Several officers assigned to an elite unit within the Los Angeles Police Department have been removed from active duty amid an investigation into whether they’d been filing false data on members of the public, the agency revealed Monday.
The department says it was first tipped off to misconduct early last year, when a San Fernando Valley mother raised concerns after receiving notification from LAPD that her son had been identified as a gang member.
A supervisor reviewed the case and circumstances, including video from an officer’s body camera, and found the details inconsistent with information filed by an officer.
LAPD removed all references in its database to the woman’s son being a gang member and began investigating the actions of three officers involved, the department said in a news release.
Further probing has uncovered additional inaccuracies in field reports from those three officers as well as others assigned to crime suppression duties in the Metropolitan Division, LAPD said.
Mike Lopez, a media relations officer with LAPD, said there was no information on exactly how many officers are involved in the investigation.
However, the department says all officers under investigation have been assigned to inactive duty or removed from the field.
LAPD Chief Michel Moore ordered a review of data filed by all officers assigned to crime suppression in the Metropolitan Division, which contains the department’s SWAT team and other specially trained officers.
“An officer’s integrity must be absolute,” Moore said in a statement. “There is no place in the Department for any individual who would purposely falsify information on a Department report.”
LAPD said it is working with county prosecutors to identify potential criminal charges that may arise from any misconduct.
