LAPD Officers Wrongly Classify People as Gang Members, Class Action Lawsuit Claims

A class action lawsuit has been filed against the city of Los Angeles by five people who say they were misidentified as gang members by the Los Angeles Police Department.

Lead plaintiff Sarah Ochoa and others claim their First, Fourth and 14th amendment rights were violated when LAPD officers identified them as gang members or “gang associated,” leading them to suffer unreasonable detention, loss of employment and emotional damage, the class action lawsuit says.

A July 10 LAPD memo confirmed a total of 24 officers are being investigated for allegedly falsifying police reports and misclassifying civilians as gang members or associates, the class action lawsuit states.

LAPD officers Braxton Shaw, Michael Coblentz and Nicholas Martinez were recently charged with 59 criminal counts related to the falsification of police records, wrongly identifying individuals as gang members, NPR reported. 

Prosecutors say body camera video shows the officers identified people as gang members even when the officers didn’t ask about the individual’s gang affiliation or when the person denied the accusation outright, according to NPR.

The officers face charges of conspiracy to obstruct justice, filing a false police report and preparing false documentary evidence, according to NBC News.

The LAPD class action lawsuit says the law enforcement agency has “manipulated the law to criminalize innocent people.”

LAPD officers often falsely incriminated Class Members by applying gang enhancements to relatively minor offenses, such as marijuana possession, leaving those defendants to the possibility of much harsher sentences, the complaint says. As a result, many of those charged accepted plea deals in order to avoid being locked up for decades. 

“Others, who had the audacity to insist on their innocence, were found guilty by juries based on perjurious LAPD officers’ testimony, then sentenced to many years including, in numerous instances, life in prison,” the class action lawsuit claims. “Those same individuals have been forced to register annually as gang members at the very police stations where they were framed in the first place.”

Plaintiff Ochoa was a correctional officer with the state of California until she says she was victimized by the LAPD’s classification of her as a gang associate “simply for going back to visit the neighborhood she grew up in,” the complaint says.

Ochoa was allegedly subjected to unreasonable detention when she was handcuffed on a public street for about 20 minutes while her vehicle and belongings were “ransacked by LAPD officers,” the class action lawsuit states.

Another plaintiff, Jajuan Johnson, is a recent high school graduate from south Los Angeles and has no criminal record, according to the LAPD class action lawsuit.

Johnson was a passenger in a vehicle Jan. 13, 2019, when officers pulled the vehicle over, “ostensibly for tinted windows,” the complaint says. 

Johnson alleges that LAPD officers came up with a reason to search the vehicle, then lied by contending in their report that Johnson was a member of the Blood street gang. 

“The LAPD officers reasoned that because Mr. Johnson’s cousin was an alleged gang member, he too must be gang affiliated,” the class action lawsuit says. Johnson is currently being prosecuted pursuant to what he says is the fabricated gang allegation, though he has consistently denied belonging to any gang. 

Johnson says because of the false claims, he has lost his job, his reputation has been damaged and he has suffered severe depression. If Johnson is convicted, he will be required to register as a gang member, the class action lawsuit claims.

The California Department of Justice revoked the LAPD’s access to the state CalGangs database in mid-July, the complaint says. A 2016 audit found the database was full of “questionable entries and errors such as the inclusion of year-old children.”

The class action lawsuit maintains that CalGangs represents racial profiling and provides little proof of the allegations of gang membership; a majority of the database consists of Black and Latino men.

The plaintiffs say the city of Los Angeles has failed to properly train LAPD officers “in the constitutional treatment of innocent civilians” and is grossly negligent in its indifference to the rights and liberties of the public and Class Members.

The class action lawsuit also accuses the defendants of perjury in open court and ratifying and condoning imposition of criminal sentencing enhancements on individuals misclassified as gang members or associates.

The proposed Class includes about 1,000 people subjected to misclassification as gang members in Los Angeles city reports, about 500 individuals who were added to a gang database and about 5,000 people misclassified as being “gang associated.”

The plaintiffs seek general and special damages; punitive damages; interest; reasonable court costs and attorneys’ fees; all other damages allowed by law; and any further relief the Court deems appropriate.

Have you ever been falsely accused of belonging to or being associated with a gang? Let us know in the comments.

The plaintiffs are represented by Humberto M. Guizar and Christian Contreras of Guizar, Henderson & Carrazco LLP; Stephen A. King of Kings Justice LLC; and Austin R. Dove of Dove Law Corp. 

The LAPD Gang Members False Identification Class Action Lawsuit is Sara Ochoa, et al. v. City of Los Angeles, Case No. 2:20-cv-06963, in U.S. District Court for the Central District of California.

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