Los Angeles police officers must turn on their body cameras at the scene of federal immigration enforcement operations and preserve the footage, according to an executive directive issued by Mayor Karen Bass on Tuesday.
Since June, federal immigration raids have disrupted neighborhoods and communities across Los Angeles and around the nation, including at work sites, along neighborhood streets and in commercial areas.
Often, police officers have responded to the scene to try to keep order amid tensions between immigration agents and community members.
“The point that we’re trying to make here is that ICE enforcement is not welcome here,” Bass said at a news conference Tuesday morning. “We have resisted against it since this terror started, and we will continue to do that.”
In addition to recording the federal immigration agents’ actions, LAPD officers must document the name and badge number of the agents’ on-scene supervisor, summon emergency personnel if someone at a scene is injured and take reports from the public about federal agents’ alleged misconduct, Bass’ five-page directive states.
The directive also prohibits federal immigration agents from using city property and imposes a fee on owners who allow federal agents to use private property.
The effort builds on a previous Bass directive that aimed to restrict the city from assisting federal immigration agents. The LAPD has a long-standing policy that its officers should not be involved in immigration enforcement.
The Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Bass noted that officers are supposed to turn on their body cameras anyway, including when they’re responding to a call from the public or when another law enforcement agency asks for assistance.
“We’re saying we really want you to do that, even if you are there and there’s not a disturbance that breaks out, if you’re there on the scene,” Bass said.
The LAPD did not immediately provide comment. The Los Angeles Police Protective League, which represents rank-and-file LAPD officers, did not respond to a request for comment.
In Chicago, the mayor issued a similar directive in January, instructing the Police Department to “investigate and document” alleged illegal activity by federal agents, said Tania Unzueta, political director of Mijente, a national group that organizes within Latino and Chicano communities.
“ICE’s power must be challenged at every level, and local governments have a critical role to play in holding the line against federal enforcement,” Unzueta said.
But in Los Angeles, immigrant rights advocates expressed concerns about requiring the LAPD to police another agency.
Maegan Ortiz, executive director of the Institute of Popular Education of Southern California, or IDEPSCA, cited the LAPD’s history of using excessive force against civilians and said that in the recent immigration raids, officers have sometimes inflamed instead of defused tensions.
“Are they really the best people to determine what is excessive use of force, given the literal millions of dollars that we’re seeing paid out in settlement because of use of force by LAPD?” Ortiz said. “Can we trust this police department to police others when they can’t police themselves?”
James “Jim” Willis, a former LAPD detective who later worked for the L.A. Police Commission’s inspector general’s office, said he agreed with the directive’s intent: to bring greater accountability to Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations. But he has questions about how it would work in practice.
For one thing, he said, it’s unclear whether LAPD officers are supposed to respond whenever an ICE operation is underway. Doing so would put further strain on a department that is down hundreds of officers from a few years ago, he said.
It’s also unclear what will happen with the recorded footage.
“Who’s going to audit this?” he asked. “Do you now create a new group, a new division and new section?”
Since rolling out the tiny recording devices in 2015, the city has spent millions of dollars, both on the body cameras themselves and data storage for the digital files. LAPD officials have conceded that the vast majority of the footage gathered by officers goes unwatched, since there isn’t enough manpower to review it.
At Tuesday’s news conference, Jocelyn Duarte, executive director of the Salvadoran American Leadership and Educational Fund, praised Bass’ directive and called on the Los Angeles Board of Commissioners, which provides civilian oversight of the LAPD, to ensure that officers “protect Angelenos from lawless federal conduct.”
“Local law enforcement must not be complicit through silence or inaction when federal agents overstep legal and ethical boundaries,” Duarte said. “Now it is imperative that our commission and LAPD fully implement this directive and make it clear that our city will not allow for fear-based enforcement to define life in our neighborhoods.”
Ortiz said she is excited that the directive imposes fees on private property owners who allow federal immigration agents to use their property. The Institute of Popular Education of Southern California has been a leader in calling for a boycott against Home Depot, which has not taken a public stance against repeated raids at the day labor centers that the organization runs at the stores.
“I do think that something does need to be done with these huge billion-dollar corporations who are allowing this and are choosing to stay silent while their customers are being dragged away and disappeared,” Ortiz said.
