Incident Details
- Date of Incident
- April 5, 2023
- Location
- Los Angeles, California
- Targets
- Ben Camacho (Knock LA)
A portion of a lawsuit filed against Knock LA reporter Ben Camacho on April 5, 2023, attempting to claw back photographs of Los Angeles Police Department officers given him in response to a public records request.
Los Angeles settles suit against journalist over release of photos
Reporter Ben Camacho and the City of Los Angeles settled a suit the city had filed to claw back photographs of police officers it had released to him, with the City Council voting to approve a settlement award on Aug. 14, 2024.
Under the terms of the settlement, the city will pay Camacho and activist group Stop LAPD Spying Coalition $300,000 in legal fees, the Los Angeles Times reported. The Times was part of a coalition of news organizations that opposed the city’s suit.
“The City of Los Angeles attempted to make an example out of me by going against bedrock press freedom rulings like the Pentagon Papers,” Camacho told the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker. “It did not work this time but it does not mean they won’t try again.”
Camacho added: “Press freedom means no attacks on the press, whether here in Los Angeles or in Gaza.”
Camacho filed a public records request for a full roster of Los Angeles Police Department 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 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 union representing rank-and-file LAPD officers, then sued the city, demanding that it recover the headshots and prevent their further distribution. The city in turn sued Camacho and Stop LAPD Spying Coalition, ordering them to unpublish the images and return or destroy all electronic and physical copies.
The city’s demands that Camacho and the coalition return photographs of officers on sensitive assignments, take them offline and never publish them again have been dropped as part of the settlement, according to the Times.
In a statement on social platform X, Camacho wrote, “This settlement is a win for the public, the first amendment and ensures we will continue to have radical transparency within the LAPD.”
In June, in a separate suit filed by a group of LAPD officers accusing the city of negligence related to the release of the photos, Camacho and Stop LAPD Spying Coalition had their anti-SLAPP motion granted by the court, barring the city from holding them financially liable for damages sought in the case.
Ben Camacho, a reporter for the nonprofit community journalism outlet Knock LA, was sued by the City of Los Angeles on April 5, 2023, in an attempt to force the return of photographs of police officers released to him as part of a public records request.
Camacho told the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker he noticed a pattern of Los Angeles Police Department officers obscuring their identities at protests by shining lights into cameras and refusing to disclose their badge numbers. Camacho filed a request under California’s Public Records Act seeking a full roster of LAPD officers and their personnel headshots in October 2021, having had success earlier that year with a similar request in Santa Ana.
In January 2022, the department responded that it could provide the roster but not the photographs, as they weren’t digitized. Camacho filed a lawsuit challenging that refusal, and the city ultimately gave him the images on Sept. 16 as part of a settlement agreement. 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.
Camacho said that approximately two months after he received the files, activist group Stop LAPD Spying Coalition contacted him about sharing the records.
“Because I don't see myself as a gatekeeper of a public record that is actually the public’s property, I gave it to them,” Camacho said.
The group released the photos on its website Watch the Watchers on March 17, 2023, and Camacho tweeted a link to a folder containing all of the headshots a few days later.
“Almost immediately myself and everybody else realized that there are more images on there than the LAPD wanted to be on there,” Camacho said.
The Los Angeles Police Protective League, a union representing rank-and-file LAPD officers, filed a lawsuit against the City and Police Chief Michel Moore on March 28 demanding that the City recover the officers’ headshots and prevent them from being distributed further. Representatives of the police union have argued that it uses a broader definition of “undercover” than the City did when censoring the records, and it should include officers in “sensitive assignments” involving surveillance and those who had or might in the future work undercover.
A law firm representing 321 allegedly undercover LAPD officers also announced plans to file a class-action suit against the City seeking damages for negligence.
Camacho told the Tracker that the City, LAPD and the police union are attempting to redefine “undercover” in order to allow the police department to continue to operate without public scrutiny.
On March 30, the City sent Camacho a letter demanding that he return the flash drive of photos and delete all copies of the photos in his possession. The letter said that the City would provide an “updated production” of the records, but that in order to protect the identities of undercover officers it would only include the approximately 130 officers listed as command staff on the LAPD’s website — less than 1.5% of the images originally released.
Camacho did not comply with the demands, and on April 5 the City filed a lawsuit against him and the Stop LAPD Spying Coalition, requesting that a judge bar them from further releasing the officers’ photos and order them to unpublish the images and return or destroy all electronic and physical copies.
A spokesperson for the Los Angeles City Attorney’s Office provided this statement when reached by email for comment:
“While there is strong public interest in governmental transparency, there is equally strong interest in the safety of LAPD officers, especially those in sensitive and undercover assignments. That is why we brought this suit — to have the photos of officers immediately removed from the website and to have the flash drive containing them returned.”
The spokesperson declined to comment further, citing the pending litigation.
The Los Angeles Police Department did not respond to a request for comment and a spokesperson for the police union was not available to comment.
The Media Guild of the West led a coalition of more than a dozen media organizations and press freedom advocates in opposition to the lawsuit, penning a letter to City Attorney Hydee Feldstein Soto and Mayor Karen Bass.
“The City’s sweeping demand for censorship defies logic as well as the First Amendment,” the letter said. “The City Attorney’s additional threat of law enforcement seizure sends a chilling warning to any journalist or individual who would lawfully use the Public Records Act to learn about their own government.”
The Times reported that on April 25 Superior Court Judge Mitchell Beckloff denied the City’s motion for a temporary restraining order, which attorneys representing Camacho had argued amounted to an unconstitutional prior restraint.
“The City of Los Angeles’ lawsuit is a thinly veiled attempt to silence Mr. Camacho and other journalists who report on law enforcement,” attorney Dan Stormer said in a statement. “The real motives behind this lawsuit are to shield the Los Angeles Police Department from any measure of accountability and transparency.”
The U.S. Press Freedom Tracker catalogues press freedom violations in the United States. Email tips to [email protected].
