Officers suspended for inventing gang ties to inflate statistics, LAPD says

At least three Los Angeles Police Department officers were suspended for falsely labeling people as gang members, the department said in a news release, CNN reported.

An investigation found there were inaccuracies in the documentation the officers completed. LAPD officer Mike Lopez told CNN that the officers falsified information to inflate traffic stop statistics.

“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, the Los Angeles Times reported.

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.

All references to the man being a gang member were removed and the department began investigating three other officers, according to the LAPD news release.

Prosecutors are considering pursuing criminal charges against one of the officers, Braxton B. Shaw, who has been placed on administrative leave.

In 2016, LAPD Internal Affairs found that Shaw’s testimony in court conflicted with his car’s dashboard camera footage, according to a Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office memo, NBC Los Angeles reported.

LAPD officers were pressured to show that their traffic stops and patrols were “productive” before the investigation, according to NBC Los Angeles.

As a result, officers falsely named “some drivers, passengers, and pedestrians as gang members” during field interviews, NBC Los Angeles reported.

This story was originally published January 7, 2020 at 7:47 AM with the headline "Officers suspended for inventing gang ties to inflate statistics, LAPD says."