Topline:
The LAPD has maintained records, including locations of police activity, for more than two decades to improve “inspection and accountability,” but the department now says the public isn’t allowed to see the underlying data.
What records are being withheld? For over a decade, the LAPD updated a crime map online that showed where and when crimes were committed in the city. That data was taken from a record system called COMPSTAT, which is also used to generate regular reports on things like crimes committed, traffic incidents and police use of force across the city.
Why the LAPD won’t release the records: The LAPD told LAist that withholding the records better serves the public interest because the records contain raw data that “has the potential to lead to misguided public policy discussions or unjustified public panic.”
A First Amendment lawyer chimes in: David Loy, legal director for the First Amendment Coalition, told LAist that the LAPD’s argument for withholding records violates the California Public Records Act. “ They don't have a right to withhold the data from the public just because they're afraid that people will misconstrue it,” Loy said.
Read on… for more about the records and why they matter.
Do you ever wonder where and when Los Angeles police officers have responded to crimes, made arrests or used force against civilians?
For over a decade you could have looked at the LAPD’s online crime map and gotten an idea of what the department was doing in your neighborhood at any given time.
While other areas of L.A. County still regularly update crime data on the website, the LAPD has stopped uploading information and is refusing to release its data.
LAist requested the LAPD’s COMPSTAT data in May in an attempt to verify claims by city officials about crime and police activities in specific neighborhoods. Those records include locations of crimes, police use of force and a number of other categories the LAPD tracks and reports on periodically.
The LAPD denied that request on Oct. 30.
Even though the LAPD has maintained the records for more than two decades to improve “inspection and accountability,” the department now says the public isn’t allowed to see the underlying data.
The LAPD said it would be against the public interest to release the data, which is preliminary and “has the potential to lead to misguided public policy discussions or unjustified public panic.”
The department has not replied to requests for comment since denying LAist’s request. And Mayor Karen Bass' office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
An argument that would “destroy” the public records act
David Loy, legal director for the First Amendment Coalition, told LAist he has never heard a public agency argue that potential misunderstandings were a reason to withhold public records.
“ They don't have a right to withhold the data from the public just because they're afraid that people will misconstrue it,” he said. “The problem with that argument is it would violate — it would destroy — the entire public records act.”
The California Public Records Act outlines how anyone can request records from local or state government bodies, and it provides specific exceptions for when public agencies can deny those requests.
Some records about personal information, law enforcement investigations or confidential informants, for example, are allowed to be withheld.
But there is no exemption for withholding raw data, which is a public record just like any other, Loy said.
In this case, the LAPD’s argument relies heavily on what is called a “catchall” exemption, which says the public interest served by withholding the record “clearly outweighs the public interest served by disclosure.”
Loy said that with the LAPD’s argument, “the exception would swallow the rule” and the exception might be used to withhold any records that don’t align with an official narrative.
“ The city probably wants to tell its own story and that's fine,” Loy told LAist, “but we, the people, have a right to the raw data so we can decide if we believe the story about crime, or garbage collection, or zoning, or land use or anything else the government does.”
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Previous data accuracy issues
While the LAPD argues that the public may misread the data, issues with the department's data collection in recent years have shown a need for public oversight.
Reporting by the L.A. Times in 2015 identified misclassification errors by the LAPD that were “artificially lowering the city’s crime levels” for years. The Times’ findings were confirmed in a review by the police commission’s inspector general.
In 2020, an LAPD audit found that numerous officers had entered false data about individuals’ gang affiliations into a statewide database.
By 2021, the department missed the deadline to transition to a new national standard of record-keeping for crime data, called the National Incident-Based Reporting System. The new system was announced by the FBI in July 2018, but the LAPD didn’t begin its transition until March 2024.
Once the transition started, the LAPD stopped updating previously available crime data and reports for months.
Most recently, in response to another LAist records request in August 2025, the LAPD said the data that tracks arrests was “currently unavailable due to structural errors and duplicate entries.”
