Los Angeles has tentatively agreed to pay a local journalist $300,000 to cover his legal costs and settle a lawsuit brought by the city attorney that sought to retrieve police officer photos and data released as a result of a public records request.
The settlement reached in the Superior Court case of City of Los Angeles v. Ben Camacho et al. still must be approved by the City Council. Journalist Camacho, the Stop LAPD Spying Coalition and 50 unnamed “Does” were named as defendants in the April 2023 lawsuit filed by City Attorney Hydee Feldstein Soto.
The city attorney’s lawsuit acknowledged that in previous litigation the city had agreed to provide pictures, badge numbers and other information about hundreds of full-time sworn officers, although the photos of undercover officers would be exempted. Inadvertently, however, records containing the exempt records were contained on a flash drive provided to Camacho’s representatives.
In turn, the information was published on a website called Watch the Watchers, and Feldstein Soto sought to have the police officer information returned to the city, saying that exposure of certain officers’ identities would compromise crime investigations in the future.
The settlement, however, ends efforts to pressure the defendants to return the information, according to Camacho’s attorney, Susan Seager of the University of California, Irvine, Law School.
“Once the City Council approves the settlement, this will completely resolve the first lawsuit against Ben Camacho because the city will dismiss the lawsuit and pay Camacho's legal fees,” Seager said in an email to the Southern California Record.
Seager said the most important part of the city’s decision is not the payment of attorney fees but the dismissal of the lawsuit, which sought the return of the flash drive and the destruction of copies of photos, as well as payment for the city’s attorney fees.
“By offering to dismiss her lawsuit, City Attorney Heidi Feldstein Soto has admitted that she made a horrible mistake by suing journalist Ben Camacho,” she said. “Her lawsuit on Camacho was an attack on Camacho as an individual journalist and an attack on the freedom of the press. Her lawsuit was also an attack on the right of the public to know about the police officers who shoot people on the street and make arrests.”
The publication of the police officer information was justified, according to Seager, adding that Los Angeles police officers themselves, including undercover officers, have published photos of themselves online.
“The city voluntarily gave these 9,310 LAPD officer photos to Ben Camacho and then had a change of heart because the politically powerful LAPD police union sued the city and demanded that the city sue Ben Camacho,” she said. “The city never provided any evidence to any court that any officers were harmed by the publication of the photos of the LAPD officers.”
A second lawsuit the city filed against Camacho was also dismissed in Los Angeles Superior Court this month, according to Seager. The second suit sought damages for alleged harm to officers as a result of the publication of the information.
“That second lawsuit was a claim for damages filed by a number of LAPD officers against the city, and the city cross-claimed against Camacho, arguing that if the city had to pay any damages to the officers, Camacho should pay some or all of the damages,” she said.
The group Stop LAPD Spying Coalition said in a website post that the April 2023 lawsuit should never have been filed.
“It was a deliberate scheme to waste our time and put a target on our backs,” the coalition said. “City Attorney Hydee Feldstein Soto dragged us into court as a political stunt to please her police donors. This is yet another example of taxpayers footing the bill for City Attorney Feldstein-Soto abusing her office for political favors and political stunts.”
The coalition also accused Feldstein Soto of working to weaken the state’s Public Records Act and enforce laws that criminalize dissent.