According to the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD), Downer is no longer alive. Fowlie explained that it appears that Downer's phone and social media were compromised a few weeks before she went missing.
These officers bravely spoke out not just for their own rights, but for the safety of the public and their fellow officers. In return, they were subjected to egregious retaliation simply because they reported misconduct and unsafe working conditions.
A former LAPD officer was able to fly in and out of the country several times and live freely in Southern California for more than a year despite an active warrant for his arrest in the 2015 killing of a homeless man, according to his defense attorney and L.A. County prosecutors leading his pending murder case. A grand jury indicted Clifford Proctor, 60, in September 2024, after the district attorney's office reopened an investigation into the shooting death of Brendon Glenn.
After the LAPD response to a 2020 protest outside the mayor's mansion led to an excessive force lawsuit, attorneys representing the Police Department insisted they had turned over all relevant evidence. But then lawyers for the plaintiffs - activists from Black Lives Matter-L.A. - found footage recorded on the officers' body-worn cameras showed them tapping out messages on their phones, apparently sending texts to other LAPD officials that were never handed over.
A homicide investigation was underway after a woman was found dead at a North Hollywood home Wednesday. A man was detained Wednesday after a woman was found dead in a North Hollywood home in an apparent domestic violence incident, according to authorities. Los Angeles Police Department officers responded to the 5600 block of Satsuma Avenue around 4:25 a.m. and found a woman dead, officials said.
A Los Angeles County grand jury is hearing evidence related to the death of a teenage girl whose body was discovered stuffed inside the trunk of singer D4vd's Tesla earlier this year, two law enforcement sources told The Times. The revelation follows the gruesome discovery of the remains of 14-year-old Celeste Rivas Hernandez in a Hollywood tow yard on Sept. 8.
A 22-year-old woman was killed in a shooting in Northridge overnight, police said. The Los Angeles Police Department received a call at around 1:40 a.m. Saturday to Bryant Street and Tampa Avenue near the Northridge Fashion Center. Two men had approached a parked car and shot multiple rounds at the three people who were sitting inside, said LAPD Det. Meghan Aguilar. Aguilar said she did not have information available on whether the two others in the car were injured.
Eric Halem, a former LAPD officer, and Gabby Ben, alleged by prosecutors to have 'ties to the Israeli mafia,' were denied bail Friday. The two men are accused of pretending to serve a police search warrant and using threats of violence to coerce a teenager into emptying a digital wallet full of cryptocurrency. Both have pleaded not guilty. Halem's attorney said her client faces danger in jail: 'He worries he is going to be killed because he was a cop.' One night last December, six men met at a home in the Hollywood Hills to plot a kidnapping, prosecutors say.
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.
Smith said the assistant Los Angeles city attorney wanted his signature on a prewritten sworn declaration that described how LAPD officers had no choice but to use force against a volatile crowd hurling bottles and smoke bombs during a 2020 protest in Tujunga. He refused to put his name on it. Instead, eight months later, Smith filed his own lawsuit against the city, alleging he faced retaliation for trying to blow the whistle on a range of misconduct within the LAPD.
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."
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.
He described men dressed in all black wearing ski masks, and said one had a knife. They put the knife on me and they grabbed my bag and they took all of my stuff and all of my jewelry, he said.
A man died after Los Angeles police officers shot him with a hard foam projectile during an attempted robbery of a convenience store in San Pedro, officials said. The LAPD said in a news release Thursday that Roger John Nielsen, 34, was taken to an area hospital after the encounter with officers from the Harbor Division, and later pronounced dead.
Two Los Angeles Police Department officers were transported to the hospital Saturday afternoon in Van Nuys, city police and fire officials said. Few details about what happened are available other than it occurred in a McDonald's parking lot on the 7000 block of Van Nuys Boulevard at 4:12 p.m., according to a police spokesperson. Los Angeles Fire Department ambulances were called to the scene to transport officers to the hospital, a fire spokesperson said.
Derek Rodriguez-Hernandez, 2, and older brother Jaden Hernandez left their foster home in the Westlake neighborhood about 1:30 a.m., police said. The boys' foster parents heard the door of their house opening and ran outside, they told KTLA, but the boys were already gone. The LAPD said they'd been taken by their biological mother, Jackeline Hernandez-Torres. An Amber Alert was issued for the trio.
As of Friday, the Los Angeles Police Department is investigating 86 incidents related to officer misconduct during last month's protests, with 59 cases involving possible excessive force.
