeit indirectly.

It has also come to our attention that the LAPD has used a third-party vendor to collect data on our platforms regarding our users. Under our policies, developers are prohibited from using data obtained on our platforms for surveillance, including the processing of platform data about people, groups, or events for law enforcement or national security purposes (https://developers.facebook.com/terms/#control).

Again, this won't stop the LAPD from utilizing services it's paid for. But it does make it clear that if Facebook ever decides to terminate access to this firehose being abused by third parties, neither the third parties or their LAPD beneficiaries will be able to do anything but bitch ineffectively about the loss of access to a surveillance tool.

Subterfuge is often essential to law enforcement investigations. But that doesn't mean private companies are obliged to provide cover for undercover surveillance. Law enforcement has been told (at least twice) that govern regular people also govern government employees -- people who often seem to believe they're above rules, laws, and even the rule of law.

Filed Under: fake accounts, impersonation, lapd, law enforcement, police
Companies: facebook, meta

LAPD Sees Your Reform Efforts, Raises You $20 Million In Bullets, Snacks, And Surveillance

from the reading-cards-like-they're-reading-a-room dept

The Los Angeles Police Department is reform-resistant. This isn't the same as reform-proof, but more separates "resistant" from "proof" in this case than the misleading labels promising varying degrees of water resistance placed on watches and cellphones.

The LAPD has endured decades of bad press with barely an uptick in performance or community orientation. The LAPD is best known for beating minorities until riots happen. With a wave of police reform efforts sweeping the nation -- many of them looking to spend less on police violence and more on things that actually help the community -- the LAPD has issued a tone-deaf demand for more money to spend on things residents are complaining about.

The LAPD has filed a massive proposal requesting more than $18 million in budget increases in order to pay for surveillance programs, bullets, and … snacks.

The Stop LAPD Spying Coalition released a letter on Monday blasting the 183-page report. The proposal requests nearly $18.44 million to support many of the things that the community has spent recent years protesting. The letter, which was co-signed by Black Lives Matter Los Angeles and the National Lawyers Guild of Los Angeles, describes the LAPD’s list of demands as a “disgusting insult to hundreds of thousands of people who took the streets last summer."

What else in the LAPD's "more please" proposal? $2 million to spend on social media monitoring, something it's asking for right after it was reported LAPD officers are demanding social media information from people they've accosted or otherwise harassed into a "consensual" conversation. That's in addition to $450,000 in licenses for social media monitoring software to better make use of this new data officers are collecting while out in the proverbial field.

The letter [PDF] from the Stop LAPD Spying Coalition doesn't pull any punches. It compiles a long list of the stupid, counterproductive demands the department is making -- ones not connected in any way to improving relations with the communities they serve.

In true Newspeak, here's the fucking news: the LAPD wants more money to be thrown at its desire to throw bullets at people.

Over $12 million for new trainings in addition to $461,850 in bullets at $17 per round to shoot away at trainings and $492,850 in “overtime funds to address field jail training” for mass arrests

This won't make the LAPD more efficient killers. And it won't make them better guardians of people's rights, starting with the right to protest. What it will do is encourage pulling the trigger until clips run dry and mass processing of people arrested for (the most part) expressing their displeasure with their current police force.

And who wouldn't applaud the blending of police officers and the military like so much corn and gasoline?

$348,130 for a new staff officer whose full-time role will be to permanently coordinate with “military” forces and facilitate their local deployment

And perhaps the most "police" thing of all, the guys are getting kind of hungry:

$100,000 for snacks that “personnel can grab quickly and take with them,” apparently enabled through new “emergency use credit cards”

Love to see "snacks" and "emergency" linked together in a sentence asking for $100,000. It sounds like an insulin request but it's actually about propping up the Frito-Lay Economy.

Once you get past all the "screw your rights and please catch bullets" parts of the LAPD's proposal, you get to the part where the LAPD claims to be saving money by spending money… or something.

Chief Moore’s cover memo raises many questions about the cost of these proposals. As he notes, LAPD previously claimed these same reforms required over $66 million. He writes that this larger figure “counted all costs – even if the resources were currently available” (p. 5) which presumably means LAPD double-counted the cost of resources that it already possessed. But one sentence later, Chief Moore claims the $18.44 million estimate amounts to a $48 million “reduction in cost projection.” It is unclear whether the $18.44 million is in fact a “reduction” or simply accurate accounting. But LAPD’s comfort switching numbers so large without real explanation speaks to how little financial scrutiny they expect from you. Additionally, it is unclear how much of the $18.44 million are yearly versus one-time costs.

Good luck sussing that out, whether you're an activist group or city oversight. The LAPD is used to asking questions, not answering them. A sea change in public receptiveness to cops being assholes doesn't appear to have had any effect on LAPD (and I use this term super-loosely) leadership. Cop business will proceed as usual, recent public antipathy notwithstanding.

So, what else is new? Nothing. But it needs more money. The LAPD says its cool with alleged transparency efforts like body cams, but only if it gets to keep harvesting data from tons of automatic plate readers and its take on stop-and-frisk, which now apparently involves requests for social media info.

And it appears the city did what it could to ensure the LAPD could have its millions without too much interference from the hoi polloi.

The proposals were made public in an 183-page document sent late in the afternoon on Friday, September 24, and the proposals will be voted on the morning of Tuesday, September 28. This is just over one business day to digest and respond to the 183-page proposals, and even that time period is only for people who happen to have received the proposal immediately because they subscribe to this board’s agenda by email. The public’s only opportunity to comment would be if they received that online agenda and then responded either by emails sent before 5 p.m. on Monday, September 27, or by becoming one of the dozen or so individuals who happen to secure a brief public comment slot during this board’s 45-minute public comment period, before the agenda item is even introduced.

Only in the government can you give the finger to your employers (taxpayers) and end up better off during FYWhatever. The LAPD likely knows what the public is asking of it. But it also knows that not caring what they think will at least give it the same budget it had in 2020 and do little to curb its surveillance excesses. At some point, the LAPD's city oversight will have to actually do its job. Until then, it's just signing off on the same law enforcement bullshit that has kept the city in constant turmoil since the Watts riots nearly five decades ago.

Filed Under: budget, lapd, police reform, reform, surveillance

Survey Confirms Los Angeles Sheriff's Department Is Still Home To Dangerous Gangs, Has No Solid Plan To Eliminate Them

from the enjoy-being-brutalized-on-your-own-dime,-taxpayers dept

The Los Angeles Police Department has spent years compiling a "gang database." The term "compile" is used loosely, because the LAPD decides people are gang members just because they know gang members, or are related to them, or live in the same buildings, or work near them, or pass through gang-controlled neighborhoods, or go to school with gang members, or just (as non-gang people are wont to do) wear clothes, shoes, and hats. It's ridiculous.

And when that's not "inclusive" enough, LAPD officers fake it. LAPD officers have falsified records to justify unjustifiable stops and searches, something that ultimately resulted in criminal charges against three officers. But even with this wealth of bogus and barely supported information, the gang database (CALGANG) still has one glaring omission: the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department.

A 63-page civil lawsuit, filed on Sept. 18 in California Superior Court, alleges that the gang’s power stems from its close ties to Sheriff Alex Villanueva, who was elected in 2018 on the promise to “reform, rebuild and restore” the scandal-plagued department. Since then, however, disillusionment with Villaneuva has grown over several of his decisions, including deactivating misconduct investigations. In July, Los Angeles Magazine dubbed him “the Donald Trump of L.A. Law Enforcement.” And the eight deputies allege in their complaint that Villanueva protects the Banditos and other deputy gangs, even rehiring deputies fired for misconduct.  

According to the lawsuit, the approximately 90-member Banditos maintain a “stranglehold” on the unincorporated communities east of downtown through a reign of unlawful policing, violence, and intimidation from their base at the East Los Angeles station. Members sport tattoos featuring a pistol-wielding, sombrero and bandolier-wearing skeleton with a thick mustache and a unique number for each member.

Villanueva hasn't reformed the LASD. It's still as terrible as ever. And it still is home to gangs composed of LASD employees, which I guess is to be expected when your hiring pool consists of thieves, statutory rapists, and cops considered too tainted to be hired anywhere else.

The Los Angeles Times reports on an unsurprising new study that shows the LASD is still a great place to join a gang.

Hundreds of Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies said they have been recruited to join secretive, sometimes gang-like cliques that operate within department stations, according to the findings of a survey by independent researchers.

The anticipated study into the problematic fraternities — which L.A. County officials commissioned the Rand Corp. to conduct in 2019 — found 16% of the 1,608 deputies and supervisors who anonymously answered survey questions had been invited to join a clique, with some invitations having come in the last five years.

According to the survey, the LASD's "gangs" were still "actively adding members" as of 2020. Presumably, the ringing in of a new year hasn't changed that. There is some internal resistance, however. 37% of deputies said cliques should be prohibited, which aligns them with about 100% of the non-LASD population. But who's going to police the police?

Not Sheriff Alex Villanueva.

Sheriff Alex Villanueva has denied that “gangs” exist within the department but has also taken credit for addressing the problem with a policy that prohibits deputies from joining any group that commits misconduct.

You can't deny a problem exists and create a (weak, toothless) policy that addresses said nonexistent problem. And it would seem a straight reading of this policy would forbid LASD deputies from joining the LASD itself, which has a long. ugly history of misconduct.

And if Villanueva is so intent on addressing this problem (the one he says isn't a problem), why would he make it almost impossible for the Department's oversight to do its job?

Inspector General Max Huntsman said Friday that Villanueva appeared this week for an interview after initially resisting a subpoena to answer questions about deputy cliques. The sheriff, however, refused to testify under oath, at his attorney’s instruction, so Huntsman said he declined to question him and now plans to ask a judge to order Villanueva to give sworn testimony.

The study further found that what little was being done by the LASD to address its internal clique problem was too weak and too disorganized to have any effect. Add that to the normal insularity found in law enforcement agencies -- one that treats anyone attempting to apply any discipline as the enemy of the rank-and-file -- and the problem shifts from "troublesome" to "festering, infected wound."

Not ironically at all, the report also noted deputies wishing to join LASD gangs often committed misconduct to do so, most often engaging in deployments of excessive force. And yet, many inside the LASD see no problem with this misconduct, the misconduct committed by clique members, or the collateral damage to the public's trust.

About a quarter of those surveyed said they believe deputy cliques can be a positive influence by motivating a station’s staff or members of a particular unit…

Less disappointingly, a similar number said cliques hurt morale and alienate LASD employees. (Nothing was said about how these gangs affect the general public.) But, more disappointingly, the remaining 50% said having close knit groups of like-minded thugs on the force had no effect on the LASD's daily operations. And that may be true. But it's definitely having an effect on the victims of excessive force deployment and others who've had their rights violated by deputies who believe they're not only above internal policy, but above the law.

Filed Under: alex villanueva, calgang, la, lapd, lasd, police, police gangs

The LAPD Is Asking City Residents To Hand Over Social Media Account Info To Feed To Its Unsupervised Monitoring Software

from the badge-sporting-amateur-anglers dept

Documents obtained via public records requests by the Brennan Center reveal the Los Angeles Police Department has made social media part of its everyday business. The LAPD is wholly embracing the 21st century. This doesn't mean its public relations department is making the most of numerous platforms to address citizens' concerns and engage in more transparency.

No, it just means LAPD officers can be just as stalker-ish as disgruntled exes or future employers.

The Los Angeles Police Department authorizes its officers to engage in extensive surveillance of social media without internal monitoring of the nature or effectiveness of the searches, according to the results of a public records request filed by the Brennan Center. (h/t Michael Vario)

And beginning this year, the department is adding a new social media surveillance tool: Media Sonar, which can build detailed profiles on individuals and identify links between them. This acquisition increases opportunities for abuse by expanding officers’ ability to conduct wide-ranging social media surveillance.

The LAPD has been doing this for years, if its "2015 Social Media User Guide" [PDF] is any indication. At that point, the LAPD was already doing plenty of social media monitoring. The guide mentions things like oversight, seeking approval for certain forms of monitoring, and the possibility of First and Fourth Amendment violations.

However, it also mentions the use of fictitious personas to engage in undercover investigations and the use of fictitious personas to engage in fishing expeditions.

The use of a Fictitious Online Persona to engage in investigative activity. Fictitious Online Personas created for the purposes of identifying and examining trends and tactics, developing profiles, or conducting research does not constitute online undercover activity.

That doesn't trouble the LAPD. There are no rules for this. Long-term surveillance of people suspected of nothing utilizing fictitious accounts that might give officers access to non-public posts and messages is something the LAPD performs in an accountability vacuum, constitutional concerns be damned.

That document says no permission is needed and no oversight governs these activities. Other documents obtained by the Brennan Center confirm the LAPD's hands-off approach to long-term social media monitoring -- some which involves officers engaged in subterfuge indistinguishable from the "Online Undercover Activity" more closely governed by rules applying to ongoing investigations.

Despite endowing its officers with broad authority to surveil social media, the LAPD has done little to ensure these powers aren’t abused. According to a letter responding to our records request, it does “not track what (if anything) [its] employees monitor[]” on social media sites and “has not conducted any audits regarding the use of social media.”

Great. So we don't know how much surveillance unrelated to criminal investigations occurs under the LAPD's unwatchful, presumably-closed eye. We also don't know how many times officers have broken what few rules govern their online interactions and passive surveillance. We also don't know whether this always-on monitoring has had any impact on law enforcement activities, like providing new leads or evidence in other criminal cases. And even if it has, the unanswered question remains: why is the LAPD keeping an eye on people it doesn't have any reasonable suspicion are engaged in criminal activity?

Just as worrying is the paperwork filled out by beat cops during "field interviews," which encompass everything from speaking to crime witnesses/victims to whatever city residents the LAPD interacts with during its patrols. Not only are these cards used to keep the LAPD's extremely questionable gang database stocked with alleged gang members, but they encourage officers to ask for information they have no legal reason to demand -- like Social Security Numbers or, as is relevant here, "social media account(s)."

All of this information gets fed into the LAPD's databases and social media monitoring tools, like Media Sonar. It's all called "intelligence," even if it's little more than bait for social media fishing expeditions by cops with the time and the tech to waste on efforts that do little to reduce crime or contribute to ongoing investigations. And this seems to be a uniquely LA thing: the Brennan Center says its review of "field interview" cards (which covers 40 US cities at this point) has yet to uncover any other law enforcement agency seeking to collect information about people's social media accounts.

This doesn't mean no other police departments are trying to collect this information. It just means the LAPD feels this is an acceptable thing to ask people for during field interviews and its reliance on social media monitoring software to do its investigative work for it. The LAPD appears to be doing this simply because no one -- not department officials, internal oversight, external oversight, or judges at any level of the court system -- has told the PD it can't.

Filed Under: 4th amendment, lapd, social media, surviellance

Please Welcome The Los Angeles Police Department (Brought To You In Part By A Generous Grant From Ring)

from the RTs-are-possibly-endorsements dept

Amazon's doorbell-camera acquisition, Ring, has captured a large segment of the home security market. Part of its growth is due to its long list of law enforcement partnerships. Coupled with the rollout of its companion app, Neighbors, Ring has been handing out cameras to cops… who then hand out these complimentary cameras to local homeowners.

Strings are attached -- some explicit and some implicit. The implicit strings connect cops to citizens: the assumption recipients of discounted or free cameras will allow officers to access recordings without having to bother the courts with a warrant request.

The explicit strings tie up cops, making them brand ambassadors for Ring and its ever-expanding network of cameras. If cops want cheap cameras and the access to recordings those might provide, they have to become Ring's unofficial spokespeople.

Public records show Ring has required police departments to assign employees to act as press and social media liaisons in the new partnership with Ring. Ring controls PR efforts and public statements. It also dangles its wifi-connected carrot: more signups for Ring's Neighbors app means more free cameras for cops.

This unhealthy relationship between Ring and law enforcement is detailed in a recent LA Times article by Johana Bhuiyan. Thousands of dollars of cameras were handed out to LAPD officers in exchange for their promotion and distribution of Ring's products.

Ring provided at least 100 LAPD officers with one or more free devices or discount codes and encouraged them to recommend the company’s web-connected doorbells and security cameras, emails reviewed by The Times reveal. In more than 15 cases, emails show that officers who received free gadgets or discounts promoted Ring products to fellow police officers or members of the public.

Officers asked for cameras, passing them on to other officers, friends and family members, as well as local homeowners. As more devices were activated, Ring sent emails congratulating the most proactive officers and promising even more free gear if this continued.

This would be problematic even without potential violations of LAPD guidelines. This is Ring using a government agency as a distribution center and advertising agency. And this is a government agency willingly performing both of those tasks in exchange for even more Ring brand evangelism.

But this back-and-forth, along with exchanges of activations for more free products, seemingly violates the LAPD's policies. However, it appears Ring and the officers were cognizant of the guidelines and worked together to ensure they weren't violated.

LAPD rules restrict the acceptance of gifts that could be seen as an attempt to influence the actions of officers. After a preliminary review of the emails, the department said officers did not appear to have violated agency rules.

An agency spokesperson said that although accepting free devices and personally recommending those products to community members did not violate the LAPD code of ethics, a paid endorsement would run afoul of agency rules.

That isn't to say the actions of everyone involved were above-board and above reproach. Staying within the guidelines frequently meant straying right up to the edge of them. It also meant finding ways to influence officers to continue pushing Ring's products without crossing that line. It appears LAPD supervisors believe the only form of payment that's unacceptable is cash. Anything else -- no matter its effect on officers and their actions -- adheres to the letter of the law while mostly ignoring its spirit.

Here are few examples of Ring/LAPD interactions the LAPD considers to be acceptable:

Officer Eric Mollinedo from the Olympic division emailed Ring’s director of operations, August Cziment, asking for promo codes as well as information about receiving a unit for his home. Mollinedo said he’d be manning a booth at an upcoming public safety fair. Cziment said Ring would get him “going with flyers, as well as a unit.” Ring also provided Mollinedo a coupon code and encouraged him to distribute it to his colleagues.

[...]

Sgt. Justin Scott exchanged a series of emails with Cziment about an offer for a free stick-up camera. Ring asked him to share the offer with his entire West L.A. station. [...] Later that month, Scott ran promotional language by the company before sending it to fellow officers, emailing Cziment a block of text about the stick-up camera offer for his approval. Cziment replied, “Looks great! Keep me updated on how it all goes.”

In Scott's case, the free camera offer resulted in responses from 60 officers. Some asked for discount codes for themselves and family members. Others asked if they were still eligible for a prior Ring giveaway. Another officer approached Ring directly, asking for the "donation" of a free camera to be raffled off at a station social function. Ring obliged.

Ring has since abandoned its guideline-skirting "brand ambassador" program with the LAPD. These partnerships are still in place elsewhere in the nation. Ring has always been happy to tout its tight relationships with law enforcement agencies even though its cameras -- despite the company's hefty market share -- have done little to reduce crime rates. The company may have made some better decisions in recent weeks -- like requiring law enforcement requests for footage to be made publicly through its online portal -- but it's certainly not interested in slowing the spread of its product.

Ring has relied on law enforcement to expand its market base for years. It's not going to completely abandon that plan just because some of its more unseemly aspects have been exposed.

Filed Under: lapd, police, ring, sponsorship, surveillance, video doorbells
Companies: amazon, ring

LAPD Asked Ring Users To Turn Over Footage Of Anti-Police Brutality Protests

from the I'm-pretty-sure-we-can-said-people-who-never-wondered-if-they-SHOULD dept

It's not just a home surveillance system. It's a surveillance system.

Documents obtained by the EFF and shared with The Intercept show law enforcement used footage from Ring doorbell cameras -- cameras some people have obtained for free from Ring's thousands of law enforcement "partners" -- to hunt down people protesting police violence.

The documents show the Los Angeles Police Department sent requests to Los Angeles residents asking them for footage recorded by their cameras. But the LAPD did not specify what sort of footage it was looking for. The task force making the request was charged with investigating crimes committed "during protests and demonstrations."

This information was vaguely conveyed to Ring owners in the area. The requests didn't even bother to specify whether the "incident" the LAPD was investigating could even have been captured by the doorbell cameras targeted by this request.

"The LAPD ‘Safe L.A. Task Force’ is asking for your help,” reads the message, from detective Gerry Chamberlain. “During recent protests, individuals were injured & property was looted, damaged, and destroyed. In an effort to identify those responsible, we are asking you to submit copies of any video(s) you may have for [redacted].” The request appears to have made no mention of what exactly the LAPD was pursuing; no crime, proven or alleged, is described in the unredacted portion of the request, only that the police wanted footage of an unspecified “incident” related to a protest. The redacted portion of the request does not appear to contain any substantive further description.

This was not the only message sent. The documents show the LAPD made additional requests following other demonstrations, in essence asking Los Angeles residents to rat out people engaged (for the most part) in peaceful protests. The task force wasn't asking for any info about specific crimes, but rather anything that showed people doing stuff that (again, for the most part) was protected by the First Amendment.

And there wasn't a lot of criminal activity. At least, not so much the LAPD should have felt comfortable sending out blanket requests for footage from cameras owned by private citizens.

In October, the Los Angeles Times cited LAPD data showing that the “vast majority” of the city’s Black Lives Matter rallies, part of a national wave of outraged mobilization following the police killing of Floyd, were peaceful, with only “between 6% and 7%” of protests resulting in any violence, including violence perpetrated by the LAPD itself.

But Ring has made aggressive inroads with thousands of law enforcement "partners." And it has provided them with instructions for requests like these -- ones that evade warrant or subpoena requirements.

On the plus side, the requests make any handover of footage completely voluntary. Bear in mind that law enforcement "requests" for footage are perceived by citizens as being far less voluntary than law enforcement perceives them to be. But the bottom line is these are requests, not demands. Even so, the LAPD would rather not answer questions about its mass emails or their efficiency rate.

And that's a problem Ring doesn't have an answer for. Indeed, it's an answer Ring doesn't even appear to care about. Ring likes cops. The people actually buying and/or deploying its cameras appear to be far down the list of things Ring cares about. As far as Ring is concerned, the market it has cornered is little more than an extension of existing government surveillance networks. If it did care about its users, it would have done more to protect them from malicious hackers and law enforcement officers who can't be bothered to boilerplate up a warrant affidavit.

Even if you decide the First Amendment question isn't settled enough to give Los Angeles residents pause when handing over footage to cops, the mutual appreciation society formed by Ring and law enforcement cuts private citizens out of the equation. It turns their cameras into cop cameras.

Sure, people may retain control of the devices and ignore emailed requests for footage, but Ring is doing all it can to erase the line between public and private. It allows law enforcement agencies to give cameras to citizens, increasing the chance the recipients of these freebies will be receptive law enforcement requests. It gives cops a portal that shows them where cameras are located, giving the government information it wouldn't have under other circumstances. Finally, Ring inserts itself into the PR process, giving itself final approval on press statements from law enforcement that involve its products, allowing it to craft a more self-serving narrative.

There's no indication this effort was limited to areas where criminal activity during protests was suspected. Instead, the portal provided by Ring made it possible for the LAPD to ask for private citizens' inadvertent recordings of protected speech. This is secondhand surveillance. And its encroachment into our everyday lives should be greeted with suspicion. This is an opportunistic approach to law enforcement, one that embraces mission creep.

Filed Under: black lives matter, iot, lapd, protests, ring, surveillance

After Being Notified Of Info It Should Have Already Been Aware Of, LAPD Bans Clearview Use By Investigators

from the ohhhhhhh-those-unauthorized-uses dept

The Los Angeles Police Department is shutting down a very small percentage of its facial recognition searches. Last month, public records exposed the fact that the LAPD had been lying about its facial recognition use for years. Up until 2019, the department maintained it did not use the tech. Records obtained by the Los Angeles Times showed it had actually used it 30,000 times over the past decade.

The most recent development in the LAPD's mostly dishonest use of this tech is that it will not allow personnel to mess around with certain third-party offerings. As Buzzfeed reports, the LAPD has forbidden the use of Clearview by officers following the release of information the department already should have already been aware of.

Documents reviewed by BuzzFeed News showed that more than 25 LAPD employees ran nearly 475 searches with Clearview AI over a three-month period beginning at the end of 2019.

[...]

LAPD officials confirmed that investigators were using Clearview AI but declined to say which officers and which specific cases it was used for. They also refused to say whether the facial recognition software has led to arrests of any suspects.

Now that the public knows what the LAPD already should have known, the department is changing its policy to exclude Clearview… and probably not much else.

The Los Angeles Police Department has banned the use of commercial facial recognition systems, following inquiries from BuzzFeed News about its officers' use of a controversial software known as Clearview AI.

Have to love the fact that the LAPD needed to be apprised of what its own investigators were doing by journalists. That's the level of internal oversight we've come to expect from the nation's law enforcement agencies. If you don't look for anything, it's almost impossible to find misconduct and abuses of power. No news is the best news. And it can easily be achieved by doing nothing at all.

This ban only affects "commercial" software which means investigators will still be able to use (and misuse) more official products, like the facial recognition system owned by the county -- the same one the LAPD spent years denying it used.

And, although it's an incremental change that seems to only forbid the use of one particular facial recognition product, it's still good to see another law enforcement agency kick Clearview to the curb. Clearview's unproven AI trawls a database of photos scraped from the internet, making it a highly questionable addition to any government agency's surveillance repertoire. And Clearview has been highly irresponsible in its marketing and distribution of its tech, making unverified claims about law enforcement successes while encouraging government employees to test drive the software by feeding it faces of friends, family members, celebrities, etc.

If more agencies uninvite this third-party interloper, law enforcement critical mass will make Clearview's business plan untenable. It's already ditched most of its private customers in response to lawsuits. If the potential customers it has left refuse to do business with it, it will soon become little more than a horrible memory.

Filed Under: facial recognition, lapd, surveillance
Companies: clearview, clearview ai