Stop LAPD Spying Coalition Profile picture
Abolish the police state! We rely on community donations to support our work: if you're able to give, venmo stoplapdspying or visit https://t.co/ZMcFl25KcH.
michael roy hames garcía Profile picture 1 subscribed
Jul 14, 2023 8 tweets 4 min read
LAPD tried hiding the names of the cops who bombed a South L.A. neighborhood in 2021, killing 2 and displacing several dozen. These are their faces, recently identified by the L.A. Times.

@CityAttorneyLA has sued us to censor these photos, first published by @bencamach0:


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Damien Levesque screamed "fire in the hole!" to announce the detonation.

The L.A. Times reports that Levesque, the supervisor on the scene, "repeatedly walked away from critical discussions about the safety of the operation." He's been "reassigned but not fired." Image
Jan 18, 2023 12 tweets 6 min read
Along with @LACANetwork , this morning we pulled up on a “Coffee with a Cop” that the local “Business Improvement District” (BID) hosted in our neighborhood. What are BIDs?
They’re private associations funded through mandatory dues from all of a neighborhood's property owners. They use that funding to promote racist policing, to displace unhoused people, and to lobby against housing solutions. Read more here: automatingbanishment.org
Nov 21, 2022 4 tweets 2 min read
BREAKING: LAPD just released its annual demand for a bigger budget, calling for a $119 MILLION budget increase.

LAPD typically consumes half the city's discretionary spending. Read and share our analysis of LAPD's new demand: stoplapdspying.org/2023budgetdema… If this proposal goes through, LAPD’s budget will have increased 53% in the past decade alone.

This will be one of the most consequential legacies of outgoing and disgraced politicians like Eric Garcetti, Nury Martinez, Kevin de Leon, Gil Cedillo, and Paul Koretz.
Jul 5, 2022 8 tweets 4 min read
This fool is complaining that Jeff Brantingham, who UCLA and the U.S. Army paid to start the for-profit PredPol company, got "canceled" because people criticized his racist business. We wrote in detail about PredPol and Brantingham in our Automating Banishment report:
- PredPol's origins and premise automatingbanishment.org/section/2-arch…
- PredPol's deployment in Skid Row automatingbanishment.org/section/4-Cont…
- PredPol's effort to rebrand as "community policing" automatingbanishment.org/section/6-refo…
Jun 24, 2022 5 tweets 2 min read
This goes beyond a failure to protect abortion rights. The Biden administration is laying the groundwork to criminalize the movement for reproductive choice and bodily autonomy as “extremism.” Last year the Biden administration released their guidelines for Targeted Violence and Terrorism Prevention (TVTP), naming “Abortion-Related Violent Extremists” (which includes both “pro-choice” and “pro-life” beliefs) as a target. fbi.gov/file-repositor… Image
May 6, 2022 6 tweets 2 min read
LAPD spends over $5 million a year paying 24 cops whose job is to manipulate journalists, smear victims and critics of police terror, and produce propaganda: As @DocMellyMel said about LAPD's Media Relations Division in 2020: "They engage in this practice that we call ‘double murder.’ They first kill the body, and then they assassinate the character. They blame the victims for their own deaths." latimes.com/california/sto…
May 5, 2022 5 tweets 3 min read
BREAKING: We just filed a lawsuit confronting LAPD’s refusal to identify the locations of surveillance cameras supposedly monitoring all activity in Echo Park Lake.

Read here: stoplapdspying.org/lawsuit-challe… ImageImage LAPD claims they installed 33 cameras in Echo Park Lake after violently closing the park in a raid where police displaced and arrested hundreds of people. Image
Dec 23, 2021 8 tweets 5 min read
THREAD: Much like the FBI in Portland, LAPD also infilitrated protests during the George Floyd uprising, with dozens of "Shadow Teams" (LAPD's term) entering crowds to surveil people and plot mass arrests. According to LAPD documents that we obtained using the Public Records Act, "Shadow Teams" infilitrated crowds during the George Floyd uprising in order to "identify plans for civil disobedience" "document crowd behavior" and "report spontaneous celebrations."
Jul 12, 2021 9 tweets 7 min read
Jeffrey Katzenberg, a billionaire Hollywood mogul, has been pressuring City Council to increase criminaliation of unhoused people. Katzenberg has a long history of using his obscene wealth to fund criminalization and surveillance in LA. In 2014, Katzenberg helped fund LAPD’s body cam surveillance program. @ladailynews reported that Katzenberg was a "rich friend" of Police Commission President @SteveSoboroff, who got him to make the donation “as a way to avoid bureaucratic red tape.” dailynews.com/2014/12/22/how…
May 19, 2021 4 tweets 3 min read
In 2014, LAPD brass went on a tour of Israel where they "visited private security firms and drone manufacturers." They "lit up when talking about a new tethered drone that was just released to IDF."

A few months later LAPD announced a drone program. jewishjournal.com/news/united-st… Israel has one of the most advanced weapons industries in the world, exporting technology to police everywhere. How long before we see these tear gas drones, used this week in the West Bank, by US police? haaretz.com/israel-news/.p…
May 19, 2021 12 tweets 5 min read
Today several community members went to @lapdcommission to condemn LAPD collaboration and trainings with IDF. @SteveSoboroff and Commission President @lapdcommission immediately moved to silence them, saying this criticism was irrelevant. Israel’s ties to LAPD and other police forces run deep, and the learning goes both ways. Since 2002, thousands of US police and federal officials have travelled from the US to Israel to train with Israeli forces.
Mar 22, 2021 17 tweets 10 min read
We recently found emails between @Target executives and @LAPDChiefMoore from last summer. They’re part of Target's long history of working closely with police forces across the country. Thread: Barely 48 hours after George Floyd’s murder, Target emailed Moore: “Issues in Minneapolis - Translating to LA?”

The email began, “At Target HQ we often discuss that when all is said and done, we believe history will say that California got it right.” The fuck does that mean?
Mar 16, 2021 11 tweets 4 min read
BREAKING: Along with @LACANetwork @BLMLA and 39 other community groups, we just sent City Council a letter about the new City Council report on LAPD's violence last summer. The report is a bold attempt to win LAPD more resources and spy powers. drive.google.com/file/d/1MCQIgu… As we wrote in @KNOCKdotLA today: “It should surprise no one that this investigation, featuring almost zero effort to hear from the community, offers nothing but calls to expand policing. It’s hard to see this review as anything but a police coup.” knock-la.com/lapd-report-pr…
Mar 15, 2021 4 tweets 4 min read
Three months ago @lapdcommission removed this disclaimer from of its motions accepting @LAPoliceFdtn gifts: "To the best of our knowledge, there are no potential factors that may give the appearance of a conflict of interest in accepting this donation." These gifts are how LAPD gets hooked on dangerous weapons that they use on the community. In 2002, @CommissBratton had @LAPoliceFdtn ask @Target (yes Target) for $200k to buy @PalantirTech for LAPD.

Once hooked on Palantir, LAPD went on to spend millions of tax $$ on it.
Mar 14, 2021 11 tweets 7 min read
What base is this work accountable to? A month ago we asked: who are reform professionals like @barryfriemdan1 accountable to when they push their harmful proposals?
Feb 19, 2021 8 tweets 4 min read
Two law professors just wrote this LA Times op-ed proposing various police reforms.

Who asked for these? This is another example of reform professionals offering prescriptions to strengthen policing with no accountability to those who will be harmed. latimes.com/opinion/story/… The first author is @barryfriedman1. What base is he accountable to?

His sole link to LA that we're aware of is @LAPoliceFdtn paying him $18,000 to help sanitize and legitimize LAPD's body cam surveillance. You would think an op-ed about policing might mention this payment.
Feb 17, 2021 11 tweets 5 min read
Starting now! Community conversation on AI and white supremacy: us02web.zoom.us/j/84024803080 ImageImage Over the past decade "artificial intelligence" has emerged as a new branding for mass surveillance in response to the scrutiny of the Snowden disclosures, explains @yardenkatz. Image
Feb 4, 2021 19 tweets 8 min read
THREAD: You might have heard LAPD claim that their budget was cut by $150 million this summer. That’s a lie. They’re playing games with numbers. We're here to demystify and defund LAPD's budget, which is billions of dollars spent to stalk and brutalize our people. LAPD got $1.733 billion in 2019-2020 and $1.721 for 2020-21. That means their funding was reduced by only $12 million. The $150 million number that police keep throwing around is the difference from their budget REQUEST (always a high number), not from any actual city budget.
Apr 23, 2020 7 tweets 9 min read
PLEASE READ THE WHOLE THREAD… (1 of 7)
@LAPDChiefMoore says @PredPol was dismantled because of budget constraints. Lets look at the sequence of events & bldg grassroots power just over the last two years @LACANetwork @katecrawford @leilamillersays @alicesperi @ChallengeIneq Thread (2 of 7)
Feb 2018 @stoplapdspying files public record lawsuit: govtech.com/public-safety/…
May 2018 @stoplapdspying release its report Before the Bullet Hits the Body – Dismantling Predictive Policing in LA: theintercept.com/2018/05/11/pre…
@YouthJusticeLA @BLMLA @freeradsorg
Jul 3, 2018 23 tweets 9 min read
1/ The City Council votes tomorrow on accepting over $425,000 in funds related to the Department of Homeland Security’s “Countering Violent Extremism” (CVE) program.

Here's why we are talking about CVE and demanding that the City Council keep #CVA out of Los Angeles! About #CVE

2/ “Countering Violent Extremism” or CVE is an Islamophobic program created by the Department of Homeland Security to justify increased surveillance of Muslim communities, and therefore increase criminalization.