LAPD

The Los Angeles Police Department has released a report that identifies several shortcomings in its response to the devastating Palisades fire, including communication breakdowns, inconsistent record-keeping and poor coordination at times with other agencies — most notably the city’s Fire Department.

The after-action report called the January blaze a “once in a lifetime cataclysmic event” and praised the heroic actions of many officers, but said the LAPD’s missteps presented a “valuable learning opportunity” with more climate-related disasters likely looming in the future.

LAPD leaders released the 92-page report and presented the findings to the Police Commission at the civilian oversight panel’s public meeting Tuesday.

The report found that while the Fire Department was the lead agency, coordination with the LAPD was “poor” on Jan. 7, the first day of the fire. Though personnel from both agencies were working out of the same command post, they failed to “collectively establish a unified command structure or identify shared objectives, missions, or strategies,” the report said.

Uncertainty about who was in charge was another persistent issue, with more confusion sown by National Guard troops that were deployed to the area. Department leaders were given no clear guidelines on what the guard’s role would be when they arrived, the report said.

The mix-ups were the result of responding to a wildfire of unprecedented scale, officials said. At times the flames were advancing at 300 yards a minute, LAPD assistant chief Michael Rimkunas told the commission.

“Hopefully we don’t have to experience another natural disaster, but you never know,” Rimkunas said, adding that the endeavor was “one of the largest and most complex traffic control operations in its history.”

Between Jan. 11 and Jan. 16, when the LAPD’s operation was at its peak, more than 700 officers a day were assigned to the fire, the report said.

The report found that officials failed to maintain a chronological log about the comings and goings of LAPD personnel at the fire zone.

“While it is understandable that the life-threatening situation at hand took precedence over the completion of administrative documentation,” the report said, “confusion at the command post about how many officers were in the field “resulted in diminished situational awareness.”

After the fire first erupted, the department received more than 160 calls for assistance, many of them for elderly or disabled residents who were stuck in their homes — though the report noted that the disruption of cell service contributed to widespread confusion.

The communication challenges continued throughout the day, the report found.

Encroaching flames forced authorities to move their command post several times. An initial staging area, which was in the path of the evacuation route and the fire, was consumed within 30 minutes, authorities said.

But because of communication breakdowns caused by downed radio and cellphone towers, dispatchers sometimes had trouble reaching officers in the field and police were forced to “hand deliver” important paper documents from a command post to its staging area on Zuma Beach, about 20 miles away.

Several commissioners asked about reports of journalists being turned away from fire zones in the weeks that followed the fire’s outbreak.

Assistant Chief Dominic Choi said there was some trepidation about whether to allow journalists into the fire-ravaged area while authorities were still continuing their search for bodies of fire victims.

Commissioner Rasha Gerges Shields said that while she had some concerns about the LAPD’s performance, overall she was impressed and suggested that officers should be commended for their courage. The department has said that dozens of officers lost their homes to the fires.

The report also recommended that the department issue masks and personal protective equipment after there was a shortage for officers on the front lines throughout the first days of the blaze.

The Palisades fire was one of the costliest and most destructive disasters in city history, engulfing nearly 23,000 acres, leveling more than 6,000 structures and killing 12 people. More than 60,000 people were evacuated. The deaths of five people within L.A. city limits remain under investigation by the LAPD’s Major Crimes Division and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

The LAPD reports details how at 11:15 a.m., about 45 minutes after the first 911 calls, the call was made to issue a citywide tactical alert, the report said. The department stayed in a heightened state of alert for 29 days, allowing it to draw resources from other parts of the city, but also meaning that certain calls would not receive a timely police response.

As the flames began to engulf a nearby hillside, more officers began responding to the area, including a contingent that had been providing security at a visit by President Trump.

Initially, LAPD officers operated in largely a rescue- and traffic-control role. But as the fire wore on, police began to conduct crime suppression sweeps in the evacuation zones where opportunistic burglars were breaking into homes they knew were empty.

In all, 90 crimes were reported in the fire zone, including four crimes against people, a robbery and three aggravated assaults, 46 property crimes, and 40 other cases, ranging from a weapons violation to identity theft. The department made 19 arrests.

The new report comes weeks after the city of Los Angeles put out its own assessment of the fire response — and on the heels of federal prosecutors arresting and charging a 29-year-old Uber driver with intentionally setting a fire Jan. 1 that later grew into the Palisades fire.

The LAPD’s Major Crimes and Robbery-Homicide units also worked with the ATF to investigate the fire’s cause.

A new report from the city controller’s office questions the effectiveness of the LAPD’s signature crisis response program, saying clinicians trained in de-escalation too often are forced to defer to armed patrol officers.

For years, Los Angeles Police Department officials have touted the success of the Systemwide Mental Assessment Response Team, or SMART. But critics say the program, which pairs licensed specialists with officers in unmarked cars, is failing in the crucial initial minutes of encounters when multiple police shootings of mentally ill people have occurred.

Dinah M. Manning, chief of strategic initiatives and senior advisor in the controller’s office, said the report found an “inherent contradiction” in the SMART program.

Even though its purpose is to send in clinicians and tap their expertise to avoid killings, LAPD policy still requires armed patrol officers to clear a scene of any potential threats beforehand.

Traditional police units almost always take charge, even on calls in which no weapon is involved, such as a person threatening to commit suicide, Manning said.

Referring to SMART as a co-response program “is pretty much a misnomer in this case,” she said. “How is it that we’re ending up with so many fatalities?”

An LAPD spokesperson declined to comment in response to questions about the report.

LAPD officers have opened fire 35 times this year; in recent years, department statistics showed at least a third of all police shootings involved someone with obvious signs of emotional distress.

The report pointed to other shortcomings with the SMART program, which is housed within the department’s Mental Health Unit. Officers detailed to the units receive no specialized training, the report said, also finding that the department has failed to properly track uses of force on mental health-related calls.

The department’s existing use of force policy “falls short” of best practices for dealing with people in mental distress, the controller’s report said. The LAPD’s policy, it said, “only makes cursory mention of ‘vulnerable populations’ without expounding on the dynamic realities presented in encounters with people who have a mental health condition or appear to be in a mental health crisis.”

Too often in cases in which SMART responds, the report said, the outcome is that the person in crisis is placed on an involuntary 72-hour hold. Such scenarios do not involve an arrest or criminal charges; instead the person is held under state law that allows for detention if a person poses a threat to themselves or others.

The controller’s report comes amid a continued debate in L.A. and elsewhere about how officials should respond to emergencies involving mental health, homelessness, substance use or minor traffic incidents.

The city has expanded its alternative programs in recent years, but proponents warn that looming cuts in federal spending for social safety net programs under the Trump administration could hinder efforts to scale up and have more impact.

LAPD leaders in the past offered support of such programs, while cautioning that any call has the potential to quickly spiral into violence, necessitating the presence of officers.

At a car lot just off the 405 in the San Fernando Valley, there is more than meets the eye.

Galpin Motors sells new and used Fords — touting itself as one of the largest dealerships in the world. But next door, it also displays exotic rides: Shelby Cobras. A vintage purple Rolls-Royce. Sylvester Stallone’s Harley from “The Expendables.”

And then there’s the on-site diner, the Horseless Carriage, where the vinyl-covered booths have hosted generations of Valley power brokers and men who have shaped the policies of the Los Angeles Police Department for decades.

Bert Boeckmann, owner and president of Galpin Motors, stands with new Fords in his showroom.

( Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

Former Galpin boss Herbert “Bert” Boeckmann was an influential figure in local politics and a member of the city’s Board of Police Commissioners, the civilian panel that oversees the LAPD. A longtime lawyer for car dealer, Alan Skobin, also served on the commission.

Now, another member of the Galpin Motors family is poised to carry on the legacy.

The City Council is scheduled to vote Wednesday on whether Jeffrey Skobin, a vice president at Galpin, will follow in his father Alan’s footsteps and join the commission.

Appointed by Mayor Karen Bass, the younger Skobin, 45, already serves on an advisory board that gives the mayor input on issues facing the Valley. He did not respond to an interview request from The Times.

Skobin cleared one hurdle last week, when the council’s public safety committee approved his nomination by a 3-1 vote.

Several committee members professed to knowing Skobin’s family, with one lauding him for the “good stock you come from.”

Skobin said he wouldn’t take the role of commissioner lightly. The five-member panel acts like a corporate board of directors, setting LAPD policies, approving its budget and scrutinizing police shootings.

“I recognize the seriousness of this role and the gravity of this responsibility,” Skobin told the committee. “My story is deeply tied to Los Angeles.”

A mega-dealership with five franchises, Galpin has long wielded influence as a source of jobs and tax revenue for the city. It was Boeckmann who established the business as a powerful player in local politics.

Rare classic Porsche sports cars on display in the Galpin Hall of Customs during the LA Auto Show’s opening day at Los Angeles Convention Center in 2021.

(Allen J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times)

Boeckmann was a self-made millionaire who started out as a car salesman in 1953, seven years after Galpin opened. He eventually bought out the company’s founder, Frank Galpin.

In the decades that followed, he amassed a large corporate empire in the Valley that also included vast land holdings and a film production company.

Boeckmann and his wife, Jane, longtime publisher of the Valley magazine, backed George W. Bush for president, Gray Davis for governor and Antonio Villaraigosa for mayor.

Galpin’s website features a picture of Boeckmann and his wife meeting California Gov. Ronald Reagan in 1974. “When I think about what’s right in America, I will always think of men like Bert Boeckmann,” said the future president, according to the company.

Samantha Stevens, a Los Angeles political consultant and former legislative staffer, said candidates routinely made pilgrimages to the Galpin lot on Roscoe Boulevard to court Boekmann.

“Everybody would go and ask for their support, not just the money. You wanted the name on the endorsement list,” Stevens said.

Although Boeckmann leaned conservative, she said, he was also a force behind the scenes in L.A.’s left-leaning City Hall and seemed to put aside politics when he found causes or candidates that he believed in — including a failed push for the Valley to break away and form its own city.

Ford Explorers on a Galpin storage lot on Woodley Avenue near Van Nuys Airport.

(Los Angeles Times)

“I remember sending my liberal Democrat candidates to meet with them, and they would get donations,” Stevens said.

First appointed to the Police Commission by then-Mayor Tom Bradley in 1983, Boeckmann served two stints under three mayors.

During his 17 combined years on the panel, Boeckmann gained a reputation as its most conservative member — with critics calling him an apologist for former Chief Daryl Gates.

He sat on the commission during two of the darkest chapters in LAPD history: The fallout of the 1991 beating of Black motorist Rodney King and the Rampart corruption scandal, which uncovered cops planting evidence, dealing drugs and committing other crimes.

Boekmann died in 2023 at age 93, but the company still maintains close ties with both the LAPD and City Hall.

Campaign finance records show that Galpin and its employees, including Jeffrey Skobin, have made contributions to numerous local, state and politicians, though not Bass’ mayoral campaign.

Yet when Bass announced the possibility of laying off city workers earlier this year, she chose Galpin as the backdrop of her news conference to rally support.

Last November, less than a week after taking over as LAPD chief, Jim McDonnell held a meet- and-greet at the company’s gleaming showroom of exotic cars across the street.

Galpin twice supported McDonnell’s campaigns for Los Angeles County sheriff, with records showing tens of thousands of dollars in donations during his successful run in 2014 and his failed re-election bid four years later.

In years’ past, the company came under scrutiny after it was revealed that Boeckmann leased city land and sold cars to the city. A controversy arose when the City Council spent $2.4 million to help buy a 239-acre parcel from Boeckmann in Mandeville Canyon. For a time, the LAPD stored some undercover vehicles on Galpin properties.

Those deep ties have led to questions about whether Skobin can be an effective police watchdog. The mayor’s office scrutinized Skobin’s business for any conflicts of interest before putting forward his nomination, city officials said.

LAPD Capt. Johnny Smith said Galpin has given to countless charitable causes and regularly provides meeting space for community groups.

“Their support has always come from a place of partnership, grounded in the belief that together, we can do better for this city we all love,” said Smith, who said he has known the Skobin family for years.

Alan Skobin, 74, told The Times his work on the police commission, on which he served from 2003 to 2012, gave his son a unique window into how the department functions — and what it takes to provide police oversight.

An auto enthusiast views the Batmobile, which was formerly a Ford Futura, on display at Galpin Hall of Customs.

(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

“Number one, don’t take things that are brought to you at face value. Look beyond the surface,” he said. “Always remember you are a representative of the public, and keep that perspective. Continue to be a good listener of various views.”

The elder Skobin recalled how his teenage son once came home upset over a traffic stop that occurred while he was driving to school with a friend, who was Black. The teens felt they were pulled over for no reason — and the incident left a lasting impression about discrimination by law enforcement, Skobin said.

“One thing I know about LAPD is things slip,” he said. “And Jeff is the kind of person that will look into those things.”

The only vote against the younger Skobin when he appeared before the council’s public safety committee last week came from Hugo Soto-Martinez, who peppered him with questions about his reaction to the Trump administration’s ongoing immigration raids.

“Heartbreaking,” Skobin said, noting that roughly half of Galpin’s employees are of Mexican descent. He is also married to a Mexican American woman.

Soto-Martinez also pressed him on how he would respond if he discovered that local law enforcement shares license plate reader data with federal authorities.

The license plate data allows law enforcement to track the movements of Angelenos in their vehicles without court orders, and some worry that they could potentially be used to track people for deportation.

“I think I would take a position to seek to understand the legality of that, what options there are,” Skobin said.

In a rare public rebuke, the Los Angeles City Council pressed the city’s top lawyer to abandon her attempt to halt a federal judge’s order prohibiting LAPD officers from targeting journalists with crowd control weapons.

One day before “No Kings” demonstrations against the Trump administration were set to launch in L.A. and elsewhere, the council voted 12-0 to direct City Atty. Hydee Feldstein Soto to withdraw her request to lift the order.

Hours later, Feldstein Soto’s legal team did just that, informing the judge it was pulling back its request — around the same time the judge rejected it.

Since June, the city has been hit with dozens of legal claims from protesters and journalists who reported that LAPD officers used excessive force against them during protests over Trump’s immigration crackdown.

The lawsuit that prompted the judge’s ban was brought by the Los Angeles Press Club and the news outlet Status Coup, who pointed to video evidence and testimonials suggesting that LAPD officers violated their own guidelines, as well as state law, by shooting journalists and others in sensitive parts of the body, such as the head, with weapons that launch projectiles the size of a mini soda can at speeds of more than 200 miles per hour.

“Journalism is under attack in this country — from the Trump Administration’s revocation of press access to the Pentagon to corporate consolidation of local newsrooms,” Councilmember Eunisses Hernandez, who introduced the motion opposing Feldstein Soto’s legal filing, said in a statement. “The answer cannot be for Los Angeles to join that assault by undermining court-ordered protections for journalists.”

In a motion filed Wednesday, Feldstein Soto’s legal team sought a temporary stay of the order issued by U.S. District Judge Hernán D. Vera. She reiterated her earlier argument that Vera’s ban was overly broad, extending protections to “any journalist covering a protest in [the City of] Los Angeles.”

The city’s lawyers also argued that the ban, which bars the LAPD from using so-called less lethal munitions against journalists and nonviolent protesters, creates “ambiguous mandates” that jeopardize “good-faith conduct” by officers and pose “immediate and concrete risk to officer and public safety.”

In addition to Feldstein Soto’s request for a temporary stay, the city has filed an appeal of Vera’s injunction. The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals is taking up the appeal, with a hearing tentatively set for mid-November.

Council members have become increasingly vocal about their frustrations with the city attorney’s office. Two months ago, they voiced alarm that an outside law firm billed the city $1.8 million in just two weeks — double the amount authorized by the council. They have also grown exasperated over the rising cost of legal payouts, which have consumed a steadily larger portion of the city budget.

After Feldstein Soto’s motion was reported by LAist, several city council members publicly distanced themselves from her and condemned her decision.

In a sternly worded statement before Friday’s vote, Councilmember Hugo Soto-Martínez wrote that the city attorney’s “position does not speak for the full City Council.”

“The LAPD should NEVER be permitted to use force against journalists or anyone peacefully exercising their First Amendment rights,” said the statement from Soto-Martínez, who signed Hernandez’s proposal along with Councilmembers Ysabel Jurado and Monica Rodriguez.

On Friday, the council also asked the city attorney’s office to report back within 30 days on “all proactive litigation the Office has moved forward without explicit direction from the City Council or Mayor since July 1, 2024.”

Rodriguez said that Friday’s vote should send a message that the city council needs “to be consulted as a legislative body that is independently elected by the people.”

“What I hope is that this becomes a more permanent act of this body — to exercise its role in oversight,” she said.

Carol Sobel, the civil rights attorney who filed the lawsuit on behalf of the plaintiffs, welcomed the council’s action. Still, she said Feldstein Soto’s filings in the case raise questions about whose interests the city attorney is representing.

“Sometimes you say ‘Mea culpa, we were wrong. We shouldn’t have shot people in the head, despite our policies,’” she said.

The chief spokesperson for the Los Angeles Police Department has resigned amid accusations from the region’s top federal prosecutor that her office was leaking information, according to three sources familiar with the matter but not cleared to speak publicly.

Jennifer Forkish, the LAPD’s public information director, said she left the department Thursday at the request of Chief Jim McDonnell but vehemently denied making any unauthorized disclosures.

“Any suggestion that I have ever shared or leaked information to the media is categorically false,” she said in a statement. “No one in the Department, including the Chief has ever raised or discussed this baseless allegation with me, because it simply never happened. Anyone claiming otherwise is lying.”

The three law enforcement sources said the chief’s concerns about Forkish’s overall performance had been mounting, and that pressure Tuesday from acting U.S. Atty. Bill Essayli may have prompted her ouster.

The drama began the prior evening after a Times reporter reached out to an official at the U.S. Attorney’s office to inquire about plans to schedule a news conference related to the Palisades fire.

Flanked by McDonnell and other law enforcement leaders, Essayli announced at a briefing on Wednesday that authorities had arrested and charged a 29-year-old Uber driver with intentionally sparking one of the most destructive fires in California history.

Before the media event, according to the three sources who had been briefed on the matter, Essayli called LAPD senior staff and demanded to know who in the department had tipped the paper off to the news conference, which had not yet been officially scheduled when The Times asked about it.

It wasn’t immediately clear why Forkish was suspected of revealing details about the news conference, which federal authorities announced to members of the media via email at 5 a.m. Wednesday.

Forkish had already left work that afternoon when McDonnell summoned her back to his office at LAPD headquarters for a meeting with him and Assistant Chief Dominic Choi, she told The Times. McDonnell did not reference a call with Essayli during the meeting, telling Forkish only that he did not share her long-term vision for the department’s public relations strategy, she said.

She said the conversation revolved around the difference of opinion about the department’s overall media strategy, adding “there has never been any conversation with me regarding the possibility of a leak with anyone from the LAPD.”

Choi would not address any phone conversation between LAPD leadership and Essayli. He told The Times he could not discuss Forkish’s case due to confidentiality around personnel matters but confirmed she submitted her letter of resignation on Thursday morning.

“We don’t wish any ill will or anything for her,” he said in a brief telephone interview. “We thank her for her service and everything she’s done and for her time with the department.”

McDonnell did not respond to a phone call and email seeking comment on Thursday. Inquiries to the U.S. Attorney’s office and Mayor Karen Bass also went unreturned.

Forkish expressed gratitude for her time with the LAPD.

“After much thought, I’ve decided to step down from my role to pursue new opportunities,” she wrote in a statement. “I do so with immense pride in what my team and I accomplished together. We told the hard stories with honesty and balance, supported our officers and our city in moments of crisis, and built a foundation of professionalism that I’ll always be proud of.”

For months, word has circulated in the U.S. Attorney’s office in Los Angeles that Essayli — a Trump appointee — is trying to root out leaks to the media. The LAPD has itself routinely opened investigations into employees who speak with journalists without authorization, and faced lawsuits from employees who claimed they were falsely accused of leaks.

Forkish began her career working for former Los Angeles City Councilman Dennis Zine, who worked as an LAPD cop for more than three decades before going into politics. She later had stints at PR firms around town, including GCG Rose & Kindel, where she worked with Celine Cordero, the future mayor’s deputy chief of staff.

After working as a vice president of corporate communications for casino giant Caesars Entertainment Corp. in Las Vegas, Forkish served as a spokesperson for former Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. George Gascón for several months in 2024.

Eric Rose, a partner at the lobbying and crisis communication firm EKA, where he was once Forkish’s boss, said she has made a positive mark at every stop of her career.

“Jennifer is an accomplished public affairs professional with deep and diverse expertise, having worked with elected officials at the local, state and federal levels for more than two decades,” he said.

But Forkish’s appointment to the LAPD job was not without controversy. Multiple department sources not authorized to speak publicly said a dispute over Forkish’s salary demands created tension before she started on the job. Then, the sources, said there was a disagreement over strategy between Forkish and her predecessor, Capt. Kelly Muniz, which ended with Muniz’s transfer to another unit.

Some press advocates say McDonnell’s tenure has been marked by conflict with the local media. The department faces lawsuits for aggressive behavior by officers toward journalists who covered protests against the Trump administration over the summer, and a federal judge has barred police from targeting reporters with less-lethal projectiles during demonstrations.

Adam Rose, a deputy director of advocacy for the Freedom of the Press Foundation, said the department has in recent months been frustratingly unresponsive when confronted with reports of abuses by officers.

“While I often vehemently disagreed with past PIOs and past department leadership, at least they were responsive,” Rose said. “The fact that McDonnell and his staff are so recalcitrant — and are so reluctant — to do their jobs is shameful.”

In her statement, Forkish said she is proud of her time at the LAPD.

“I’ve always approached this work with transparency, respect, and accountability, and that will never change,” she said.

Times staff writers James Queally and Brittny Mejia contributed to this report.

When she was called last year to testify against a top Los Angeles police official, Sgt. Jessica Bell assumed she would be asked about the AirTag.

Bell found the Apple tracking device under her friend’s car while on a weekend getaway in Palm Springs in 2023. The friend suspected her former domestic partner, Alfred “Al” Labrada, who was then an assistant chief in the Los Angeles Police Department, had secretly planted the AirTag to monitor her movements after they broke up. The women contacted San Bernardino County authorities, who opened an investigation.

By the time Bell, 44, testified last year, prosecutors had declined to charge Labrada with any crime, but his ascent through the uppermost ranks of the LAPD had already gone sideways. Once considered a leading candidate to become the city’s next police chief, Labrada faced being fired for allegedly lying to LAPD investigators and trying to cover up his actions.

Disciplinary proceedings against LAPD officers play out like mini-trials, held behind closed doors under state laws that shield the privacy of officers. According to her attorney, Bell figured that her role would be limited to describing the AirTag she found — and that anything she said would remain sealed.

Instead, according to her lawyer, she faced a line of questioning that turned personal, with Labrada’s attorney grilling her about problems in her former marriage.

The disciplinary panel found Labrada guilty of planting the tracking device, and he resigned from the department. In the months since, details of Bell’s testimony spread among colleagues, according to a lawsuit she filed against the city of Los Angeles this year.

The suit is one of dozens filed by LAPD employees in recent years alleging they faced blowback after reporting suspected wrongdoing. Bell and others claim testimony that was supposed to remain confidential at so-called board of rights hearings or in internal affairs interviews was later used against them.

In the months that followed Bell’s testimony against Labrada, according to her lawsuit, she was denied a position in the department’s training division. Bell said through her attorney that she has come under department investigation for at least three separate complaints, including one alleging that she hadn’t been truthful at Labrada’s disciplinary hearing.

Her supposed lie? Testifying that her daughter had been traumatized by the ordeal of finding the hidden tracking device.

Bell — known professionally as Jessica Zamorano, according to her lawsuit — declined to comment. She said through her lawyer that internal affairs investigators told her that Labrada made the complaints.

The accusation that she lied triggered a separate investigation by the state Commission on Peace Officer Standards and Training, the law enforcement accreditation board, putting her at risk of losing her police officer license.

Bell also lodged a complaint with the inspector general’s office, writing that she was “initially scared to come forward because I feared retaliation for reporting and cooperating with the investigation against Labrada.”

Bell’s attorney Nicole Castronovo said she was disgusted that the LAPD was allowing Labrada to “weaponize Internal Affairs to continue waging this campaign of terror on my client.”

Al Labrada, a former Los Angeles Police Department assistant chief, holds a news conference in Beverly Hills on Oct. 17, 2023, to address allegations he used an Apple AirTag to secretly monitor the movements of his former romantic partner.

(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)

Labrada confirmed to The Times that he had filed several complaints against Bell and Dawn Silva, his former domestic partner, who is also an LAPD officer.

He said he hoped the department would look into the veracity of statements the two women made during his disciplinary hearing. He said the allegations against Bell were based on his conversations with her ex-husband, who made him question her truthfulness. The disciplinary board wouldn’t let him call the ex-husband or others as witnesses, effectively torpedoing his case, Labrada said.

Labrada acknowledges the AirTag was his, but maintains he did not hide it to track his former girlfriend.

“This is all about financial gain for Ms. Silva and Jessica — that’s all this is,” he said. “In my opinion, she made falsified statements not only in the police report but also in the board of rights.”

He has filed his own a lawsuit against the city of Los Angeles and former Police Chief Michel Moore, alleging Moore conspired to oust a rival for the chief’s job.

Labrada was cleared of wrongdoing in the AirTag affair by the state law enforcement accreditation board, an outcome that allows him to retain his license to carry a badge in the state.

Labrada has been publicly outspoken about what he sees as his mistreatment at the hands of the department, making numerous appearances on law enforcement-friendly podcasts to plug a forthcoming tell-all book about his time as an L.A. cop.

He contends his case was handled differently than those of other senior officials accused of misconduct, who because of their close relationships to past chiefs were allowed to keep their jobs or to retire quietly with their pensions.

Retaliation among officers has been a problem in the LAPD for decades — and past reports have been critical of how the department investigates such cases.

The LAPD has long had a policy that forbids retaliation against officers who report misconduct, and officers who feel they’ve been wronged can report problems to the department’s ombudsman, or file complaints through internal affairs or the inspector general’s office.

Retaliation can take on many forms, including poor job evaluations, harassment, demotions and even termination, according to lawyers and LAPD personnel who have sued.

Fearing consequences, some officers have taken to posting about misconduct anonymously on social media or recruiting surrogates to call in to Police Commission hearings to raise allegations of wrongdoing on their behalf.

Sometimes, witnesses won’t come forward for fear of being disciplined for violating department rules for immediately reporting misconduct.

Others argue that the department’s disciplinary system allows opportunistic officers to take advantage of complaints in order to settle grievances with colleagues, distract from their own problems or earn a big payday.

LAPD Cmdr. Lillian Carranza — who has sued the department for calling out questionably counted crime statistics and misogyny, and also been sued over her supervision of others — declined to discuss Bell’s case, but said that, in general, after 36 years on the job, “I do not see the department doing anything to protect employees who are whistleblowers or report misconduct.”

“What I have seen is that they are shunned to the side, they are [labeled] as problem employees, and pretty soon, they are persona non grata,” Carranza said.

While the department takes all public complaints, supervisors can be selective about what gets investigated, according to Carranza, who alleged the process is often colored by favoritism or fear of being targeted by the police union.

“At the end of the day, the LAPD cannot investigate itself — we cannot investigate ourselves because we have too many competing interests,” she said. “We need an outside agency to investigate us, especially with things that are serious misconduct and they are not caught on body-camera videos.”

Bell alleged that the retaliation against her has stretched on for months.

A 15-year department veteran, Bell has worked in patrol for most of her career, with brief stints in vice and internal affairs. When an opening came up at the training division, where Silva also works, she put in for it and was picked for the spot.

Her former captain at Olympic Division sent out a glowing email just as she was about the leave the station in early 2024, asking her colleagues to join him in congratulating their “beloved” sergeant. Suddenly, her lawsuit said, the offer was rescinded with little explanation.

She alleged in her lawsuit that a close friend of Labrada’s pulled strings to keep her out of the position.

The LAPD higher-up who blocked her transfer, Bell wrote in her claim to the LAPD inspector general, “consistently calls and checks on Labrada and offers his vacation house to him.”

Teresa Sánchez-Gordon was just a girl when federal immigration agents came for her.

She and her mother had been on their way to drop off a jacket at the dry cleaners when they spotted a group of suspicious-looking men, watching intently from down the street.

Sánchez-Gordon remembers her heart pounding with dread that the men were there to haul them away for being in the country without papers. Her mother grabbed her and they beelined back to their house. From their hiding place in a closet, they could hear loud knocks on their front door, Sánchez-Gordon recalled.

The agents’ demeanor turned “cordial,” Sánchez-Gordon suspects, only after her light-skinned father let them in.

“Dad could pass — he had blond hair, blue eyes,” she said in an interview earlier this year. “So when he opened the door and these agents are there, they just assumed he was an American citizen.”

Looking back decades later, Sánchez-Gordon, 74, said that that experience would shape her views and career. In her new role as president of the Los Angeles Police Commission, she will help guide a Los Angeles Police Department that faces questions about how to handle the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement campaign.

Sánchez-Gordon said she recognizes the fear and desperation felt by the immigrants even while living in so-called sanctuary cities such as Los Angeles, which try to shield immigrants from deportation unless they have committed serious crimes.

“Even my housekeeper today said, ‘I’m a U.S. citizen, but I’m even afraid to go outside and go to the market, because I’ve got the ‘nopal en la frente,’” she said, pointing to her forehead while using a popular expression for someone who appears to be of Mexican descent. “So my perspective, as an East L.A. girl: I’m horrified, I’m angry.”

After her close brush with deportation as a child, Sánchez-Gordon eventually gained citizenship. An early adulthood steeped in Latino activism led to a career in law, first as a federal public defender and later a Los Angeles County judge. She retired in 2017 after two decades on the bench and was appointed last October by Mayor Karen Bass to lead the Police Commission.

Much like a corporate board of directors, the commission sets LAPD policies, approves its multibillion-dollar annual budget and scrutinizes shootings and other serious uses of force to determine whether the officers acted appropriately.

Sánchez-Gordon was born in the western Mexico state of Jalisco. Her father, a butcher by trade, emigrated and found work as a bracero picking crops in fields up and down the West Coast. He sent for his family when Sánchez-Gordon was 3. She recalled how her mother bundled her and her siblings into a bus that took them to the border, where they hired a “coyote,” or human smuggler, to get the rest of the way. They eventually settled in East L.A.

The government granted a path to legal status to laborers like Sánchez-Gordon’s father that no longer exists. In recent months, she said she has been troubled by “the way that people are being treated and the separation of families in our community … and this level of hatred toward the immigrants, the people that sustain this city.”

Of particular concern for Sánchez-Gordon is the perception that LAPD officers are working closely with federal immigration agents.

“The optics of the military being here, the optics of the National Guard being in our city, the optics of our community seeing the LAPD in some of these raids is troubling,” she said.

Sánchez-Gordon said she is open to revisiting “certain language” in Special Order 40, the policy that bars officers from stopping people for the sole purpose of asking them about their citizenship status. But she doesn’t think it necessarily needs to be overhauled in order to add more protections.

At commission meetings, she has pushed harder than her colleagues to get answers from LAPD Chief Jim McDonnell about the department’s response to the immigration raids and the protests that ensued — but stopped short of openly challenging the chief.

Sánchez-Gordon replaces Erroll Southers, a former FBI agent who is now a security official at USC, as president of the commission. Southers may still remain on the body, pending a decision by the City Council.

The commission has been down a member for months, since former member Maria “Lou” Calanche resigned so she could run for City Council. A lack of quorum has led to the cancellation of roughly a third of its meetings this year. To fill Calanche’s seat, the mayor has nominated Jeff Skobin, vice president at Galpin Motors Inc. and the son of a former longtime police commissioner.

Activists have long denounced commissioners as being puppets of the Police Department who are disconnected from the everyday struggles of Angelenos. Week in and week out, some of the board’s most vocal critics show up to its meetings to blast commissioners for ignoring the threat of mass surveillance, hiding their affiliations with special interest groups and failing to curb police shootings, which have risen to 34 from 21 at this time last year.

Sánchez-Gordon said she was surprised at first by the intensity of the meetings, but that she also understands the desire for change. Early in her career, she organized to improve conditions for people who had moved to the U.S. from other countries as part of the AFL-CIO’s Labor Immigrant Assistance Project.

She got her first taste of politics volunteering for the City Council campaign of Edward R. Roybal, who would go on to serve 15 terms in Congress. She later enrolled at the People’s College of Law, an unaccredited law school in downtown, where she rubbed shoulders with other Latino political luminaries such as Gil Cedillo and future L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa.

She credits conversations around the breakfast table with her husband and father-in-law, both prominent civil rights lawyers, with inspiring her to pursue a law career. After working for several years as a federal public defender, she decided to run for judge at the prodding of a mentor. Like many activists of her generation, she thought that the best way to effect change was from the inside.

Since retiring from the bench, she has continued to work as an arbitrator and is a partner at a local injury law firm.

Sánchez-Gordon said her to-do list on the commission includes understanding the department’s ongoing struggles with recruiting new officers, and getting the department ready for the upcoming World Cup and Olympic Games. Once she gets settled, she said she intends to spend more time outside the commission’s meetings attending community events.

Given the recent rise in police shootings, she said it’s also important that officers have the right training and less-lethal options so they don’t immediately resort to using their guns.

She sees her new role as an extension of the work she’s been doing her whole career: “I just see it as what I’ve always done as a judge: You ask questions.”

Five months ago, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass revealed that more than 1,600 city workers might have to be laid off to close a $1-billion budget shortfall.

On Tuesday, after months of negotiations, Bass stood at City Hall with union leaders and announced that her administration had averted every layoff.

“Some people said it couldn’t be done, but I am so glad to stand here today and say that we have proved the naysayers wrong,” Bass said.

The announcement came on the heels of an agreement with the L.A. City Coalition of Unions, which collectively represents gardeners, mechanics and clerks, who will take up to five unpaid holidays in 2026. Seventy-five workers had previously been targeted for layoffs.

Since the mayor unveiled her proposed budget in late April, she and the City Council have worked to reduce layoffs through a variety of cost-cutting measures. The council scaled back hiring at the LAPD and reduced the number of new hires in the fire department, saving about 1,000 jobs.

Last month, the Los Angeles Police Protective League, which represents sworn LAPD officers, and the Engineers and Architects Assn., which represents city planners and some LAPD civilian employees, signed agreements with the city that saved nearly 300 other jobs.

The Police Protective League agreed to a voluntary program where officers can take days off in exchange for overtime hours, while Engineers and Architects Assn. members will take up to five unpaid holidays.

While the unions negotiated, the city began laying off workers, with many members of the Engineers and Architects Assn. sent home, said Marleen Fonseca, the union’s executive director.

On Monday, Fonseca spoke with a member who had been hospitalized over the weekend, delivering the good news that he had his job back.

“Had we not had this agreement, he would be facing a medical crisis with no health insurance,” she said. “This is the real human difference that solidarity makes.”

The city also moved some employees targeted for layoffs into open jobs in other departments. The City Council worked over the course of 10 committee meetings to find those openings, said Councilmember Tim McOsker.

“This is great news for this fiscal year, but we must remain clear-eyed: our city’s budget challenges will continue and we need to stay focused on long-term solutions and protecting our city workforce and services,” McOsker said.

At the same time that federal immigration enforcement ramped up across the Los Angeles area this summer, calls for help to local police plummeted.

Emergency dispatch data reviewed by The Times show a major decrease in LAPD calls for service in June, during the weeks when sweeps by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and other federal agencies were met by large street protests in downtown Los Angeles.

In a city where roughly a third of the population is foreign-born, the steep decline in calls adds to long-standing concerns from advocates that aggressive immigration enforcement leads to domestic abuse and other crimes going unreported because victims fear triggering deportations.

In the two weeks after June 6, when the immigration raids kicked off, LAPD calls for service fell 28% compared with the same period last year — an average of roughly 1,200 fewer calls per day.

LAPD officers responded to roughly 44,000 calls for service in that two-week span — versus nearly 61,000 calls during the same days in June 2024.

The calls include reports of serious crimes, such as home break-ins and domestic disputes, along with instances when the public has sought help with noisy neighbors, loud parties and other routine matters.

The data analyzed by The Times do not include all 911 calls — only LAPD calls for service, which are typically registered when a squad car is dispatched. Though multiple people may call 911 in connection with a single incident, in most cases only one LAPD call for service is recorded.

The decrease was especially noticeable for LAPD calls responding to suspected domestic violence and other incidents related to family disputes, which fell this year by 7% and 16%, respectively, after the ICE activity increased. Although family-related calls later began to creep back to 2024 levels, those for domestic incidents kept declining.

National experts said the findings reflect a crisis of public confidence that has followed other controversial incidents. Similar downturns in calls to local police occurred during the first Trump administration, after the 2020 murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis and following the fatal shooting six years earlier of Michael Brown, a Black 18-year-old, in Ferguson, Mo.

It’s hardly surprising that the same thing could happen even in a city where the police force is majority Latino and whose leaders have reaffirmed the city as a sanctuary for immigrants, said Vida Johnson, an associate law professor at Georgetown University.

“You’re going to see fear of law enforcement that is going to last generations,” Johnson said. “And that has the biggest impact on women, because women often are more likely to be victimized, and then more afraid to call for help than men.”

At least some of the decline during the initial two-week period can be explained in part by LAPD going on citywide tactical alert, which allowed the department to have more officers and resources at the ready to deploy to the front lines of the protests. During that time, the department prioritized responding to serious crimes such as shootings and robberies, leading to many other less urgent calls going unanswered.

But that doesn’t explain why calls for service remained down after the department returned to its normal operations. While police call levels began to rise again later in June and early July, they still remained down roughly 5% from the same period in 2024.

The decrease in calls was less pronounced in the nine police districts in South L.A., the San Fernando Valley and the Eastside where Latinos make up the majority of residents, but the data show a persistent dip in domestic violence calls in those areas that remained in the weeks after the immigration enforcement campaign began.

Police calls for service have been on a slow decline for years, a phenomenon that has coincided with a drop in overall crime. LAPD Chief Jim McDonnell and other leaders have tried to emphasize in public remarks that local cops are not allowed to enforce civil immigration laws and only work with federal agents to arrest criminal suspects or quell unrest that threatens public safety.

But Carlos Montes, a longtime organizer with the Boyle Heights-based immigrant advocacy group Centro Community Service Organization, said the sight of LAPD officers standing alongside the feds during recent operations has ensured that even more Angelenos will think twice about calling the police for help.

“In general, in the neighborhood we don’t want to call the cops because they’re not going to solve anything or they’re going to arrest someone, or beat someone or shoot someone,” he said.

LAPD Assistant Chief German Hurtado, the department’s immigration coordinator, acknowledged that it has been a struggle to reassure the public it’s safe to call the police.

“Police are also the most visible form of government, and right now people are not trusting the government,” Hurtado said in an interview last month. “People [are] scared to be deported, and that’s totally understandable. That’s something that we’re going to have to deal with and figure out a way to heal with the community.”

In response to what he called “negative publicity” around the LAPD’s actions in recent weeks, he said the department was stepping up its outreach efforts in various immigrant neighborhoods, with a series of planned listening sessions and other events aimed at educating the public.

The department recently launched a citizens academy for Spanish speakers, and senior lead officers have been out meeting with faith and community leaders trying to get them to reinforce the message that police need victims to cooperate in order to solve crimes.

Marielle Coronel, 24, co-owner of a boxing gym in Sylmar, said she worries about being profiled while being out and about, which has also made her think twice about calling police.

Even though she believes that at least some police officers are trying to help, she said the last few months have been unnerving. She recalled how her parents recently gave her a version of “the talk” that many parents of color have with their children about how to deal with police. Their fears have grown to include unidentified masked men posing as ICE agents, Coronel said.

Her parents insisted that she start carrying her passport with her everywhere she goes and that she not lower her window to anyone unless they clearly identify themselves. Tending to her gym’s front desk one recent afternoon, she said she has taken the advice to heart.

“Even if I am a U.S. citizen, you just don’t know,” she said. “We don’t feel like we have backup from the government.”