Five people say they were falsely labeled as gang members. Now they’re suing the LAPD
Five people have filed a lawsuit against the Los Angeles Police Department, saying they were falsely labeled as gang members by police officers.
According to the lawsuit filed on Sunday, Sara Ochoa worked as a corrections officer and was mislabeled as a gang members on Jan. 18 when she was visiting a neighborhood she had lived in. LAPD officers handcuffed Ochoa and searched her car, according to the lawsuit.
Ochoa is one of five people suing the City of Los Angeles, its police department, and Police Chief Michel Moore for damages.
“In many instances LAPD officers falsely stated in official records that the individuals had ‘self-admitted’ gang affiliation when no such admissions had occurred,” the lawsuit read. “This resulted in devastating consequences to putative class members, almost all of whom were Black and Latino, including imprisonment, deprivation of civil rights, and practical consequences such as not being able to obtain a job, rent an apartment, or receive financial aid for college.”
McClatchy News has reached out to the Los Angeles Police Department for comment.
Ochoa told KABC that she had been fired from her job after she was labeled a gang member. “Sacrificed my family for my career in corrections and to have it taken away from me is not right,” Ochoa said. “We need to bring this to light, the injustices committed by LAPD.”
Jajuan Johnson, another plaintiff in the lawsuit, was in the passenger seat when a car was pulled over for tinted windows on Jan. 13, 2019, according to the lawsuit. LAPD officers labeled Johnson a member of the Blood street gang because his cousin was an alleged member, the suit said.
“These things have been happening for years and years and years, and the consequences are devastating,” Austin Dove of Justice X Law Group said at a news conference, according to KABC. “Individual lawyers have tried to fight it as best they can, but the system is bigger than them. Now we’re here to fight back.”
Los Angeles prosecutors charged former LAPD officer Braxton Shaw in July for allegedly falsifying 43 field interview cards, saying that he and two other police officers wrote that people had admitted they were gang members, even though body camera footage showed that it never took place, the Los Angeles Times reported.
Officers Shaw, Michael Coblentz and Nicolas Martinez were charged with “conspiracy to obstruct justice and multiple counts of filing a false police report and preparing false documentary evidence.”
At least three officers were suspended in January for falsely labeling people as gang members, McClatchy News previously reported, citing the department’s news release.
“An officer’s integrity must be absolute. There is no place in the Department for any individual who would purposely falsify information on a Department report,” Chief Michel Moore said in a statement.
A San Fernando mother received a letter from the LAPD in 2019 saying that her son was identified as a gang member. She reported it to the police and believed that he had been misidentified.
LAPD then launched an investigation, reviewing “body worn video and other information, finding inaccuracies in the documentation completed by an officer,” the Los Angeles Times reported.