Media Coverage Featuring CheckLBPD's Public Records Act Requests, plus Articles Authored or Researched by CheckLBPD's Lead Researcher Greg Buhl
CheckLBPD's most recent project has revolved around the LBPD's lack of compliance with Assembly Bill 481. With advice from the American Friends Service Committee and the assistance of Steve Downing at the Beachcomber we were able to publicize the LBPD's non-compliance, force them to draft and redraft an AB 481 policy, and raise community awareness of the issue ahead of the upcoming City Council vote to approve the police's policy.
CheckLBPD's second most recent discovery was the secret LBPD's drone program, which had been operating since 2017 without policy to guide safe and Constitutional use.
The two-part article starts with a full exploration of the LBPD drone program, including how the program was started in secret with the help of the City Attorney and special FAA authorization for use last summer for "civil unrest".
In part two CheckLBPD makes the case for a local Surveillance Transparency Ordinance.
Below one can see the evolution of the CheckLBPD.org project and some of what we have uncovered since launching in November 2020. Discoveries covered in the media include the LBPD's extensive facial recognition program and the fact the LBPD shared automated license plate readers data with ICE for most of 2020 in violation of the California and Long Beach Values Act—which got the attention of the ACLU.
"'Like Walking in the Dark': Citizen Police Complaint Commissioners Push Back Against Secrecy, Powerlessness" By Greg Buhl, published in FORTHE.org (July 7, 2020)
This article came out Public Records Act requests filed by Greg Buhl as a contribution to the police accountability movement that was invigorated by the murder of George Floyd. As more documents on police surveillance and other topics starting coming in, the CheckLBPD.org project was created to house them and serve as a counterpoint in local media coverage.
The article focuses on the CPCC's dysfunction such as: hearing only a fraction of filed cases, a city manager who frequently vetos finding of misconduct, and failing to issue its required annual report the four year prior to this article.
"LBPD Dragnet Snags the Innocent" By Stephen Downing, Research and Technical Sidebar by Greg Buhl, The Beachcomber (Aug, 7, 2020)
If any article/LBPD scandal is most responsible for starting the CheckLBPD project it is this one by revealing the scale of LBPD's surveillance architecture and its mismanagement, although the department's TigerText disappearing message scandal is a close second which CheckLBPD has also dug into.
It was also PRAs filed for this article on ALPR misuse at the summer's protests that led to the discovery that the LBPD was sharing ALPR data directly with Immigration and Customs Enforcement in violation of the LB and CA Values Acts designed to protect non-criminal immigrants from administrative deportation.
"Analyzing LBPD's Use of License Plate Readers" By Greg Buhl, The BeachComber (Aug. 7, 2020)
A sidebar to the article above in the Beachcomber (online and in-print) relying on public records obtained by Dave Maass of the Electronic Frontier Foundation through a PRA request filed through MuckRock.com to give an overview of the LBPD's ALPR program and its 25 millions scans per year.
Additional research discovered the LBPD officer whose name was on the $360,000 Vigilant Solutions purchase retired months after and began working as a Vigilant Solutions account executive servicing the western region of the U.S,–including LB which just bought another $400K in new ALPR's from Vigilant.
"LBPD Officer Corrupts the Challenge Coin" By Stephen Downing with Research Credit to Greg Buhl, The Beachcomber, August 28, 2020
After a twitter "cop anthropologist" posted some LBPD challenge coins online the race was on to identify the officers who made them.
While the LBPD investigation has yet to come to a conclusion, it took two days for Steve and me to track the officer down through LA County business records. We found two officers who had issued a dozens of versions of coins, some depicting Long Beach in a negative light. Here's an opinion piece on my site about it. checklbpd.org/lbpd-challenge-coins-and-other-cursed-artifact/
"Offensive LBPD Memorabilia Scrubbed" By Stephen Downing with Research Credit to Greg Buhl, The Beachcomber, September 1, 2020
A follow-up to the article above. As soon as we named the officer who made the coins, they disappeared from his site.
The LBPD still sells authorized challenge coins, but one must suspect the unauthorized ones are still passed around.
At least it is better than the LA Sheriffs and their gang tattoos with special embellishments for shooting someone.
"The Surveillance Architecture of Long Beach: Advanced Cameras" By Greg Buhl, FORTHE.org September 20, 2020
Best lede I've ever come up with for an article: "Freedom Surveillance may sound like someone’s attempt to coin a new oxymoron—like jumbo shrimp or civil war—but it is actually the name of the Arizona-based company that manufactured the high-tech, truck-mounted camera the Long Beach Police Department deployed at a morning Peace Walk organized by Black Lives Matter Long Beach (BLM LBC) on July 3."
Civil Lawsuit Charges Candidate Allen with Active Deceit, Concealment, Fraud" By Stephen Downing with Research Credit to Greg Buhl, The Beachcomber, October 8, 2020
Long Beach recently elected a new City Council member, a former LBPD officer who once shot of a crime victim who had just fought off muggers—resulting in a court settlement.
She was elected, despite issues with her city residency and major on-going conflicts of interest related to the ad agency she founded (and is being sued for fraud over). One city contract was to create a new "Brand Identity" for the LBPD, where her husband remained as a commanding officer. A PRA for the branding documents is seven months old as of June 2020.
"City Council to Decide Whether to Buy Controversial License Plate Readers" By Kevin Flores, FORTHE.org, November 17, 2020
When FORTHE.org discovered an inconspicuously placed item snuck on the consent calendar of the City Council agenda recommending the purchase of 17 automatic license plate recognition (ALPR) devices with a price tag of nearly $400,000 for the Parking Enforcement Division, they rushed to head off the secret expansion of this flawed program—with help from CheckLBPD.org
Despite the FORTHE.org article pointing out the ICE data sharing, the Long Beach City Council still voted to expand the error ridden program under the guise of "Parking Enforcement". The data is still going into the same LBPD system that sent data to ICE. Public Works does not have its own ALPR program.
"Police in Pasadena, Long Beach pledged not to send license plate data to ICE. They shared it anyway"Los Angeles Times, December 21, 2020
It takes a major technological screw-up for the LBPD to get mentioned in the L.A. Time and sharing ALPR data with ICE in violation of the Long Beach and California Values Act is about as major as you can get.
The story didn't end here, the ACLU of Southern California sent the City a demand letter in April 2020 calling for an end all out-of-state ALPR data sharing, as a violation of the clear language of California State Senate Bill 34.
After promising not to, LBPD says it accidentally shared license plate data with ICE. Long Beach Post December, 21 2020
Oops. Not the best title and just a rehash of part of the LA Times article above.
What the LB Post (the paper Mayor Garcia founded and used to fuel his rise in city politics) leaves out is that this "error" happened just five months after Mayor Garcia's 2019 self-congratulatory Spanish-language speech promising the LBPD's internal data would never be made available to ICE.
LBPD Facial Recognition Use Saw Major Increases This Year Due to Civil Unrest (12/28/2020)
The Long Beach Police Department has used facial recognition technology for investigative purposes at least 3,999 times in the past decade—with over 2,800 of those queries coming between January and September of this year, records show.
After CheckLBPD published a report on this program, FORTHE helped amplify the message and get city council members to address why they never acted to regulate the program.
There is still more to this story. 2,800 queries in a city the size of Long Beach would take a scan of every criminal in Long Beach, and likely some innocent protesters caught up in the dragnet. Not the first time it would have happened, as these two women the LBPD could have gotten killed by wrongly labelling them as felons in an national ALPR database can attest to.
Experts Say ICE Likely Still Able to Access LBPD License Plate Data; Local Elected Officials Remain Silent on Issue (2/24/2021)
More of FORTHE.org holding the Long Beach City Councils feet to the fire. Eventually they will have to get singed.
ACLU Says LBPD’s Sharing of License Plate Data Violates State Law (4/21/2021)
The big guns get involved: "The American Civil Liberties Union is accusing the Long Beach Police Department of violating several state laws and risking the civil rights of residents by continuing to share data collected by automatic license plate readers with dozens of out-of-state law enforcement agencies."
"The ACLU of Southern California sent a letter on Monday to City Attorney Charles Parkin and Police Chief Robert Luna urging the LBPD to stop sharing license plate data and end its use of ALPR devices."
"ACLU Alleges LBPD Use Of License Plate Reader Data Illegal" By Stephen Downing with Research Credit to Greg Buhl, The Beachcomber, April 22, 2021
Another great article on the ACLU demand letter on the city. Quotes from CheckLBPD.org lead researcher and founder Greg Buhl make up a good portion of the commentary in this article.
Steve Downing took a deep dive into the issue, getting into the SRA Int'l (General Dynamics) ICE connection. I may or may not have edited his wikipedia, which neglected to mention that he was the script doctor brought in to fix the original MacGyver and is responsible for Mac never using a gun after the pilot episode, as well as Steve's time as a board member of the coolest police organization ever, LEAP - Law Enforcement Against (Drug) Prohibition.
The Electronic Frontier Foundations' Atlas of Surveillance
This ambitious crowd-sourced project from the Electronic Frontier Foundation and University of Nevada, Reno catalogues police surveillance programs across the country by category.
CheckLBPD has LBPD's categories close to full, but a few more topics still need investigating.