The Brief

With federal agents conducting more immigration-related arrests throughout Southern California, residents have been active, too, capturing on camera those detentions in their communities — by real agents and potential impersonators.

Peter Eliasberg, chief counsel for First Amendment rights at the ACLU of Southern California, said community members have a constitutional right to record government officials engaging in public duties: “Doesn’t matter if it’s LAPD, the L.A. Sheriff’s Department, ICE or Border Patrol.”

But being a bystander also means navigating moments that can take very quick turns.

LAist cannot offer legal counsel, but we have turned to civil rights experts for guidance about how to document these detentions safely and effectively.

What can bystanders record?

The public has the right to capture agents’ faces and license plates, Eliasberg said.

WITNESS, a nonprofit devoted to using video evidence to expose injustice, recommends gathering images of any documents that agents present, including warrants. Community members can also record badges, weapons and uniforms. Video of the context in which detention takes place — including street signs, landmarks and any cameras that might be affixed to nearby buildings — can be used to authenticate the footage and corroborate community members’ experiences.

How close can you be to law enforcement?

How far away must witnesses be while recording interactions between agents and detainees?

“There's no tape measure rule,” Eliasberg said. “You have a right to record, and you have a right to be pretty close. You just can't get in the way so much that you're interfering with what the officer's trying to do.”

Eliasberg also noted that there may be public safety reasons for law enforcement to close off an area, including crime scenes and disaster zones.

After federal immigration agents shot and killed Minnesota residents Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti, the national ACLU held an information session to provide guidance for observers. More than 76,000 people tuned in.

“A good rule of thumb would be that you want to be enough steps away from the officer that they would have to affirmatively walk towards you to be in physical contact with you,” said Byul Yoon, a fellow at the ACLU Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project. “That's going to reduce the chance that they claim that you were interfering.”

WITNESS encourages community members to “film openly and comply with any instructions agents give you.”

But “if the agents tell you to stop filming, you can tell them: ‘I am exercising my right to document this arrest,'” a WITNESS instructional video adds. And if agents ask you to step back, “document yourself complying.”

Can you ask agents to identify themselves?

Given that agents continue to cover their faces, use unmarked vehicles and sometimes wear plain clothes, community members have increasingly demanded that they identify themselves. This, too, is permissible, Eliasberg said.

“The public has a right to ask: ‘Who are you? What is your name?’” he added. “They may not get an answer, but they have an absolute right to ask that question.”

If witnesses don’t get answers, Eliasberg said, “trying to take a photograph of the badge to see the name is a perfectly appropriate response.”

Can you ask detainees questions?

In videos circulating across social media, community members have also taken to asking detainees three questions:

1. What is your full name?
2. What is your birthday and year?
3. Who can we call?

Eliasberg said this is “absolutely permissible.”

At the ACLU of Southern California, he added, “we are hearing stories all the time where people are saying: ‘I have no idea what happened to my family member.’ I mean, literally, they've been snatched off the street, or they don't even know. They just don't come home one night.”

Can you remind detainees about their rights?

The public also has the right to tell people who are being arrested that they have rights, Eliasberg said. This includes the right to remain silent and not to sign any documents.

“You're simply informing them what their constitutional rights are,” he said.

Is it OK to record ICE from inside my car?

In some parts of the country, federal agents have set up traffic stops, then proceeded to ask drivers for proof of citizenship. In such situations, drivers can “absolutely” record these interactions, said Gloria Leal, general counsel of League of United Latin American Citizens, a nonprofit that works to advance the economic condition, educational attainment and civil rights of Latinos in the U.S.

But, “whenever possible,” Leal recommends observing and filming immigration agent activity on foot. The courts and law enforcement “generally treat vehicles as potentially deadly weapons, even when no harm is intended [by the driver],” she said.

If you’re in a vehicle and are approached by an immigration agent, she added, “you should not inch forward or reposition your vehicle without instruction. Do not block lanes, driveways, or sidewalks.”

Maribel Hernández Rivera, the ACLU’s national director of immigrant community strategies, offered another piece of advice: “Don’t record while driving.”

Yoon added: “If you're recording ICE from behind the wheel while you're driving and holding your phone, you could be pulled over or cited for breaking that law."

What if an agent takes away my phone?

If an immigration agent takes an observer’s phone, deletes their recordings or coerces them into sharing a password, those actions are a potential violation of the Fourth Amendment, Leal said.

In such situations, she added, an observer “should not physically resist.”

“They should state that they do not consent to the seizure or search,” she said. “They should [also] try to document the officer's identity, then seek legal counsel.”

WITNESS and Eliasberg emphasized that agents cannot take your phone if you're simply trying to record what's happening. They also can’t force you to delete your footage. But they may try anyway.

To help create a barrier, WITNESS recommends that witnesses lock their phones with a passcode, which are protected under the Fifth Amendment. (Fingerprint IDs and facial recognition are not.)

If you feel that your civil rights have been violated, you can seek help from organizations like the ACLU, which offers free services.

“The problem,” Eliasberg said, “is we don't necessarily have the resources to help everybody.”

How should I share my footage?

Community members typically share their footage with trusted media outlets, attorneys at civil rights organizations, or on social media. The state has also moved to track potentially unlawful activity by federal agents. Recently, the California Department of Justice launched a portal where the public can submit videos and photos. The portal asks community members to indicate whether their footage depicts excessive force, unlawful searches or arrests, or other civil rights violations.

In its tip sheet for filming immigration enforcement activity, WITNESS recommends securing consent from the arrestee “and/or direct representatives,” including members of that person’s family or their lawyer. WITNESS also suggests keeping a copy of the video file in a secure location, in case your footage is removed from social media.

If you’d like to share your footage with LAist’s investigative reporting team, you can do so by contacting editor Jared Bennett on Signal. His username is jbennett.18. You can also share it with watchdog correspondent Jordan Rynning, whose username is jrynning.56. For instructions on getting started with Signal,visit the app's support page. Once you're in the app, you can type their usernames in the search bar after starting a new chat.

How footage can help community members

The morning of June 17, Oscar Preciado went to a Walmart in Pico Rivera to pick up merchandise for his work as an Instacart shopper.

That day, 20-year-old Adrian Martinez was detained and taken by Border Patrol — even though he’s a U.S. citizen.

Preciado was in the parking lot. When he saw the agents appear, he whipped out his phone.

In a conversation with LAist, Preciado said he and other community members were recording the agents’ vehicles and license plates when he noticed that “they were throwing someone to the ground.”

Preciado ran over to capture what was happening.

“It was horrifying to witness,” he added. “The kid weighs 110 pounds, maybe, and he was being thrown around by these big guys.”

The federal government later said that Martinez was detained for punching officers. But after watching video footage, a federal judge said he threw no punches.

Martinez has since been released from custody on bond. He also lost his job. But he's home with his family.

Learn from a bystander: What is the experience like?

Since detentions by the Department of Homeland Security intensified in southeastern L.A. County, local resident Eric Eztli has been monitoring Home Depot parking lots and car washes. He keeps an eye out for suspicious vehicles, as well as for people who, in his view, are racially profiling and unfairly detaining his community members.

Last summer, Eztli went to a Home Depot in Huntington Park, bearing witness as men in sage green uniforms, with Border Patrol patches affixed to their sleeves, chased a day laborer. The agents’ faces were covered.

Eztli ran toward them and started to record the interaction on his cellphone.

In his video, Eztli is heard demanding that the agents show a warrant for the man’s arrest. They do not.

One of the agents tackles the day laborer to the ground. Then, three agents hold down the day laborer and handcuff him. As they tie his arms behind his back, one agent pushes the day laborer’s face into the dirt, first with his hand, then with his knee. Eztli repeatedly asks the day laborer for his name. The man manages to say “Jorge” before agents drag him away. “Jorge what?” Eztli shouts after him, trying to get his last name.

As the agents’ unmarked vehicles pulled away from the parking lot, Eztli recorded their license plate numbers.

The scene hurt to watch, he told LAist, but he wanted to gather as many details as he could. Some of it might be of use to Jorge.

“I was going to get his birthday, too, but they just took him very quickly,” Eztli said.

Eztli also meant to get a contact number so he could reach out to Jorge’s family and let them know he’d been detained. Full names and birth dates are also required to search for people in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s inmate locator system.

“I think it's important for the community to exercise their right to record and make sure that [agents] are being held accountable,” Eztli added. “But it's hard because they are hiding behind anonymity, so they can do whatever they want — that's why it feels so scary.”

President Donald Trump is canceling nearly $1 billion in spending approved by Congress, the White House announced on Friday, using a rare and contested power to axe funding for immigrant services and diversity-focused initiatives.

Trump’s Office of Management and Budget described the funding cut as focused on “the most harmful government spending.”

Most of the cuts are focused on services for immigrants, including nonprofits that serve refugees and unaccompanied minors accused of being in the country illegally. The administration says the funds are no longer necessary because illegal border crossings have diminished considerably.

A White House press release announcing the funding rescissions notes that some of the organizations are led by people who worked in the administration of Democratic President Barack Obama.

Trump’s move was condemned by Sen. Susan Collins, a Republican in a tough re-election campaign and chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee.

Collins said in a statement that the action came without warning or consultation. She also said she would work to address with colleagues “these illegal actions.”

“Not only is the delay itself an impoundment that was not reported to Congress, but also it is a usurpation of Congress’s appropriations powers,” Collins said. “OMB is an agency of the executive branch. It does not get to decide which programs are worth funding.”

Typically, Congress can review the president’s proposed spending cuts before they take effect. But Trump made that all but impossible by announcing them with just five days left in the federal fiscal year. The Government Accountability Office says the maneuver, known as a “pocket rescission,” is illegal.

Collins called it the latest attempt by OMB to “undermine Congress’s Constitutional power of the purse.”

A hedge fund manager who wants more bike lanes and a construction workers' union are the biggest donors in L.A. city elections over the past two months.

They put a total of $7 million behind City Councilmember Nithya Raman’s run for mayor, according to the latest campaign filings submitted by Thursday to meet a state deadline.

Aaron Sosnick, a hedge fund founder, and the construction workers union — the Western States Regional Council of Carpenters — each gave $3 million to the same committee backing Raman, city filings show. Sosnick gave another $1 million to the pro–Raman political committee of the street-safety group Streets for All.

Airbnb has pumped in more than $4 million into backing Mayor Karen Bass and three other city candidates. The filings also show the LAPD officers' union has spent nearly $3 million, money that went to oppose Raman, city attorney candidate Marissa Roy and city council candidate Estuardo Mazariegos, and to support council candidate Tim Gaspar. Most of that Airbnb and police union spending was before the June primary election, though police union spending against Raman has picked up recently.

Overall, the filings show Raman’s significant earlier disadvantage in outside dollars has narrowed significantly in recent weeks. So far, the amount of ad spending by outside groups for the general election is similar between the two candidates, with a total of $1.57 million supporting Bass and against Raman, versus $1.53 million supporting Raman and against Bass. Those groups still have millions of donor dollars on hand for future ads.

Ballots are set to start hitting voters’ mailboxes by the week of Oct. 5.

What to know about the mayor’s race

Sosnick runs the New York-based hedge fund A.R.T. Advisors, which uses computer programs to quickly buy and sell stock, to make money from short-term price changes. He is based in Reno, according to campaign filings, and splits his time between New York and L.A.’s Los Feliz neighborhood, according to Michael Schneider, Streets for All’s founder.

Sosnick has been a major donor to prior streets-focused campaigns in L.A., including 2024’s Measure HLA. That voter-approved initiative requires the city to add planned bike lanes, bus lanes and pedestrian upgrades when it repaves major streets.

Two years after voters approved it, the city had completed only about 300 feet of HLA improvements as of March, Streetsblog L.A. reported at the time. The city paused some repaving and shifted to smaller repairs that stay under the measure's trigger, Streetsblog reported.

The construction workers union — which has said most of its nearly 100,000 members are in Southern California — endorsed Bass in 2022, before switching to Raman in August. The union broke with Bass over her affordable-housing directive, ED1, which doesn't require union wages.

The LAPD officers' union has put more than $2 million into groups opposing Raman. A recent ad funded by the union highlights Raman’s remarks about opposing a city ban on homeless encampments near schools. In the ad, Raman is shown saying she doesn’t "think a kid’s gonna be safer because a tent is 500 feet away from a school."

The police union committee also received $525,000 from Douglas Emmett Inc., the landlord behind the largest attempted eviction from rent-controlled housing in the city in decades. The city declined to legally intervene on behalf of the renters, who ended up suing and winning a 2024 court ruling that found the evictions were illegal.

Airbnb has given more than $4 million to groups backing Bass, city attorney candidate John McKinney and City Council candidates Jose Ugarte and Gaspar. The city attorney's office has a current lawsuit against Airbnb over alleged price gouging after the January 2025 fires. Whoever wins in November will inherit the case. This year, Bass advanced a proposal backed by Airbnb to relax city regulations by letting Airbnb hosts rent out second homes and investment properties through 2028.

Dodger Stadium parking-lot co-owner Frank McCourt's real estate firm also gave $25,000 to a group backing Bass. McCourt needs approvals from the Metro board, which Bass chairs, for a proposed gondola project.

Much of Bass' other outside support comes from unions, including the SEIU union that represents most city government staff, whose pay is negotiated by the mayor and approved by the city council.

City attorney

Beyond $2 million from an Airbnb-backed committee supporting McKinney, the police union’s committee has spent $357,000 against city attorney candidate Roy.

Smart Justice California, a criminal-justice-reform advocacy group that wants to reduce incarceration, and a group of trial lawyers are major backers of a committee supporting Roy. The city attorney oversees the city’s misdemeanor prosecutions and defends the city against lawsuits, including those brought by plaintiffs' firms.

City Council: Gaspar and Ugarte far ahead in outside money

In Council District 3, Gaspar’s biggest outside supporters include about $550,000 from an Airbnb-backed group, around $230,000 from a major association for apartment landlords and $136,000 from the police union. His opponent, Barri Worth Girvan, has received a much smaller amount of outside backing, largely from unions, including one that represents construction workers.

In Council District 9, outside spending for Ugarte includes about $300,000 by Airbnb and about $230,000 by the landlords association. Among their many responsibilities, the city council votes on rent rules.

Ugarte’s opponent, Estuardo Mazariegos, has received much less outside support, largely from the main union for L.A. Unified School District teachers and a tenant organizing group known as ACCE.

How the biggest donations flow

Direct giving to the candidates’ campaigns is legally restricted to $1,800 per donor each election cycle for L.A. mayor and city attorney, and $1,000 for city council. So the biggest donors instead spend through “independent expenditure” committees, or “IEs.” Donors can give unlimited amounts to these committees, as long as the spending isn't coordinated with the candidates' campaigns.

That IE money often flows through multiple committees — many of which combine money meant for candidates in multiple races — on its way to election ads, which can make the money hard for the public to easily track.

The general election will take place Nov. 3.

The City of Long Beach is pushing back against requests to release information about a sustained misconduct finding from the personnel file of one of its former officers — even as more details come out about past incidents.

Defense attorney Scott Sanders has requested material in the personnel files of former Long Beach Police Officer Erik Suarez after he learned Suarez was convicted on aggravated battery charges stemming from a 2019 beating in Cobb County, Georgia.

In court filings, Sanders has argued that information should have been disclosed to his client, Lonnie Jacobs, from the outset of the case. Jacobs is facing up to four years in prison on a charge that he brought a controlled substance into a jail. Sanders has argued the case should be dismissed because he alleges the initial arrest was based on Suarez misrepresenting facts and omitting evidence.

Now the defense has requested information from Suarez’s personnel file about both the Georgia conviction and an allegation that Suarez assaulted a man on the job in 2023. Sanders argues that information in the personnel file could show a pattern of misconduct by Suarez. In court filings, he also claims it could reveal a practice within the Long Beach Police Department to conceal incriminating information about its officers in protected personnel files.

“The reasonable conclusion is that the non-disclosure of Officer Suarez’s conduct and conviction is illustrative of an intentionally flawed process designed to conceal evidence that is favorable to defendants and harmful to LBPD officers,” Sanders wrote in a declaration submitted to the court on Sept. 23.

“With what we've learned so far, every defendant charged in a Long Beach case must presume that evidence is being concealed in their case,” Sanders told LAist. “Just look at the lengths the department went to in order to protect Officer Suarez's misconduct. He was arrested after violently causing serious injuries to the victim. Then just three months after being convicted in that case, he used force while on duty that the department found impermissible. Long Beach PD's response? Send him back to the streets and block defendants from finding out the truth.”

Erik Suarez from a photo in a Long Beach police file documenting his use of force during an arrest in 2023.

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Suarez left the Long Beach Police Department in June and is now with the Burbank Police Department, according to records from the California Commission on Peace Officer Standards and Training.

The Burbank Police Department confirmed that Suarez was employed there and assigned to the field operations division. The department said it could not comment on “confidential personnel records or specific aspects of an individual’s background investigation, employment history, disciplinary history, or other personnel matters” and declined to make him available for an interview.

LAist tried to reach Suarez by calling a phone number linked to him in public records. Each time, a man answered and said he was not Suarez, but that he was in contact with Suarez. This week, that man said he had no interest in passing along the reporter's contact information.

Todd Vigus, an attorney for the Long Beach Police Department, argued in a Sept. 22 response to Sanders’ motion that the allegations surrounding Jacobs’ arrest “do not establish good cause to search the officers' personnel files for every conceivable form of misconduct, moral turpitude, discipline, performance deficiency, racial bias, or unrelated wrongdoing.”

A spokesperson for the Long Beach Police Department said in an email dated Sept. 11 that they are prohibited from discussing personnel matters and internal investigations, but did confirm that the department was aware of Suarez’s arrest in Georgia.

In response to a records request from LAist, department officials on Thursday released records from a 2023 use of force investigation that determined Suarez used "unnecessary or unreasonable force" while arresting someone.

That same year, the Los Angeles District Attorney’s office investigated an allegation that Suarez committed “assault under the color of authority” but declined to press charges.

“The decision to decline prosecution in the 2023 matter was based on the evidence available at the time,” said Greg Risling, a spokesperson for the district attorney’s office. “Although we did not know of the allegation from Georgia, the facts of that case would not have been a deciding factor in that charging decision.”

How Suarez's record came to light

When Suarez left the LBPD in June, Sanders was attempting to subpoena him for questioning about why he arrested Jacobs, who is bald, when his body-worn camera footage showed a witness describing the person who threatened him with a gun as having dreadlocks or braids.

Sanders attempted to subpoena Suarez twice through the Long Beach Police Department. In response to the first subpoena, in April 2026, the department said Suarez was out of the country. After the second subpoena filed June 22, the department informed Sanders that Suarez had resigned.

According to state records, Burbank hired Suarez two weeks later, on July 6. He’d worked for the Long Beach Police Department from November 2017 until June 19, 2026 — three days before Sanders made a second subpoena attempt.

Still attempting to subpoena Suarez, now at his home, an investigator working for the defense of Lonnie Jacobs — the man Sanders represents in the drug case — found Suarez had been convicted of misdemeanor aggravated battery in 2022 in Cobb County, Georgia.

According to court records LAist obtained from Georgia, the incident took place in a Waffle House in 2019.

The victim told the Long Beach Press-Telegram that Suarez threatened to kill him while beating him on the ground. The victim said he has vertigo and problems with his vision from the beating, according to the newspaper.

The Cobb County District Attorney’s office charged Suarez with two felony counts of aggravated battery. In 2022, Suarez pleaded guilty to misdemeanor aggravated battery. He served a year on probation and was ordered to take an anger management class.

According to the article, the victim said he was told by Georgia prosecutors that Long Beach police officials had been informed of the charges, and was surprised to see that Suarez was still working for the police department years later.

Records released by the Long Beach Police Department show Suarez received a two-day suspension for bringing discredit to the department by leaving the scene of the assault without reporting it.

Former Long Beach Police Officer Erik Suarez received a two-day suspension after the 2019 arrest in Cobb County, Georgia.

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Long Beach Police Department

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Sanders argues in his filing that these details support the motion to open up Suarez’s police records. In California, police personnel files are mostly shielded from public disclosure, except under certain circumstances, including findings of unnecessary use of force and misconduct while on the job.

Defendants who believe those personnel files may include information relevant to their case can file what’s called a Pitchess motion in court. If a judge agrees with the motion, the court will have an opportunity to review personnel files and pull out information deemed relevant to the case at hand.

Sanders filed an initial Pitchess motion before a preliminary hearing, but the court denied his request. He filed another motion to disclose Suarez’s personnel files once the defense learned about the Georgia conviction. Long Beach filed in opposition to that motion, arguing information in Suarez’s personnel file is not relevant to the Jacobs’ case. It is that motion that a judge is considering now.

Why this case could have broader implications

Sanders argues the Georgia conviction should have been disclosed not through a Pitchess motion, but proactively under Brady v. Maryland, a 1963 Supreme Court case that established prosecutors’ obligation to disclose information that could help defendants win their case. In his motions, Sanders is asking not only for information about Suarez’s conviction and potential misconduct, but for evidence that the Long Beach Police Department employs a similar tactic to hide information about other officers in their personnel files.

“Quite clearly, there can be no safe haven within a police department that is created to facilitate the concealment of improper acts by its officers or to hide the department’s efforts to protect officers from receiving deserved consequences,” Sanders wrote in a Sept. 23 supplement to the second Pitchess motion. “It is a near-certainty that the department is engaging in a pervasive practice of non-disclosure.”

On Thursday, a judge in Long Beach granted a continuance in the case against Jacobs, rescheduling the hearing for the second Pitchess motion for Nov. 12.

What the DA knew — and didn’t know

Shortly after Sanders began defending Jacobs, a deputy district attorney on the case notified the defense that the DA’s office investigated Suarez in 2023 for “assault under the color of authority,” but did not file charges.

In his latest filing, Sanders argues this disclosure suggests that the district attorney’s office was aware of its obligations to disclose evidence under Brady and would have disclosed the Georgia conviction if they knew about it.

The district attorney’s office handbook instructs prosecutors to turn over evidence that directly opposes guilt or could be used to impeach a witness, including felony convictions, misdemeanors or other conduct that “reflects on believability, misconduct involving moral turpitude.”

A charge evaluation worksheet submitted to the court provides some details about the 2023 incident but, according to Sanders, leaves other questions unanswered.

The worksheet says that Suarez was assisting other officers responding to a domestic violence call in 2023. The other officers had arrested and handcuffed a man who, according to the worksheet, was “forcefully resisting” arrest. The worksheet says the man bit Suarez. The account reports Suarez then punched the man in the face, and the man lost consciousness for about four minutes. That narrative is based on reports from body-worn camera footage, reports and interviews, the worksheet says.

The district attorney’s office decided not to press charges against Suarez, citing “insufficient evidence” showing Suarez used more force than necessary.

In the latest filing, Sanders raises several issues with the worksheet provided by the district attorney’s office and is seeking more information about what happened during the incident.

The worksheet says Long Beach “opened an investigation into the allegation that Suarez used excessive force” in March 2023, two months after the incident.

In response to a records request from LAist, the Long Beach Police Department said they had identified one investigation with a sustained finding of “unnecessary or unreasonable force” from 2023 in Suarez’s personnel file. Later that same day, the department released the investigatory files related to that incident.

The records show the internal affairs investigation was prompted by deputy chief Gerardo Prieto, who also requested a criminal investigation, and resulted in a three-day suspension for Suarez.

A summary of a meeting between Suarez and LBPD leadership states that Suarez and James Trott, an attorney with the Long Beach Police Officers Association, argued the use of force was reasonable. Trott said the incident “should and alone and not be associated with the prior out-of-state incident,” according to the summary.

The worksheet from the district attorney’s office does not reference any sustained findings by the Long Beach Police Department. It does not describe the allegation or explain where the allegation came from, a key omission, according to Sanders.

The report summarizes an interview with the man Suarez punched. It does not include any statements from that man and explicitly states they did not seek a compelled interview with Suarez.

Importantly, Sanders argues, the report makes no mention of the conviction against Suarez in Georgia that occurred just a few months earlier.

The man Suarez punched was convicted of resisting arrest during the incident. Sanders argues that he was entitled to know about Suarez’s conviction, and that the district attorney’s office should have known about the conviction while deciding whether or not to charge Suarez.

The district attorney’s office handbook states that when considering pressing charges on someone, prosecutors shall “review all available police reports and the accused’s background and prior record.”

“The fact that the accused’s alleged conduct is consistent or inconsistent with prior proven conduct may remove or create a reasonable doubt,” the handbook explains.

The district attorney’s office told LAist the office was not aware of the Georgia conviction at the time of their 2023 investigation.

What makes The Little Sugarplum special? Three sisters started the traveling pop-up bakery, each with a different role in running it. There’s the medical student-turned-baker, the hospitality worker-turned-marketer, and the blackjack dealer-turned-accountant.

What else? Their cinnamon rolls, which have become the main attraction, include a variety of rotating flavors like strawberry shortcake, matcha, coffee and ... mashed potatoes. Yeah, you read that right.

They recently shared their secrets with LAist host Austin Cross.

About the owners

Jenna Agpaoa grew up with her two sisters in Valley Center, a city in San Diego County, where their passion for baked goods began to take shape.

The Amish cinnamon roll

Soon after starting the bakery, their content went viral after sharing a recipe for a traditional Amish cinnamon roll, which notably uses mashed potatoes as an ingredient. They learned the recipe from an old neighbor growing up, who was Pennsylvania Dutch, a group descended from German-speaking immigrants from the 17th and 18th centuries.

Now you can find them vending all across Southern California, including at places like Ubefest and 626 Night Market.

Their fall flavor menu

They offer other baked goods in addition to cinnamon rolls, including cookies, brownies and bread.

The Little Sugarplum's fall menu.

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What should we try next?