Over the years, the Los Angeles Police Department has been the subject of several scandals, misconduct, and other controversies. According to one study, during the lengthy tenure of
William H. Parker as police chief (1950–1966), the LAPD was "outwardly racist", The consent decree was lifted in 2013.
James E. Davis served two terms as LAPD police chief, heading the department from 1926 to 1929 and from 1933 to 1938. During his first term as chief, Davis called for violence against criminals while leading a
Prohibition vice squad, and the department was known for controversies including accusations of conspiracy, blackmail, and murder. Davis also formed a
Red Squad to combat labor unions; headed by Capt.
William F. Hynes, the squad arrested hundreds of strike participants. In March 1928, Christine Collins reported her nine-year-old son, Walter, missing. Five months later, a boy named Arthur Hutchins came forth claiming to be Walter; when Mrs. Collins told the police that the boy was not her son, she was committed to a mental institution under a Section 12 internment. It was later determined that Walter had fallen victim to a child rapist/murderer in the infamous
Wineville Chicken Coop murders, and Arthur Hutchins admitted that he had lied about his identity to meet his favorite actor,
Tom Mix. The widely publicized case was depicted in the 2008 film
Changeling. When
Frank L. Shaw was elected mayor in 1933, he reappointed Davis as police chief, and the LAPD––already considered "nationally notorious" for police corruption––entered a new phase of widespread criminal activity. In 1936, Davis sent members of the LAPD to California's state borders, along Arizona, Nevada, and Oregon, to institute checkpoints blocking the entry of migrants, or
"okies". The police began raids and mass arrests of populations including the homeless and disabled; those taken in by police were given the option of leaving California or serving a 180-day jail term. By 1937, the LAPD was leading a vast intelligence operation wiretapping politicians, judges, and federal agents. Some records of police surveillance were taken under subpoena after Harry Raymond, a former officer investigating corruption in the force, was the victim of a car bomb. During the trial that followed, LAPD captain
Earl Kynette was found guilty of Raymond's attempted murder; Davis acknowledged that he had known Raymond was under police surveillance. In the late 1930s, the LAPD engaged in widespread racial profiling of
Mexican Americans. The LAPD and the
Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department used the 1942 "
Sleepy Lagoon murder" of José Gallardo Díaz to justify a coordinated crackdown: the police identified primarily-Mexican American communities, cordoned them off with blockades, and carried out mass searches and arrests.
1950s–1960s William H. Parker, who served as chief of the LAPD from August 9, 1950, until his death on July 16, 1966, was frequently criticized for racist remarks, his refusal to acknowledge police brutality, and his demands that the police not be subject to the same laws as citizens; the last of these contributed to ongoing conflicts with the FBI, with the agency refusing to train LAPD officers until after Parker's death. Parker adopted the rhetoric of Los Angeles as the "
white spot" of America, first popularized by
Los Angeles Times publisher
Harry Chandler, and explicitly set it against the "black picture" of the nation. The
Los Angeles City Council once confronted him with a recording in which he referred to Mexican Americans as not being far from "the wild tribes of Mexico"; in the 1960s, he claimed that "by 1970, 45% of the metropolitan area of Los Angeles will be Negro" and that the city should support a strong police force because "if you don't, come 1970, God help you"; he described Black participants in the 1965
Watts riots as acting like "monkeys in a zoo". he popularized the term "
thin blue line" in both his speeches and in
a TV show he conceived and produced for Los Angeles NBC network
KNBC; and he introduced the department's first press office. These efforts were seen as tied to his efforts to curry public favor and extend the reach of officers of the LAPD. In 1962, the controversial LAPD shooting of seven unarmed members of the
Nation of Islam resulted in the death of Ronald Stokes, and led to protests of the LAPD led by
Malcolm X and the Nation of Islam.
1970s–1980s In the 1970s and into the 1980s "biased policing", also known as
racial profiling, was commonplace in the department. This policing alienated the department from minority residents and gained the department a reputation of abuse of power and bias against minority residents. Early in his tenure as Chief of Police, Daryl Gates re-instituted the use of the chokehold (placing an arm or flashlight over someone's throat) to subdue suspects. In 1982, this technique was used and led to the death of
James Mincey Jr. Following Mincey's death, the
Police Commission barred the use of chokeholds by officers unless in a life-threatening situation. An investigation found that sixteen people had died after being restrained by police chokeholds. In 1986, Officer
Stephanie Lazarus killed her ex-boyfriend's new wife. Despite the victim's father's insistence that Lazarus should be a suspect in the homicide, she was not considered by the police and the case went cold. In the 2000s, detectives revisiting cold cases deduced that Stephanie was a suspect. DNA evidence led to her arrest and conviction. Also in 1986, the department purchased a 14-ton armored breaching vehicle, used to smash quickly through the walls of houses of suspects. The ACLU questioned the constitutionality of the vehicle, and the California Appellate Court later ruled the vehicle was unconstitutional, violating lawful search and seizure. He was released when the LAPD realized their mistake. The city cleared the detective of wrongdoing, but Morgan subsequently filed a civil suit against both the LAPD and the city for the unlawful detention; the lawsuit was settled in 1993, and Morgan was awarded $800,000 by the Los Angeles City Council. On September 4, 1988, LAPD officers raided the home of Roger Guydon looking for drugs. They found nothing. In 1991, Guydon won a $760,000 lawsuit against the city.
1990s–2000s: Rodney King, LA riots, consent decree In April 1991, the Christopher Commission was formed in the wake of the
Rodney King beating, by the then-mayor of Los Angeles
Tom Bradley. It was chaired by attorney
Warren Christopher and was created to examine the structure and operation of the LAPD. The commission found that there were a significant number of LAPD officers who used excessive force and that the disciplinary structure was weak and ineffective. Fewer than a third of the suggested reforms were put into place. To reduce
drive-by shootings, LAPD initiated
Operation Cul-de-Sac in 1991. This consisted of installing barriers on residential streets to block vehicle traffic. As a result, homicides and assaults were greatly reduced. The program ended after two years, with violent crime rates returning to their previous levels. On July 1, 1992, John Daniels Jr., 36, a tow truck driver, was fatally shot by LAPD Officer Douglas Iversen as he was driving away from a service station in South Central. Iversen was charged with
second-degree murder, the first officer to ever be charged with murder for an on-duty shooting. Two separate juries were deadlocked on the charge with 20 out of 24 voting for acquittal of all charges. The case was dismissed by a judge. Daniels' family received a $1.2 million settlement after filing a lawsuit against the City of Los Angeles. The Los Angeles riots of 1992, also known as the Rodney King uprising or the Rodney King riots, began on April 29, 1992, when a jury acquitted four LAPD police officers accused in the videotaped beating of Rodney King following a high-speed car pursuit on March 3, 1991. After seven days of
jury deliberations, the jury acquitted all four officers of assault and acquitted three of the four of using excessive force. The evening after the verdict, thousands of people in the Los Angeles area rioted for over six days following the verdict. Widespread
looting,
assault,
arson, and
murder occurred, and property damages totaled one billion dollars. In all, 53 people died during the riots. On October 12, 1996, LAPD Officers
Rafael Pérez and
Nino Durden entered the apartment of
Javier Ovando. They shot Ovando in the back, paralyzing him from the waist down. They then planted a gun on the unarmed Ovando to make it appear he had attacked them. The two officers then perjured themselves. Ovando was sentenced to 23 years in custody based on their testimony. Later, one of the officers admitted his crime. Ovando was released, and in 2000, was paid $15 million for his injuries and imprisonment. The officers' actions led to the exposure of the
Rampart scandal. By 2001, the resulting investigations would lead to more than 75 officers being investigated or charged, and over 100 criminal cases being overturned, due to perjury or other forms of misconduct, much based on the plea-bargain testimony of Perez. Other provisions in the decree called for divisions to investigate all use of force (now known as Force Investigative Division) and conduct audits department-wide; the development of a risk management system; the creation of a field data capture system to track the race, ethnicity or national origin of the motorists and pedestrians stopped by the department; the creation of an Ethics Enforcement Section within the Internal Affairs Group; the transfer of investigative authority to Internal Affairs of all serious personnel complaint investigations; a nationwide study by an independent consultant on law enforcement dealing with the mentally ill, to help the department refine its system; a study by an independent consultant of the department's training programs; and the creation of an informant manual and database. In 2006, the consent decree was extended by six years, as U.S. District Court Judge
Gary Feess found that the LAPD had not implemented the reforms that it had committed to. After police arrived, Pena threatened to kill her and himself after firing at others earlier. SWAT officers were called in. One officer was shot and wounded by Pena. In 2003, the LAPD arrested
Juan Catalan after a 16-year-old girl was shot dead. Catalan was sentenced to death after a witness stated that he looked like the killer. Catalan turned out to be innocent; it was footage shot for the sitcom
Curb Your Enthusiasm which showed him at
Dodger Stadium, showing him watching a baseball game with his family, that exonerated him. On
May Day, 2007, immigrant rights groups held rallies in
MacArthur Park in support of undocumented immigrants. The rallies were permitted and initially the protesters followed the terms of the permits, but some of the protesters began blocking the street. After warnings by the LAPD, the protesters failed to disperse and the rally was declared an unlawful assembly. The LAPD only announced the declaration of the unlawful assembly in English leading to confusion by some in the crowd who only spoke Spanish. The officers began slowly advancing and fired rubber bullets and used batons to disperse crowd members who refused to comply with police orders to leave the area. In 2008, Officer Russell Mecano offered to not arrest a woman in exchange for
sex and offered cash to another woman in exchange for sex. He was convicted and sentenced to more than eight years.
2010s–2020s On July 22, 2012, Alesia Thomas, an African American woman, died in the back of a police car after being kicked in the upper thigh, groin, and abdomen. Her cause of death was ruled "undetermined", and the autopsy report mentioned cocaine intoxication as a "major" contributing factor, but also indicated that the struggle with officers "could not be excluded" as a contributing factor to her death. It was later revealed that Thomas was also determined to have
bipolar disorder. Later, LAPD officer Mary O'Callaghan was charged with assault over her actions in the case. As a result of these events, on September 1, 2012, civil rights activists requested an emergency meeting with LAPD Chief
Charlie Beck to review arrest and use-of-force policies. On August 18, 2012, Ronald Weekley Jr., a college student, was punched in the face while being arrested after being stopped for riding his skateboard on the wrong side of the street. On August 21, 2012, Michelle Jordan, a
registered nurse, was pulled over for holding her cell phone while driving. She was thrown to the ground twice in the course of being arrested after getting out of the car and refusing to comply with an officer's command to get back in the vehicle. The first incident took place on the 19500 Block of Redbeam Avenue. LAPD officers fired numerous shots into the back of a blue pickup truck, allegedly without warning, and injured the two women inside. Twenty-five minutes later, the Torrance Police shot into the windshield of another pickup truck, narrowly missing the driver. In both cases the victims were not involved with the Dorner case. The Dorner case involved allegations of impropriety by other LAPD officers, as Dorner alleged that he had been fired for reporting brutality by his training officer. The manhunt was triggered by Dorner's alleged attacks against LAPD and ex-LAPD personnel. In 2013, the city of Los Angeles agreed to pay the two female victims of the first incident $2.1 million each to settle the matter. The city of Torrance agreed to pay the victim of the second incident $1.8 million. In May 2014, after much controversy in their city, the
Seattle Police Department transferred two
Draganflyer X6 UAVs to the LAPD. The LAPD stated that the only uses for the drones would be for narrow and prescribed circumstances such as hostage situations, but that they would not be put into use until the Board of Police Commissioners and the City Attorney crafted a policy for their use after the LA City Council ordered the policy creation. The decision to use the drones gained significant opposition from community activists including the ACLU and new groups founded after the announcement about drone use including Stop LAPD Spying Coalition and the Drone-Free LAPD, No Drones, LA! Activist groups protested outside of city hall against the use of drones by the LAPD. On August 11, 2014, an African-American man named
Ezell Ford was shot by two LAPD gang detectives after they made an investigative stop of Ford on the street. Ford was unarmed and the officers claimed that he got into a physical struggle with one of them and then reached for their gun, forcing them to fire on Ford, while some witnesses who claimed to have seen the incident alleged that there was no struggle. The autopsy report was ordered to be released by Mayor
Eric Garcetti before the end of 2014. On September 11, 2014, African-American actress
Danièle Watts was temporarily detained by the LAPD when she and her boyfriend were in Studio City. Watts accused the officers who stopped her of racially profiling her because she was African-American and her boyfriend was Caucasian, claiming that they treated her as if she was a "prostitute" and that the officers had been disrespectful to her because she was African-American. The recording showed that police had received a 911 call about lewd acts in a car and the couple who were described to have committed the lewd acts fit Watts' and her boyfriend's description. The two officers were cleared of any wrongdoing by the department shortly after the release of the audio recordings. In October 2014, the LAPD Office of the Inspector General released a report that members of the department had been using department computers to falsely inflate the number of officers and patrol cars that were on duty at any given time in a method known as "ghost cars". The report found that supervisors of various ranks would check officers into vacant assignments right before the department's computerized patrol software did its headcount and then log the officers off when the count was done. The report found that the practice occurred in at least five out of 21 patrol divisions, and the report also highlighted the causes including understaffing in the LAPD. In 2018, LAPD officers Louis Lozano and Eric Mitchell were fired for misconduct, making false statements, and violating the public's trust in their actions during an armed robbery in 2017. On April 15, 2017, Lozano and Mitchell were on duty when they received a call for an armed robbery at a nearby
Macy's. Despite being close to the scene, the officers remained parked in an alleyway; Sergeant Jose Gomez, patrol sergeant for that shift, asked that the officers respond to the robbery, but they did not reply. While being questioned over the incident, Lozano and Mitchell claimed they could not hear the call due to loud music from a nearby park. When Sergeant Gomez reviewed their vehicle recordings, he found the officers were distracted by the mobile game
Pokémon Go, and that they ignored the robbery call and left their patrol jurisdiction to continue playing the game. Lozano and Mitchell attempted to appeal their firing, arguing their vehicle recordings were used improperly as evidence, but the California Second District Court of Appeal rejected their appeal. In June 2020, following a campaign by a coalition of community groups including
Black Lives Matter, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti announced LAPD budget cuts of $150 million. Garcetti announced the funds would be redirected to community initiatives. Then-Senator
Kamala Harris supported Garcetti's decision to cut the LAPD's budget. In 2020, the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office announced that six LAPD officers had been charged with conspiracy and falsifying information in a false gang labeling scandal, with an additional 18 officers under investigation. The discovery of false accusations led to the review of hundreds of cases and the dismissal of several felony charges dating back to 2016. On February 13, 2021, the LAPD announced in a series of tweets it was launching an internal investigation into the Harbor Division after their employees allegedly passed around a
Valentine's Day-themed
e-card depicting
George Floyd with the caption "You take my breath away", which referred to
Floyd's murder. The LAPD said it "will have zero tolerance for this type of behavior". On June 30, 2021, an LAPD
bomb disposal squad detonated confiscated illegal fireworks in a residential neighborhood, injuring 17 people, causing extensive damage to nearby houses, and destroying the LAPD's bomb disposal truck. The explosion reportedly occurred when the bomb squad significantly underestimated the weight of the fireworks that were loaded into the truck's blast chamber. 42 pounds of fireworks were loaded into the blast chamber; however, it was only designed to sustain 15 pounds of explosives, with a maximum of 25 pounds (though this would disable the truck). The LAPD was criticized for carelessly handling explosives and detonating them in a neighborhood; Chief Moore publicly apologized during a news conference, informing reporters the bomb squad had begun implementing new procedures to prevent similar incidents in the future. In September 2021,
The Guardian reported that LAPD officers had been instructed by Chief
Michel Moore to collect
social media account information from all citizens they interview, whether or not they have been accused of committing a crime. Further, officers were asked to collect
Social Security numbers and instructed to tell individuals that they "must be provided" under federal law, although it is unclear if this is true. In a response to the comment, the LAPD stated that the field interview policy was "being updated". An updated policy instructs officers not to collect Social Security numbers. In October, 2025, the LAPD has stopped releasing raw crime data, breaking a two-decade precedent. They cite "the potential to lead to misguided public policy discussions or unjustified public panic", which undermines the California Public Records Act. There are no exemptions for withholding raw data, and the LAPD is relying on a generalized reason of asserting the release of the data would be against the "public's interest". == Fallen officers ==