LA County sheriffs surveilled, investigated multiple journalists

The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department investigated or surveilled multiple journalists during Alex Villanueva’s tenure as sheriff from 2018 to 2022, according to accounts published in July 2024.

The Los Angeles Times reported that its former investigative reporter Maya Lau became a subject of an investigation in 2018, when the department revived an inquiry into the disclosure of a list of roughly 300 problem deputies. Lau had written about the deputies the previous year, prompting the LASD’s initial attempt to identify the source, which quickly ended without success.

The investigation was reopened shortly after Villanueva took office as sheriff and, according to an investigative case file obtained by the Times, officers ultimately alleged that Lau was a “criminal suspect,” having knowingly received stolen materials. The department submitted the case against her to the state’s attorney general in 2021, who formally declined to prosecute her in May 2024.

Lau told the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker that she only learned of the investigation when her former colleagues at the Times reached out for comment after it was closed.

“This investigation is an outrage. They should know better: Journalists shouldn’t be criminally investigated for doing their job,” Lau said. “Whether they want to admit it or not, it is an intimidation tactic.”

She added that her coverage, along with that of her colleagues, helped change state laws to improve public access to police disciplinary records and that the work she did was in the public’s interest.

Lau was not the last journalist investigated under Villanueva’s leadership.

According to a pair of articles published on July 17, 2024, reporter Cerise Castle obtained email records confirming that the LASD began surveilling her almost immediately after she published a 15-part series with Knock LA in March and April 2021 exposing a history of gangs within the department.

Castle gained access to digital communications containing her name after suing the department for denying a May 2021 public records request. It ultimately agreed to a settlement and began turning over the records two years later.

The emails revealed that she was flagged as a suspicious person, that an officer described her reporting as “a potential officer safety concern” and that another described Knock LA as among the “anti-LASD platform(s) we’re tracking,” Castle reported.

“These emails confirm LASD monitored me, a reporter performing her work, protected by the First Amendment of the US Constitution, as well as other people they consider to be in my orbit,” Castle wrote. “It’s not clear the extent of which this is still happening. I have filed similar requests to the original filed in 2021, but have not received any records.”

Castle told the Tracker that before the series was published, a source warned her that she might be surveilled and she took it seriously: She stayed at a safe house while finishing the reporting and through its publication. After returning home, she said she repeatedly saw department vehicles parked in the driveway outside her apartment — located outside of LASD’s jurisdiction — and has been pulled over multiple times recently while reporting on police misconduct cases.

“It’s impossible for me to relax. I don’t really feel safe anywhere, even at home,” Castle said. “It hasn’t killed my resolve. It has changed me completely as a person, but I’m not going to stop doing this work.”

David Loy, legal director of the First Amendment Coalition, condemned the surveillance of journalists in a statement, calling it “truly alarming.”

“It creates a significant chill in the fact that journalists should be able to do their jobs without fear that they’re going to be targets, or potential targets, of law enforcement retaliation,” Loy said.

At a news conference in April 2022, Villanueva targeted another journalist, LA Times reporter Alene Tchekmedyian, as part of a leak investigation. That followed Tchekmedyian’s reporting on internal documents that detailed an alleged department cover-up around an inmate abuse case.

When pressed at the news conference to say whether Tchekmedyian was under criminal investigation, Villanueva responded that the reporter received information and put it to use. “What she receives legally and puts to her own use and what she receives legally and the L.A. Times uses — I'm sure that's a huge, complex level of law and freedom of the press and all that. However, when it’s stolen materials, at some point, you actually become part of the story.”

Hours after the news conference, Villanueva went on social media to address the public outcry over his comments.

“Resulting from the incredible frenzy of misinformation being circulated, I must clarify at no time today did I state an LA Times reporter was a suspect in a criminal investigation. We have no interest in pursuing, nor are we pursuing, criminal charges against any reporters,” Villanueva wrote.

At the time of that statement, however, the department’s recommendation that Times reporter Lau be charged was still pending before the attorney general.

Villanueva was later voted out of office and his replacement, Robert Luna, was sworn in as sheriff in December 2022.

In an emailed statement to the Tracker in July 2024, the department said: “Under the leadership of Sheriff Luna, we do not monitor journalists and we respect the freedom of the press. Our current administration operates distinctively from its predecessor, and actions taken in prior administrations do not reflect our current policies or practices.”

LASD declined to respond to requests for details about when the investigations were opened and closed, and whether Villanueva personally ordered or oversaw them. Villanueva did not respond to a request for comment.

Police investigating journalists isn’t unusual, Castle told the Tracker. “We’ve seen journalists that have gone through surveillance like this by police departments quite frequently,” she said, citing Lau, Tchekmedyian and the raid on the Marion County Record last year. “This stuff is happening all over the United States a lot more frequently than I think people are aware of, and it’s something that should be a concern for all of us.”

Lau said that while she doesn’t have any reason to believe that egregious investigatory tactics, such as tapping her phone, were used, there are unanswered questions. “I don’t know the full scope of this investigation and that is the danger. It could theoretically put other sources, including those that had nothing to do with this story, at risk.”