Incident Details
- Date of Incident
- January 16, 2024
- Location
- Los Angeles, California
- Targets
- Ben Camacho (Knock LA)
A portion of a lawsuit filed against Knock LA reporter Ben Camacho on Jan. 16, 2024, attempting to hold him and an advocacy group financially responsible for damages in a class action suit filed against the Los Angeles Police Department.
Judge dismisses LA’s cross-claims over journalist’s records request
A judge dismissed cross-claims by the Los Angeles city attorney against Knock LA reporter Ben Camacho on June 18, 2024, in a negligence suit filed by a group of officers in the Los Angeles Police Department.
The Los Angeles County Superior Court judge ruled that Camacho’s distribution of police headshots released to him through a public records request, for which the city had sought to hold him financially liable, was “clearly protected activity, protected by the First Amendment, as it relates to his role as a journalist,” Courthouse News Service reported.
Camacho filed a public records request for a full roster of LAPD officers and their personnel headshots in October 2021. When the department agreed to provide the roster but not the photographs, Camacho filed a lawsuit against the city and obtained the photographs in September 2022 as part of a settlement agreement.
He then shared the photos with the activist group Stop LAPD Spying Coalition, which posted them on its website in March 2023. Camacho also posted a link on social media to a folder containing all of the released photos.
The Los Angeles Police Protective League, a police union, then sued the city, demanding that it recover the headshots and prevent their further distribution. A week later, a group of rank-and-file LAPD officers filed a class action suit against the city seeking damages for negligence.
The city in turn sued Camacho and Stop LAPD Spying, ordering them to unpublish the images and return or destroy all electronic and physical copies. That suit was settled in June 2024, with the city agreeing to pay Camacho and Stop LAPD Spying $300,000 in legal fees.
The city also added Camacho and Stop LAPD Spying as cross-defendants in the LAPD officers’ class action suit in January 2024, seeking to hold them financially liable for the release of the headshots.
In February, Camacho and Stop LAPD Spying filed an anti-SLAPP motion calling for the city’s cross-claims to be dismissed. SLAPP, or strategic lawsuit against public participation, refers to legal actions brought in order to chill speech.
On June 18, the judge granted the motion, ruling that the publication of the photos constituted “protected speech and petitioning, especially given the broad right of the press to publish confidential matters, even police personnel files, when they relate to issues of public interest - e.g., police accountability,” according to a draft copy of the order that Camacho shared with the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker and confirmed was identical to the final version.
Camacho told the Tracker that the suit is still pending while a few procedural details are resolved. “We’re off the hook though,” he said.
Journalist Ben Camacho was sued by the City of Los Angeles for the second time on Jan. 16, 2024, in an attempt to hold him and an activist group financially liable in a related suit over the release of police headshots.
Camacho, a reporter and photo editor for the nonprofit community journalism outlet Knock LA, told the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker that he had previously filed a public records lawsuit against the city after the Los Angeles Police Department refused to release the personnel headshots of officers.
As part of a settlement agreement in September 2022, the city provided Camacho a printed roster of sworn officers, a flash drive containing 9,310 officers’ photos and a letter explaining that officers working in undercover assignments had been excluded from the disclosures.
After the photos were published online in March 2023 by the activist group, Stop LAPD Spying Coalition, Camacho said it quickly became apparent that there were more images disclosed than the LAPD had wanted. On March 28, the Los Angeles Police Protective League, a police union, sued the city demanding that it recover the headshots. A week later, a group of rank-and-file officers filed a class action suit seeking damages for negligence.
The city, in turn, filed its first suit against Camacho and the activist group on April 5 in an attempt to force the return of the photographs and the destruction of any copies. The latest lawsuit seeks to have Camacho and Stop LAPD Spying Coalition held financially liable for the damages sought in the negligence class action suit.
Camacho told the Tracker that he believes Los Angeles City Attorney Hydee Feldstein Soto is pursuing the cases against him without clear support from the mayor or city council.
“This is an elected official who isn’t afraid to ignore First Amendment-protected activity, this is someone who is pro-government secrecy, this is someone who is anti-transparency,” Camacho said. “And she’s also not afraid to go after the California Public Records Act.”
Feldstein Soto lobbied in 2023 for an amendment to the public records act that would make identifying information — including photos — of public employees exempt from disclosure. Camacho told the Tracker that such an exemption would enable the LAPD to operate as secret police. The proposal did not come to a vote in 2023 but could be reintroduced.
In a post on social media, Camacho called the new lawsuit “another stain on the office she holds.”
Knock LA expressed its support for Camacho and condemned the lawsuits in a statement posted on its website.
“Throughout what has become a longstanding battle, Feldstein Soto and her legal team have repeatedly violated the constitutional and First Amendment rights of journalists and the public to report on public servants,” the statement read. “As we continue to lose the local news landscape of Los Angeles to corporate greed and mismanagement, this attack on the free and independent press by the city is especially poignant.”
The U.S. Press Freedom Tracker catalogues press freedom violations in the United States. Email tips to [email protected].
