Three more Los Angeles police officers have been criminally charged with falsifying information on field interview cards, pushing the total number of charged officers in the growing gang labeling scandal to six.
Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. Jackie Lacey announced the charges Friday, alleging the officers — all out of the LAPD’s troubled Metropolitan Division — had falsified information used to enter the names of people they had stopped on the street into a statewide gang database.
“In all three cases, the defendants are accused of writing on the card that a person admitted to being a gang member even though body-worn camera video showed the defendants either never asked the individuals about their gang membership or the individuals denied gang membership if they were asked,” Lacey’s office said.
Officer Rene Braga is charged with filing a false police report and preparing false documentary evidence in a single case. Officers Raul Uribe and Julio Garcia are each charged with preparing false documentary evidence in a single case.
The officers could not immediately be reached for comment Friday, and it was not immediately clear if they had attorneys.
Three other LAPD Metro officers were charged by Lacey’s office in July. One of them, Officer Braxton Shaw, stands accused of falsifying information on 43 field interview cards. His attorney has said he did nothing wrong.
An additional 18 officers remain under investigation. Of those, 11 are assigned home and seven are assigned to desk duties.
In a statement Friday, LAPD Chief Michel Moore said the department is “committed to continuing our thorough investigation of these troubling actions and have already taken steps to ensure it never happens again.”
He added, “Reverence for the Law and Respect for People are the pillars of our core values. We will strive to live up to those principles by holding anyone accountable who violates them.”
The scandal has rocked the department and its elite Metro Division and spurred department officials to halt the department’s use of the state’s CalGang database — a longtime demand of police reform activists who say false gang labels can haunt people for years, hurting their immigration standing and their ability to find employment and housing.
The LAPD launched its investigation into false gang labeling in Metro last year after a Van Nuys mother received a letter in early 2019 informating her that her son had been identified as a gang member. She fought the label, telling an LAPD supervisor that she believed her son had been misidentified. After the supervisor reviewed body-camera footage and found inaccuracies in the officer’s report, the woman’s son was removed from the gang database and internal affairs began a deeper review.
In the wake of the charges against the first three officers in July, Lacey’s office began dismissing cases that hinged on the testimony of the accused officers, saying prosecutors could no longer rely on their testimony in cases going back years.
